SquareTrade

Win a Free SquareTrade Warranty by using Twitter!

100% off coupon code will be posted via @SquareTrade every day for five days. This could happen anytime of the day from 7/13 to 7/17.

We already obsess about saving you money and your electronics. This time, we’re giving away that added peace of mind to our followers on twitter.

Here's how to win:

To win a FREE SquareTrade Warranty, all you need to do is be the first person to use the 100% off coupon code at www.squaretrade.com. It’s that simple! 

It's first come, first served so you'll have to act quickly. Of course, to increase your chance of winning, we encourage you to follow us @SquareTrade.

What will you win?

When we say you'll "Win a free SquareTrade Warranty" we mean you'll win a FREE SquareTrade Warranty - the only warranty rated 5-stars by customers!

You'll have to enter your credit card info at Checkout but applying the 100% discount means you'll be charged $0!

What happens if you don't win?

If that's the case, be sure to follow @SquareTrade so you can be on the lookout for the next FREE SquareTrade warranty we tweet.

Rules:

• 100% off coupon valid only at www.squaretrade.com
• Each coupon expires 11:59pm PST the day it is tweeted.
• The promotion begins 12:01am PST on July 13th and finishes at 11:59pm PST July 17th, 2009.
• Discount reflected when you enter coupon code at checkout.
• You must enter your credit card info but will NOT be charged when you use.
• Coupon eligible for warranties on items purchased from any Retailer.
• Warranty must be purchased within 90 days of item purchase date. The purchase window of warranties for items bought on eBay is 30 days.
• Winner must have a permanent US mailing address.
• Coupon may not be combined with any other offer. (100% off means it's already free!)
• Coupon cannot be applied retroactively to past purchases.

Independence Day Sale: with 30% off bonus till 6pm Today!

More Summer savings! Use our special Independence Day coupon code JULY04 and save 30% off on your next warranty purchase (max $50 discount, through 6pm PST 6/23).

After that, coupon valid for 20% - up to $50 on your next warranty purchase through July 5th.

You can use the discount on a warranty for an item you buy from eBay or any store (like Wal-mart, Best Buy, Apple etc)  - online or not.

Kick off of SquareDeals of the Day and SquareTweets!

It almost feels like we’re back in school – sneaking notes.  We can’t let the cat entirely out of the bag just yet.  But since you’re our fans, we wanted to let you in on the secret.

There’s a lot going on here at SquareTrade HQ. This week, we’re gearing up to launch a series of SquareDeals of the Day! 

Raise your hand if you’ve recently purchased an LCD TV, a washer/dryer or perhaps a new wii.  Maybe you’ve been planning to buy a new laptop? 

Well, this week we’ll be offering even greater savings on coverage for things like digital cameras, LCD TVs, home appliances and game consoles.  Yup, we’ll be offering up to 40% additional savings with a new coupon each day!

So stay tuned (and don’t let Miss Othmar catch you passing this note!)

On a related note, if you’d like to be the first kid on the block that has the inside scoop, you can follow us on twitter. We’ll tweet breaking news on specials like the upcoming Deals of the Day as well as nifty things we hear are going on in the world of gizmos and gadgets.

Sorry, did you ask “What's a tweet?!”  Well, Mike Massimino has been tweeting from space. Even Oprah is becoming twitter savvy. You can also ask google. 

Super-Cheap AT&T smartphones at Amazon!

Hope you haven't gone out and bought a BlackBerry Curve lately, because Amazon just posted a sale where every single AT&T smartphone (sans iPhone, naturally) now costs just one cent.

Some of these are priced at one cent, and some are done through full-price rebates, but the deals include things like the Pantech Duo, the AT&T Tilt, the BlackBerry Curve, Curve Titanium, Pearl, and 8820, the Palm Treo, Samsung Blackjacks, LG Shine, and a whole mess of RAZRs if you're so inclined.  And that's just the tip of the iceberg.  You can even get a $75 rebate on that one-cent Curve Titanium with a plan activation, so they'll pay you $75 to get the phone. 

