Here is another American Express Sync promotion if you sync your AmEx card with your Xbox LIVE Gamertag on Xbox 360. Visit AmeXbox.com to register. At the very minimum, you’ll get $10 for registering your card at AmeXbox.com, with more lucrative opportunities if you have Halo 4. As with other American Express promotions like Small Business Saturday, I assume you can get $10 for each card you own including authorized user cards, if you have multiple Gamertags. I don’t have an Xbox, but reader Nic helpfully sent me the e-mail text below.

American Express and Xbox are bringing you a new way to save. From now until December 31st, Cardmembers can sync an eligible American Express® Card with their Xbox LIVE Gamertag to unlock exclusive content, offers, and more.
• Spend $10 at AMC Theatres®, get $5 back
• Spend $50 at PacSun®, get $25 back
• Get a $10 statement credit from American Express

Cardmembers who sync their Cards with Xbox LIVE and play the newly released “Halo 4” will also be able to unlock additional offers by reaching specified in-game achievements. These include:
• Spend $100 at Best Buy®, get $50 back
• Get a $25 statement credit from American Express

Last year, we debated how much money do LED Christmas lights really save?, where I suggested that since the electricity savings were on the order of $1 per year per 100-light strand, it wasn’t really worth throwing away perfectly good incandescent lights if you had them already.

Well, this year Home Depot is having a Christmas light trade-In promotion where you can get between $3 and $5 off a box of LED lights for every string of old lights you give them to recycle (working or not). You can get up to 5 coupons per customer, promo ends 11/14. The cheapest lights that can be found online are about $8.50 for 50-lights, or $5.50 after coupon. The GE-branded lights (~$20 for 100 lights) are slightly more expensive but easier to compare prices, and based on a quick scan the prices are competitive so that after the coupon you should be ahead.

Throw in the fact that the price differential has narrowed, and this may be a good opportunity to recycle your old lights and upgrade to energy-efficient LEDs. Fine print below.

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Target recently announced a new “Holiday Price Match” policy that will let you price-match with select online stores between November 1st and December 16, 2012. Full details are to be released on October 22 at target.com/morereasons, but for now the qualifying retailers will include Amazon.com, Walmart.com, BestBuy.com and Toysrus.com. Target is even offering free WiFi now in all stores to aid your price-matching activities. (Target press release)

Combine this with their REDcard credit/debit cards that offer 5% off everything at Target and Target.com, and things may actually end up cheaper at your brick-and-mortar Target than online. Sales taxes are another variable. (Does your state charge sales tax? Does Amazon charge sales tax in your state now?) Also consider if you want to provide your gift recipient the ability for easy in-store returns. An interesting stat taken from this WSJ article:

A recent survey by brokerage house William Blair & Co. found that on average Target’s prices were about 14% higher than Amazon’s, Best Buy’s were 16% higher and Wal-Mart’s prices were 9% higher. The comparison included shipping costs for Amazon, but not sales taxes.

This follows similar announcements by Best Buy and Toys R Us, although each have their fine print. I don’t think I’ve been inside either a Best Buy or TRU in years.

Amazon.com and Mastercard are currently running a promotion that gets you an additional 10% off the first shipment of select “Subscribe & Save” items with promotional code MSTRCRD1. This is on top of the standard 5% off all Subscribe and Save items (including future shipments) and also the Amazon Mom 20% off discount on baby items. Must pay with Mastercard. Expires October 31st, 2012. Now extended through November 30, 2012.

Eligible items include food, baby, household, pharmacy, and nutritional supplements. If you only want it once, you can still just sign-up, get your 15% off, and then cancel the subscription with a few clicks after the order ships. Or, just wait and Amazon will e-mail you before the next shipment goes out. I forget the exact time period, but you get at least a day or two, enough that I usually just wait for the e-mail to cancel.

Things that I buy with S&S… Tasty Bite Punjab Eggplant and other hard-to-find ethnic foods (also cheaper than local), Diapers (appear to be excluded from this promo), Pamper’s Baby Wipes (net cost 1.8 cents each).

Updated. American Express has a product called Serve – a combination of their prepaid credit card and a Paypal-like online payment service. No credit checks, no monthly fees, and one free ATM withdrawal per month (the ATM itself may charge a fee).

The current live promotion is a $25 account credit on any single $25+ load, valid through December 31st, 2012. Basically a free $25 if you’re new, you could just transfer it back into a bank account, use it to buy an Amazon gift card, or just do a split transaction on a larger purchase (put $50 on the Serve card, and the rest on another credit card).

You can load funds from a bank account for free, and Serve is also waiving credit card and debit card load fees until March 15, 2013 but it warns you that your card issuer may still classify it as a cash advance. Last I checked, the limits on credit card loading were $100 per day, up to a cumulative $250 to $500 per month. May be handy for meeting spending requirements on credit card bonuses, especially if you have access to a fee-free ATM. I used this tactic on my Chase Sapphire Preferred card earlier and it worked as a purchase.

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Mobile payments are hot, and start-up LevelUp let’s you pay by scanning a QR code from your smartphone that is linked to your existing credit or debit card. You know what that means… venture capital spent on customer acquisition! New users can get a free $5 credit by signing up through a referral link or with code JL8U06. The referrer also gets $5, but only if the user spends $5 on their own credit card. Nice detail: The app lets you use your camera to grab your credit card number instead of typing it in.

In addition to the referral bonus, you’ll also get a few bucks of free starter credit at each of thousands of participating merchants (mostly restaurants). For example, in San Francisco you can get $1 a Adam’s Grub Truck, $2 at Slider Shack and Quiznos, and $4 at Asa Sushi. In New York City you can get $2 for Big D’s Grub Truck. Neat feature to encourage trying out a new place. There are also loyalty promos, for example you may get $5 after spending $50 at a store over time. They seem to have many major metro areas covered, but there are holes.

Overall, another mobile payment app based on the idea that whipping out a credit card is just too much trouble. I do think there will be a big winner in this arena, but competitor Square is already moving towards the concept of leaving both your wallet and phone in your pocket entirely and essentially paying by saying your name once your phone is nearby. One interesting feature is that they offer zero merchant fees for businesses, which sounds great but I’m not quite sure how they pull that off. In the meantime, I like checking out new startups and will enjoy my free lunch.

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If you are an AT&T Wireless, U-verse, Home Phone, or Internet customer, here are some promotions that are currently available.

$25 for AutoPay
Sign up for automatic payment of your bill via credit card or bank account and get a $25 prepaid Visa gift card. You must maintain your AutoPay status for at least 90 days. FYI, here’s a different one offering $10 for AutoPay.

$10 for Paperless Statements
Enroll in paperless billing and get a $10 prepaid Visa gift card. Offer is valid for AT&T Wireless, U-verse, Home Phone, and Internet Accounts. One $10 Reward Card for Paperless Billing enrollment per 12-month period. Must retain qualifying enrollment in Paperless Billing for a minimum of 90 days and at time processing of reward is completed.

Current AT&T TV, Internet, and Phone promotions
Check out the current promotion for their U-Verse products and regular AT&T bundles with high-speed internet starting at $14.95 a month.