Groupon is offering a $10 gift card to Sephora for $5. Can be used in store, online, via mobile devices, or at any Sephora inside JCPenney. Limit one per person. I was going to say I’ve never shopped there, but I think I did buy a gift once. Over 100,000 bought, so I guess it is popular.

Remember that you can save even more with cashback shopping sites like eBates ($5 new customer bonus), Mr. Rebates ($5 bonus), TopCashBack (high %), and BigCrumbs (high %).

Here are a few new proposed class action settlements that may affect you. They both involve popular food products that marketed themselves as “All Natural” and ran into some controversy:

Naked Juice. If you bought an eligible Naked Juice product between September 27, 2007 and August 19, 2013 you could claim up to $75 with proof of purchase, or up to $45 without proof of purchase. I tend to break down and buy these horribly-expensive drinks when I’m sick.

The payout varies with how much you spent during that time period. As long as you spent $45.01, the proposed settlement will get you $45 without the need to provide receipts. File a claim here.

Barbara’s Bakery. Barbara’s Bakery makes a variety of “healthy” cereals and snacks, most notably for me their popular Puffin cereal which is sold at many natural foods-type stores including Trader Joe’s. Consumers can get up to $100 if they bought eligible Barbara’s Bakery products [pdf] between May 23, 2008 and July 5, 2013. It doesn’t appear that proof of purchase is required upfront, although as usual they may ask for it later. Who saves their cereal receipts?

The payout varies with how much you spent during that time period, starting at a maximum of $5 if you spent $10 or less. As long as you spent over $100, the proposed settlement will get you up to $100. File a claim here.

With all of these class action settlements, you need a lot of patience and a stable mailing address. For example with this old Sprint ETF class actions settlement I wrote about in January 2009, I didn’t get the check until this month, August 2013!

Back to School time is here again, and Amazon has a promotion where you get can $10 free credit for each new Amazon Student member that you refer to sign up. If you’ve got some social media influence in college or just met 100 new friends in your dorm, this would be a pretty easy way to rack up some pizza money as it’s completely free to sign up and you get 6 months of free Amazon Prime 2-day shipping. “All Amazon customers can invite friends to join Amazon Student via email, Facebook post or by sharing a personal invitation link on social media sites.”

Students are verified by providing a working .edu e-mail address, although you can use another e-mail for your account. After the first 6 months, new sign-ups can continue Amazon Student at 50% off ($49 a year) and keep the 2-day free shipping as well as get access to the Amazon Prime streaming movie and TV library, as well as the Amazon Prime Kindle free borrowing service. You have to provide a credit card for the trial I believe, but you can cancel at any time, even immediately and you can still keep the free 6 months and it’ll just stop when time is up without charging your card.

Fine print:

Residents of AR, MN, NC, and RI are ineligible to receive Student referral credit. Credits may take 7 days or longer to appear in your account after new member signup. Credits expire one year from date of issuance, are one-time use, are non-refundable, and can be redeemed only on items sold by Amazon on www.amazon.com.

Sign up for Amazon Student here. Get your own referral links here.

One of my more popular posts is about Haggling To Lower Your Cable or Direct TV Satellite Bill. Looking at the stats, I would confidently estimate that hundreds of people have saved hundreds of dollars each after reading it and taking some action. Today, a call center worker in the Retention Department of a satellite TV company (Dish? DirecTV?) left some interesting thoughts that I didn’t want to get lost in the 135+ comments. I’ve quoted it below, unedited except for a few spaces to break things up.

I work for a satellite company, I wont say which one. and might I just say that if you are going to call in and do all this just to get money off of your bill at least be up front about it. The worst is when people call in and try to give some sob story about not being able to afford it when they have like the highest package but wont go down to a more affordable one. We have done this long enough to know who is “blowing smoke” so if you want the best deal just be nice (we in the retention department deal with mostly escalated situations as well as customer retention)

If you call in and just say “hey, I know you guys have a lot of good deals going on for different customers, is there anything you can do for me” I PROMISE You you will get the best deal.

[Read more…]

(Update: Free promo is expired, it’s back at $9.99.) Just a quick note that there is a Kindle eBook about tax deductions for small businesses, including self-employed people, that is currently free called Small Business Tax Deduction Secrets by Stephen Nelson, CPA. The author participates in the Bogleheads investment forum under the username SeattleCPA.

I downloaded and skimmed the book briefly, and it does have helpful information for those looking to maximize qualified business expenses and deductions (as you should!). Free for a limited time, so as usual my advice is download now and read later! You can download software to read Kindle books on PC, Mac, smartphones, and tablets.