More Cheap Trick Thursday: send free Restaurant.gift certificates every day until Christmas!
Looking for free holiday gifts, or want stocking stuffers that cost absolutely nothing at all?
For every day until Christmas, you can (updated) send 3 $10 Restaurant.com gift certificates as part of its Feed It Forward campaign for the low low price of nothing.
It's a nice gift, especially for folks who may be cutting back on eating out.
So what's the catch?
The food won't be entirely free, of course.
When you redeem the Restaurant.com certs for $10 coupons to specific restaurants, most of them require minimum purchases of $20. So, your gift recipient have to shell out some dough to use the coupon --- not to mention taking the steps of navigating the site and selecting a restaurant in their area (provided some of the approximately 5,000 participating restaurants are nearby), etc. etc.
Some of the restaurants will also restrict the coupon value to just food purchases (excluding alcohol) or even strictly to entrees.
And readers, we've often warned you about the dangers of sending gift cards --- that some expire, that recipients have to use them before businesses expire, that some recipients never get around to using them. But if you're not spending any money on the gift certificate itself, those perils seem negligible.
UPDATED: After a reader asked, I checked with Restaurant.com and confirmed that the company does not sell e-mails collected through this campaign to third parties, and users can opt in and out of future marketing e-mails. So no fear -- your gift recipients won't be getting a free, $10 gift certificate for spam.
Categories: Cheap/Frugal, Food, Holiday shopping
Comments
The link in the blog is giving me a '404 - File not found' error
The Beav, thanks for the heads up! It's updated now. --- lfk
Posted by: The Beav | December 4, 2008 11:43 AM
Governor O"Malley will once again do the correct maneuvar to help Maryland recover from the recession. The last Gov. did not raise taxes, he just sold them as fees. I am glad to see him gone. WBAL Righties gave him a right wing talk show and still refer to him as Governor and his wife as the First Lady.while taking swipes at the present Governor whom they seemingly despise. Bring back Allen Prell to add some realistic balance to the Right Leaning Radio station.
j, thanks for writing. I'm pretty sure that you still continue to call people by their former titles (i.e. Sen., Gov., Judge) as a sign of respect, but I'm not sure how it works with non-elected positions like First Lady. -- lfk
Posted by: j | December 4, 2008 1:26 PM