If you’re like me, or anyone else for that matter, you enjoy receiving things that are free. Most of the free samples given out today are pretty much junk or something so small with little or no value. What if you had a way to receive expensive electronics at absolutely zero cost?
The electronics I’m talking about are more than just a small cable. Here is a list of everything I’ve received so far just by being crafty over the internet for free.
The only thing that you have to put in on your end is a about 10 minutes per order. This article includes how to find these articles and a special little trick on how to get free shipping as well. Not only are we going to get this item completely for free, but we’re also going to show you a way on how to make money from it as well by getting some cash back. Just make sure to follow all of the steps in order.
Let’s get started.
Where Do These Free Electronics Come From?
The way we get these free products are from what are called free after rebate (FAR) offers. What this means is that you pay in full up front for the product. When you receive the package in the mail, save the receipt and cut out the UPC code on the back of the box. You mail this information in to the rebate company and you receive the full amount back that you paid for.
The only downside is that these rebates can take a while. I recently just received a $90 dollar rebate that almost took 8 weeks to get to my door. However, to be fair, I did receive an 8 GB stick of RAM that would’ve normally cost me that $90 dollars.
TigerDirect.com is a website that sells computer parts and electronics and often has these FAR offers. In fact, they appear so frequently that you could probably receive a couple hundred bucks of free stuff every month in your mail.
How Do I Find These Offers?
If you go to TigerDirect.com and look for these FAR offers, they’re going to be a little difficult to find. Subscribing to their email feed won’t help you either, as they don’t want to constantly promote free things to their already existing subscribers. TigerDirect sees it more as a bonus or an add-on to what you’re already purchasing, and is a great way to lure in its customer base.
The best way to find these offers is on a website called Slickdeals.net. Slickdeals acts like a forum, in which everyone works together to submit the best deals on the web. These rebate offers appear quite often.
If you are an active user on Slickdeals you have to act quickly. Once a “FREE” product is listed on the featured deals on the front page, it doesn’t last long and will soon go out of stock. A good way to get to these products before the average user is to go to the “Popular Deals” section found on the sidebar on the right.
This section shows deals that are becoming more and more popular and have the potential to soon be on the front page. By grabbing the deal before it hits the featured deals, you greatly cut down the risk that your product will become out of stock. This has happened to me on quite a few occasions and I often feel disappointed in missing out on a great product.
How Do I Get These Rebates And Receive Free Stuff?
Let’s say you find one of these FAR products on Slickdeals and you are redirected to the TigerDirect page. You want to go through with the purchase but are uncertain as to how to claim the rebate or anything about it.
We’re going to break down everything for you step by step from beginning to end so that you get it exactly right.
1. Find a deal on Slickdeals.net
The first thing you want to do is go to slickdeals.net and wait for a free after rebate offer from TigerDirect. Deals are updated so quickly that you could literally come back every hour and find a completely different new front page. Once you find one, go ahead and click on the link.
2. Get Cash Back
Once you have the deal opened, open a new tab in your browser. You don’t want to click the “Buy Now” button in Slickdeals or you’ll be missing out on getting some extra cash back. There are two ways to get cash back.
The first way is the best way, which requires a Discover It card. If you have this card, you can get 5% cash back on all TigerDirect.com purchases. Here’s a quick look at the card:
- No annual fee
- Get $150 sign-up bonus after spending $750 within the first three months of opening an account
- Receive 5% cash back on categories that rotate quarterly: gas, restaurants, improvement stores, theme parks and movies.
- All other purchases receive a 1% cash back bonus
- Each monthly statement provides a free credit score from FICO
- Save anywhere from 5% – 50% on online purchases.
Once you get the card, go to the “Rewards” tab at the top of the page and click “Shop Discover.”
From there you’ll be redirected to their shopping portal. Find TigerDirect.com and it should say 5% back on all purchases (with some exceptions).
Click on “Start Shopping.” You’ll be redirected to the TigerDirect homepage. You must make the purchase with your Discover Card to receive the full cash back.
Now when you make your purchase with the Discover Card, you’ll receive a bonus 5% on your account. If it’s during the winter time, Discover offers an extra 5% off on all online purchases, so you’ll actually be making 10% in cash back!
For those of you without this card (even though I highly recommend it), you can still get cash back by going to ShopAtHome.com. This is another shopping portal, but only gives you a cash back rate of about 2% instead of 5% – 10% with Discover. I’ve already used the maximum about of cash back per quarter with my Discover It Card, so that’s what I’m going to go with.
Once you go to ShopAtHome, type in TigerDirect in the search bar at the top and click “Visit Site.” From there you’ll also be redirected to the TigerDirect homepage.