And naturally, you can put a 3-Year SquareTrade warranty on any or all of these for about half what AT&T would charge you for cell phone insurance... assuming they offer it on these phones.  We know they don't on the BlackBerrys.  Check out our reviews if you like... we sure would.

This is Amazon, after all, so there's no telling how long this is going to last.  They'll change it the second they feel like changing it.

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Cheap GPS devices at Best Buy!

Okay, Best Buy, after a rough start, you've been good this week and we were very pleased to see you've singled out six GPS models and chopped between $50 and $300 off the price of each one.  We approve.

And the selection's pretty eclectic, too.  On the 15% off end of the scale, you've got a pair of TomToms; the ONE XL-S, a nifty text-to-speech gadget with a 4.3" touch-screen and a Gig of onboard flash memory, going for only $300, and the GO 920T, which bumps the SSD up to 4GB.  We also found a trio of Magellans - the 3200, 3250, and 4250 for $$70, $80, and $100 off, respectively, leading up to a $700 all-in-one GPS/CD/DVD in-dash player from Pioneer, down from $1000.  That's good stuff, BB.

But, and we're sorry to keep bringing this up, your warranties still cost about twice what a SquareTrade GPS warranty does... and oddly, it doesn't even look like you're offering warranties on your sale GPS devices.  That's okay; we are.  And we're throwing in a 5-Day Service Guarantee and an option for Accidental Damage coverage, too.

That's a pretty good arrangement, BB.  You sell the swag for less, we'll keep it safe for less. We should do this more often.

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AT&T drops Cheap Refurbished iPhones.

Well, it was only a matter of time.  We've been keeping an eye on AT&T's newish program of offering refurbished phones on new plans... they've had Blackberrys up for a while, the Pantech Duo and LG Trax went up the other day, and now cheap refurbished Apple iPhones are available.  Hooray?

Specifically, it's a refurbished 8GB iPhone that's gone up for $250, which is $150 less than a brand-new model.  That's a decent chop, but don't forget the mandatory 2-year contract with purchase. 

Also don't forget that AT&T doesn't offer cell phone insurance on iPhones, Apple Care won't be available on a refurb, and even if they did, it would cost too much for too little.  A SquareTrade iPhone warranty for an iPhone refurb will run you $30 for a full year of coverage, and if anything goes wrong, you'll get your $250 back to go buy a new phone.  Up to you.

Keep in mind, these are iPhones that have broken down once before, so it's strictly Buyer Beware. 

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Pantech Duo and LG Trax go Refurb at AT&T.

Well, that didn't take long.  AT&T's been offloading their surplus refurbished phones at a steep discount for a while now, but they just threw a bunch of G3 network smartphones up onto the refurb list, and wouldn't you know, the Pantech Duo is one of them.  Didn't it only come out five months ago?

This is the neat-looking Windows Mobile dual slider phone that came out late last year, with a vertical slide for the dialpad and horizontal slide for the QWERTY keyboard.  It's load-out includes a 1.3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, quad-band support, and that lovely HSDPA-level 3G network, which also gives you access to broadband goodies like AT&T Music and Cellular Video, including live mobile TV, all at iPhone-dusting speeds.  The refurb's $99 with a two year contract, half what a new Duo runs.

If the Duo's a little to plastic for your tastes, there's also the slightly older LG Trax.  It's got pretty much the same feature set, but crammed in a mirror-finish flip-phone without the QWERTY.  It's $230 new, and Free as a refurb with the two-year contract.

Again, these are cheap options for people who want the (second hand) latest and greatest, but it's strictly Buyer Beware.  If you stick with AT&T for insurance, you'll be stuck with refurbs until your contract runs out.  A SquareTrade cell phone warranty will run you half their price, and pays out in cash so you can choose your next phone yourself, instead of taking whatever they decide to send you. 

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Circuit City allows mourning HD-DVD owners to swap for Blu-Ray.

 In every war, good people get caught on the wrong side.  Which is to say, the losing side, because winners are always right.  That's how they win.  But if you're regretting buying that HD-DVD player, now there's a way to recant your decision... so long as you bought it from Circuit City.

