Monday, August 29, 2011

The Bed (and Ebates!)

I'm becoming a bigger and bigger Ebates fan every single time I receive an update on my Ebates balance! I discovered the site right before we moved, through one of my favorite bloggers, and decided that since there were so many odds and ends that I needed to buy for the move, and since I do most of my shopping online, it made sense to sign up. After all, what was the harm? It basically meant clicking through ebates to get to sites I already shop at, and by going through Ebates I would, theoretically, get cash back. You can even make certain motel reservations through the site (although the fact that Paul never knew where he'd be at night during the move hindered that part of my cash back scheme).
I was a tiny bit skeptical about how it would work, but figured that it couldn't hurt to try. And so far my experience has been pretty great. I spent the $10 gift card to Target that I got for signing up yesterday (on more shelves to assemble and organize of course) and have a balance of around $75 (a large part of that was the 50% back I got one day when I subscribed to Magnificat, which is not an inexpensive magazine, and which I'd wanted to receive for quite a while!). So I'm pretty thrilled with the site. And I'd been meaning to write a post about the "big purchase" that I bought through Ebates.

I'd been planning on getting Sadie a bed for over a year now. But there was always a reason to wait. First we moved in June 2010. Then came the next move on New Years 2011. And we knew we were moving to either Rome or one of like fifty other law schools (that's only a slight exaggeration), so it was easy to find excuses to put off the purchase.

After that we knew that we were moving to Florida and so I finally set a date for the big purchase: August 2011.

As Paul drove across the country with all of our belongings I compared prices on the bed that seemed like the best fit for the girls embarrassing toy/clothes collection and our ever limited storage space. I liked that it reminded me of the bed I'd had growing up (which also had three drawers across the bottom).

I was slightly annoyed when, after waiting a weekend to order the bed (so that it wouldn't be delivered to our apartment before Paul arrived), I found that the price on two of the websites I'd been looking at, mysteriously doubled from $150 to right around $300. In a panic I finally found the bed for the original price on Walmart and ordered it.

Grumpa assembled the bed during their visit and Sadie was thrilled when she realized that she had her very own big girl bed. I have had to remind her to leave room for herself when she "organizes" her stuffed animals and toys on it, but the drawers have been great. We did order a second big girl bed when we ordered Sadie's bed (in anticipation of Mae's eventual graduation from the crib, although that is still a ways off). Mae loves to sit next to the beds and open the drawers and select a toy and so far, despite her interest in the drawers we've (amazingly) had no pinched fingers.

Now if only all of the furniture for the master bedroom was assembled. But I guess for that to happen I have to stop buying shelving to hold the ridiculous number of books that somehow made their way onto the Uhaul...

7 comments:

  1. I use Ebates all the time and love it!

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  2. But if you stop buying shelving and book cases, your poor husband will have nothing to lug up a flight of stairs and past two locked doors! What is he going to do now when in rains in Naples?

    ~Thomist

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  3. Excellent point Thomist. Maybe we could get a sandbox so that you could lug 50 lb bags of sand up the stairs and past the two locked doors? Food for thought!

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  4. Did you buy Magnificat through Ebates? How did you get "cash back" for it?

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  5. I went to Magazines.com through Ebates (it's one of the top sites under the "books and magazines" column at the left hand side). At the time the rebate through Ebates was around 50%. Right now it's a bit more confusing and says it's between 5-52% which I've never seen before, but it changes daily and with Magazines.com it's usually pretty high. So I paid the $40-something dollars which was the sale price for Magnificat and then got around $20. I ordered Magnificat Kids too, so it ended up being around $30 back.

    If I were to order it now though I think I'd wait a few days until they have an actual % back. I don't like the whole 5-52% thing they have up right now because I can't tell how much you'll actually get back!

    When you have an Ebates account you get the money back quarterly, either by check or through a paypal account. You basically get paid whatever percent Ebates lists each day, to shop at the stores you usually shop at. The only store I couldn't find that we use regularly was Amazon. But Target and Walmart are there along with LL Bean (yay!).

    I hope that explanation helps!

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  6. So let's say that I order Magnificat through the link on Ebates to Magazines.com, I don't also become a member of Magazines.com, do I? In other words, if I become a member of Ebates, I don't also become of member of every site that I buy from, do I? Getting emails from tons of different sources? (Thanks for helping me with this.) By the way, I forgot to sign my name at the end of my original question.

    Maria

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  7. Hi Maria- I think you can register as a guest at most sites and since you're this "tracking ticket" comes up when you go through ebates it should still work. I've never written down the tracking ticket number, but I did look at them yesterday and ebates actually keeps track of all of the tickets opened on each account (so I could see all the tickets from stores I'd never bought anything from!).

    One thing that's helped me is having an extra "junk email"account that I use for things like this. It didn't start out that way, but I give most stores my yahoo email address (which I don't check as frequently) and use my gmail address for more important things.

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