3. Find The Deal On TigerDirect.com
Now that we have that out of the way, go back to your Slickdeals.net tab that you still have open in your browser. Copy the name of the item that has the free after rebate offer and paste it into the TigerDirect search bar. If you go through Slickdeals instead of a portal, you won’t receive the extra cash back.
Quickly find the item and add it to cart. Make sure it says “Free” somewhere on the page to make sure you can get your money spent back. There should be a “See Terms” link nearby in the description. Make sure to click on it and you’ll be taken to a link on how to claim the rebate. Open this page and save the page to your desktop so that you don’t forget to fill it out later (It should open as a PDF File).
If you don’t fill it out, you’ll have spent a lot of money for a product that you could have gotten for free.
4. Make The Purchase With Free Shipping
You’ve done all of this work and you’re at the checkout only to find out that it costs $4.99 to ship. I would say that only about 30% of these FAR offers have free shipping. Otherwise, you may be looking at a hefty fee.
There is another option. Sometimes there will be an offer for ShopRunner shipping. ShopRunner is a shipping program that connects with partner retailers in order to give free shipping to its clients.
This free shipping comes with an annual fee, but we are going to be frugal and find a way to not pay for it. With any American Express credit card, you are automatically eligible for a free Shoprunner account. You can click here to sign-up. If you don’t have an American Express credit card, make sure to get one here ASAP for this option.
Usually Slickdeals will tell you whether or not the product comes with free shipping or with free shipping through Shoprunner before you actually click the deal.
5. Make The Purchase And Save The Rebate Form
Once you make the purchase, we have to wait until the product arrives at the door in order to claim the rebate. Rebates can be a tricky process and many people complain that they never receive them and often blame the rebate companies.
I have NEVER once not received a rebate from TigerDirect. At most I’ve had to wait 10 weeks for it to arrive in the mail, but I eventually get it. Maybe it’s magic. :)
I Received My Product And My Rebate! What Else Can I Do To Make Some Cash?
Hopefully it all worked out for you and now you have some new electronics to play with that you got for free! If you don’t want the item, try reselling it on Ebay or Amazon.
Just make sure to mark the item as either used or open box. It is important that you label on the product description that the UPC code is missing. Otherwise, you are falsifying what you are really selling. You’re not only being dishonest but could also potentially suffer a return and being held responsible for paying the return shipping fee.
I usually make a description that’s somewhat vague to make it sound like I didn’t cut out the UPC code on purpose. For example, I might say something like this:
“Product is open box and has never been used. Comes in original packaging, but there are some holes in the box, including where the UPC code used to be.” You’ll notice that some other sellers are doing the same thing.
This way the buyer knows that the product has been opened but not used, and they know that they won’t receive the UPC code. The buyer is happy, you’re happy because you made a profit on something that’s free, and Ebay or Amazon is happy.
Don’t forget to look out for specials. Sometimes you’ll see a deal of mass rebates put together in one post on Slickdeals for TigerDirect. If the deal adds up to over $100, sometimes they have a coupon for $25 dollars off.
You can find these coupons on Slickdeals or simply do a Google search for “TigerDirect Coupons” before checkout.
Conclusion
This is a great way to get some free electronics that you don’t have to fork over the extra cash for. If anything, they make great stocking stuffers during the holidays.
Here’s a summary of what we’ve covered:
- Check for deals on Slickdeals.net for free after rebate deals from TigerDirect.com
- Go through a cash back portal to get cash back on your purchase. This can be done through Discover or ShopAtHome.com.
- Fill out the rebate form accurately and neatly.
- Wait 4 – 12 weeks to receive your rebate. These rebates will often comes in a check or a gift card from American Express.
- If you desire, sell you product on Ebay or Amazon for some extra cash.
If you’re a reseller of these types of free products, I’d love to hear how you’ve done and what kind of profit you’re making. Please leave them in the comments below, or if you have any questions as well. Thanks for reading, and have a Frugal and Merry Christmas!
I really like your blog! I know a fella that reminds me of you. You are very frugal and creative.
This post has some really great advice. I actually used to use Slickdeals all of the time. Unfortunately, I forgot the name of the website. So thank you for reminding me!
All in all, you’re making me want to become more frugal and consider my options with that. I am defiantly going to be using Slickdeals again, and looking for the FAR products.
Do you find that you are having to close a lot of credit card accounts and/or receive a lot of spam from all the ways that you save money?
Thank you for the compliment!
What I usually try to do for credit cards is after receiving the sign-up bonus, try to waive my annual fee for the following year around 12 months down the line. Unfortunately, for chase credit cards, they normally won’t let me waive them so I have to cancel. As for spam, yes, quite a bit. But I usually quickly unsubscribe to any junk that I don’t normally want to receive. Another idea is to make a separate email account to use when you sign-up for deals or any offers that your receive.
Happy frugaling!
I have been getting the TigerDirect coupon alerts from Dealhack. It works for me.