If you have some time today before heading out to celebrate New Year’s Eve: today’s the last day of the quarter, which means it’s the earnings deadline for a couple of rewards programs that pay quarterly — Ebates (join here if you’re not a member) and Wellness360 (join here) (aff). It’s also the last day to use up the balance in your FSA account if you have one, and it’s the last day of the Pepsi Stuff points promotion.
Ebates requires you to earn at least $5.00 in cashback savings per quarter in order to receive your cashback the following quarter, otherwise it rolls over (that’s $5 in personal shopping cashback in addition to the $5 signup bonus or $10 gift card bonus you get when you join). If you’re not sure if you’ve earned $5.00 this quarter, it’s easy to check: When you log in, next to your name at the top of the screen it says Total Cash and a dollar amount. Click the dollar amount, then click Cash Pending. Cash Back on Purchases will be displayed at the top of the screen. If it’s under $5, you may want to take advantage of Ebates’ Double Cashback Sale still going on, offering higher shopping rates at stores like Home Depot (6%), Disney (6%), Macy’s (8%), and Dell (4%), among others! Today’s the deadline for your next Big Fat Check so don’t delay!
Wellness360 also pays quarterly when your personal earnings exceed $25, otherwise your earnings roll over. You can check to see how close you are to meeting the threshold by clicking View Report under My Points on the right hand side of the screen. If you’re close to $25 but not quite there, you may want to spend some time on the site: you get one point for every page you visit for at least 20 seconds. Please only use the site to get information you’re truly interested in — they have software that will detect if you’re just refreshing pages to get points, which violates their Terms of Service. Keep in mind, you will have to come back to Wellness360′s website some time between 1/1 and 1/15 to manually request your payment.
If you have a FSA (Flexible Spending Account, aka pre-tax medical withholding account), obviously as today’s the last day of 2008, today’s your deadline to empty out any remaining balance. If you can’t schedule a last-minute eye exam, and don’t have any prescriptions that need refilling, you may want to stock up on other qualified OTC medical staples like band-aids, pain relievers, antihistimines, decongestants, vitamins, etc. If you have a debit-type plastic card you use in conjunction with your FSA, you can use it online at Drugstore.com (just add items to your cart marked with a blue FSA). Live Cashback (see my post below) just dropped their cashback rate on Drugstore.com purchases to 5%, but you can get 8% from Extrabux, or 7% from Ebates or MrRebates (aff).
Last but certainly not least: If you’ve been participating in the Pepsi Stuff points program, today is the last day to enter and redeem Pepsi points if you have them. The new Pepsi packaging has been in stores for the last month or more where I live, so if you want to head out to pick up those last couple of points you need for redeeming, you may want to scope out smaller stores that may still have the old packaging in inventory. (Or look for less popular products like Pepsi Jazz. Yuck.)
That’s it for me for 2008! I wish you all a safe and happy New Year’s and a healthy and prosperous 2009!
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Boy I sure wish I visited your page more often! My wife and I had been accumulating our Pepsi Stuff points all year, and were waiting until after Christmas to redeem them. (We planned on redeeming the points for the episodes of Battlestar Galactica we had missed, if we didn’t get the series on DVD as a present.) So after the holidays wound down (and after the entire family recovered from having strep throat), we finally had a chance to return to the Pepsi Stuff page last weekend, where my wife and I were shocked to discover the promotion had ended!
I find it extremely unfair for a promotion like that to be shut down without at least sending out an email to users reminding them that the promotion is ending and that any unused points will expire. Is that really so hard to do in this day of internet technology? Even better would be closing the promotion to new code entries but allowing 30 days for people to use up their points.
I’m sure there are plenty of other people who missed the fine print about the promotion ending on 12/31 and are upset about losing their points. Is there anything that can be done to encourage Pepsi and/or Amazon to extend a grace period for redeeming points?
I got curious as to when the promotion ended so I looked at the tiny print on one of my pepsi boxes and saw that it had ended…and all my points were gone. I tried going to the website today to see what I could get, if anything, and it has completely disappeared! You WOULD think they would give you 30 days like Marc stated to redeem your points but noooooo. Pepsi didn’t earn any points with me because of that.
They’ve sure lost my business by effectively dropping the promotion without useful warning (I don’t have an electron microscope to read that fine print. And I looked for it). Stuffs not so good for you anyhow, they’ve lost me and mine.
/F