Tag Archives: Gift Cards

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Peets Coffee & Tea $10 Off $25 AMEX Offer (Gift Card Balance Reloads Worked)

Updated 3/6/24 at 8:30am PT: I successfully used this AMEX Offer 3 times and all 3 statement credits posted quickly.  Please scroll to the bottom of this post for more details.


Good morning everyone, happy Saturday!  If you are a fan of Peets Coffee & Tea, you won’t want to miss this AMEX Offer.  There is a new Peets Coffee & Tea $10 Off $25 AMEX Offer available and I immediately loaded the offer to my AMEX CC to see if reloading my Peets gift card balance would work.  Yes, it did! This AMEX Offer can be done up to 3 times for a total of $30 statement credit  After you load the offer to your AMEX CC, open the Peets app, go to the Wallet tab, and click Add Funds.

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My 2023 Peloton Bike Rental Year End Review (Total Cost of Ownership & Workout Class Stats)

Good afternoon everyone, welcome to Pedal with Grant. Just kidding, I’m not turning Travel with Grant into a fitness blog, but I wanted to share my experience renting and using my Peloton bike in 2023. I wish I could say that I rode the bike everyday and lost 50 pounds, but that was definitely not the case last year.  Even though I didn’t live up to my Peloton expectations for 2023, I’m starting 2024 off on a strong note and hope to keep the pedal to the metal for the rest of the year.

Here is the origin story for how the Peloton bike ended up in our “workout studio” aka the garage. Back in late 2022, Laura and I decided to try out the Peloton bike. I was worried that we would buy the bike outright and then “forget” to use it and have it sit “stationary” for months. Luckily, I stumbled onto a Mashable article that mentioned renting the bike directly from Peloton and I was surprised by the affordable monthly price. As of January 2024, the Peloton bike rental program is still running and the monthly price has remained the same.

For starters, you can rent the original Peloton Bike for $89 / month or the upgraded Peloton Bike+ for $119 / month.  Instead of going for the more expensive Bike+, you can buy a $50 screen attachment that will allow you to adjust / rotate the monitor.  Both bikes have an initial $150 delivery and set up fee, but there is no long term commitment and you can end the rental anytime and have the bike picked up for free. I liked having the option to return the bike if we didn’t like it or use it enough to justify keeping it.  There is also an option to buy out both bikes.

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Attention Coinstar Users: Not All Kiosks Offer Amazon eGift Cards

Good evening everyone, happy Friday!  Last weekend, I visited my grandfather down in Southern California and he gave me a bag of change.  He likes to keep his change and give it to me whenever I visit him.  This is how I got into coin collecting (numismatics) when I was younger, but that’s a story for another day.  Anyway, whenever I have a bag of change, I take it to my local grocery store and put it in the Coinstar kiosk and select an egift card (there are no fee for egift cards).  During my recent Coinstar visit, I was surprised to see that Amazon was not listed as an egift card option.  After doing some digging, I learned that not all Coinstar kiosks offer Amazon egift cards and some stores offer very few egift card options.  Here is what I learned…

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PSA: Email Capital One Shopping if $200 Referral & Sign Up Bonus are Missing (Bonus Received Within 3-4 Hours)

Good afternoon everyone, I hope you had a great MLK Jr. Weekend.  Back in December, Capital One Shopping increased their referral bonus and sign up bonus to $200 each (Doctor of Credit’s post).  I was an existing member, so I was not eligible for the $200 sign up bonus, but my wife (Laura) was not a member of Capital One Shopping.  I sent her my referral link on December 10 and she signed up for an account that same day.  We needed a few things for our home, so she placed an order from Walmart and received the “Success! We’ve received your order and are processing your rewards now” email.

Fast forward a month and neither of us had received the $200 referral or $200 sign up bonus.  I searched the Capital One Shopping portal for a contact button and finally found the customer service email (help@capitaloneshopping.com).  I sent them an email detailing the issue on January 11 at 6:58am…

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Yearly Reminder: Max Out 10% Citi ThankYou Points Rebate on Citi Rewards+ Credit Card (10K Annual Limit)

Good afternoon everyone, happy Friday!  I wrote a similar post in 2022 and thought I should publish a similar reminder post for 2023.  One of my favorite sock drawer credit cards is the Citi Rewards+ Credit Card.  This credit card has a pretty decent sign up bonus at the moment (20,000 Citi ThankYou Points after spending $1,500 in 3 months), but my favorite feature of this credit card is the 10% rebate on redeemed Citi ThankYou Points.  You can receive up to 10,000 Citi ThankYou Points rebated each calendar year, you just need to redeem at least 100,000 Citi ThankYou Points in a calendar year.

So why am I reminding you about this today?  The 10% rebate posts to your Citi ThankYou Points account when your statement closes.  If your statement closes on or after January 1, that will count toward your 2024 calendar year 10,000 Citi ThankYou Point limit.  Therefore, you probably only have 1 or 2 more statements between now and December 31, 2022.  I will show you how to calculate how many rebated Citi ThankYou Points you have already received this year.

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