Rumors have circulated for days, but now those happy-go-lucky guys at Gizmodo have confirmed that it's official Circuit City policy to accept returns of HD-DVD players in exchange for Blu-Ray DVD players.  This was outlined in an internal memo (that's now gone external) appropriately titled "HD DVD - The End."

"Q; What about customers who may try to return an HD DVD player - even if they have owned it for several months?

A: We do not want to upset our valued customers. For this special circumstance, we are happy to offer an exchange for a Blu-ray player (customer plays any difference in purchase price) - even if it has been several months since the customer made their HD DVD player purchase. If the customer does not want a Blu-ray player, we can issue a gift card refund for their original purchase price. For products purchased in the last 30 days, handle as usual."

We assume "play the difference" is a typo.  But we have heard of customers swapping out their HD-DVD player for a Blu-Ray-playing PlayStation 3, so CC's apparently counting anything that plays Blu-Ray in the definition of "Blu-Ray player."  CC's memo also states that A.) you can't exchange HD-DVD software for Blu-Ray - you'll just have to eat those costs - and B.) they're going to keep selling HD-DVD players as up-converting DVD units for a little while longer.  And you will have to go into a CC store to exchange it, as their online retail streams haven't gotten the memo yet.

But before you head out to exchange your Old and Busted for the New Hotness, you should definitely compare their warranty to a SquareTrade warranty.  If it looks like our prices are about half what theirs are, with better, faster service, you can safely assume those aren't typos.

We have no idea why Circuit City's leaving the advertising of this spectacularly cool policy to the blogosphere when it would buy them so much good will from their sagging customer base.  Seriously, CC... it's okay to be the nice guy once in a while. 

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Cheap TiVo HD Recorder at Woot!

We like us some WOOT! even though we almost always hesitate just long enough for them to sell out of their Item de jour.  This time, however, they seem to have a good chunk of stock on hand.

What stock is that?  How about a Tivo HD DVR for only $180... not quite half-price, but pretty close.  This particular model can store up to 20 hours in HD or 180 hours in Standard Definition, record two shows at once (both in HD), and does all the wonderful plug-n-play things all other Tivos do.  You'll still have to subscribe to Tivo's service, but saving $120 on the DVR will almost cover the first year.  And a SquareTrade warranty will make sure it stays operational for that year, and two more besides, for pennies a day.

Don't know WOOT?  They sell one item at a time, for 24 hours or until the item sells out, whichever comes first... so Early Birds and all that.

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Leap Year Sales catch some decent air.

We know you're thinking an extra day in February is just The Man's way of making you put in extra hours at the office, but it's also a handy excuse for big box stores to put things on sale. 

Best Buy doesn't have much other than the Vaio/Inspiron sale from three weeks ago and a bogus "$700 Off" home theater package that requires a $200 Geek Squad buy-in to save money on a TV that's already on sale elsewhere.  Circuit City, on the other hand, has a handful of electronics deals we like... such as a Philips DVD Player (non-HD, no-Blu) going for only $30... or $50, if you're lazy and don't mail in the rebate.  They've also knocked 33% off the price of the Garmin c340 StreetPilot GPS, or there's the TomTom ONE going for $167... down eighty bucks from normal. 

CC's desktop computer bundles and laptop sales are pretty joke-worthy ($30 off a $1000+ comput er just doesn't do it for us), but they are offering free 1GB memory cards with certain digital cameras, and some truly great deals on DV camcorders.  We particularly like the $270 they chopped from the price of the Canon HV20 HD Camcorder, putting it down to $730.  Not bad for a best-in-class device. And that's how you discount something.

Speaking of which, you can get 20% Off your SquareTrade warranty for any of these things (or anything else) from now through March 2nd... and that's on prices that were already about half what Circuit City would charge you.  That includes Accidental Damage coverage, too, if you want it.

Just use Coupon Code: MARCHSALE on our checkout page.  And do it while you're at work, too, just to stick it to The Man.  He deserves it.

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