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What's the easiest way to find goods with great rebates?
Your weekend newspaper.
Saturday (and depending on where you live, Sunday) is THE BEST day for finding free stuff.
My Saturday paper has a section full of ads for all the local stores. While eating Saturday morning breakfast I browse these ads and find out which stores are having what on sale. If theres something that has a really nice rebate, I go online to see if I can get it free. Sometimes Ill still buy stuff thats a few dollars over free, because I know I can still make a profit on it.
If you don't subscribe to a newspaper, just check out the deals going on at major Web sites on Sundays. The deals are posted on Sunday because sales usually last from Sunday-Saturday for online stores that have a brick-and-mortar counterpart. This holds true for Staples.com, OfficeMax.com, OfficeDepot.com, BestBuy.com, and many others.
Another thing you can do to get the paper free is go to the barber shop, or a dinera lot of times these will have the newspaper laying around for patrons.
Message Boards
Online message boards are a great place to find free stuff.
Ive gotten full toothpaste tubes, hair care products, colognes, you name it, from message board postings. Usually these are manufacturer giveaways, and I havent found any place better to find out about them than message boards.
Actually, I usually find out about them through this message board:
http://www.bigbigforums.com.
They have almost 50,000 members, with lots of people sharing their knowledge. Just go to the FREE STUFF section and youll be in heaven.
You may also want to check out http://www.edealforums.com (the message board for eDealInfo.com).
A quick note about message boards: Pay attention to the rules if you're going to post. You dont want to get kicked off the message board for breaking the rules. My suggestion is to just lurk for a few days before you post. Get a feel for how others act before you start joining in on the fun.
Rebate Info:
Here are some tips to making sure your rebates are rewarded:
1. Fill everything out completely. This is a big one. If you leave out one required blank they may not send you the check!
2. Make copies of everything, including UPC codes, rebate submission forms, and receipts.
3. Write down the following:
Date you sent the rebate form
Product the rebate is for
Amount of rebate
Expected time frame for receiving your check
Any contact information for the rebate submission company
4. If you dont receive the rebate within the specified time, call or e-mail the company. Sometimes theres just a small error in processing. Once, when I didnt receive a rebate, I called the company and they told me they couldnt read my address so they didnt send it. Were they lying? I dont know. Should they have contacted me themselves? Yes, but they didnt. Because I kept good records, I got my check anyway.
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