The following is a revision of a post I first posted about in August 2014, and I usually repost / update it every other year.
Kindles and other eBook readers have some costs to them: by the time you purchase the Kindle and other related accessories (cover to protect it, maybe an extra charger, etc.) can certainly add up. However, you’ve made your initial investment in the Kindle hardware, and there is enough free content out there for you to read the rest of your life without buying another book. Forever.
While I do read a lot of the free books I talk about here in the blog I still enjoy certain authors and will purchase a lot of books. Some of them are inexpensive offerings from independent authors and some are from your mainstream “big name” authors, and I don’t care what the price is – I’ve gottagetitnow. Well, I do care what the price is but I may just wait until it gets below $10 unless it’s a new one by David Baldacci. I’m sure there are offerings by favorite authors you want to buy, too.
So, what’s my point with this post? Great question because, as in real life, I am getting long-winded.
You have a source of “free” money you can spend in the Amazon store and you probably don’t realize it as it is right under your nose. I’m talking about your loose change.
Most of you have seen the change conversion machines in grocery and other stores, and a lot of you have used them: you take in your coffee can of loose change, dump it in the hopper, the machine counts it and then spits out a receipt you take to the cash register to redeem for paper currency or a credit in the store. The one main drawback to these machines, to me, is a lot of them take a 10% or more commission / cut of whatever you brought in as their profit. For example, at an 10% commission rate you would need to bring in $11.11 worth of change to receive a $10 bill. Some people will say “so what” and accept that as a cost of doing business vs. rolling the money yourself and either turning it in to a bank (if they accept the change these days – my local branch of Bank of America does not) or taking it to a convenience store who needs it and having everyone behind you steam as you and the convenience store clerk count out a bagful of pennies.
That’s really a stupid effective interest rate for a three-day loan, assuming they empty the machine every three days.
The grocery store usually splits the fee earned 50-50 with the owner of the equipment, but even if the grocery store is providing a three day loan to the equipment maker until they are reimbursed, that is one heck of a money maker (why didn’t I think of that?)!
I’m sure some of you are still wondering what my point is with this post. I’ll get to it, I just had to set the stage.
Coinstar is one of the largest providers in the USA of this equipment to stores. They have partnered in many cases with Amazon to not charge you a fee for the change you bring in if you bring in a minimum of $5.00 worth of change, but they will give you a gift card eligible for 100% of the change you bring in to be used at the Amazon website; I am assuming Amazon is paying the commission fee as a customer acquisition cost.
That’s actually a huge benefit for you and me as we feed our Kindle book addiction or shopping habits on Amazon.
Using my earlier example, if you brought in $11.11 worth of change and selected the Amazon gift card option, you would get a $11.11 Amazon gift card as your receipt. You would then enter the gift card details on your Amazon account on your computer (or Kindle, if the wireless feature is on with the browser pointed to the Amazon website). You can then use those funds now applied to your account and buy not only Kindle books but anything else on the Amazon website.
You also don’t have to roll the coins yourself or, if your house is like mine, you have a couple of containers here and there full of spare change. You’re also not giving up any of your money as a commission just for someone to accept your spare change. I hope that’s change you can believe in (pun intended).
Coinstar has partnered with other companies in addition to Amazon to offer gift cards with no fee to you – you turn in $11.11 worth of coins, you get a $11.11 gift card to the Amazon store or to the other store(s) participating in the program. While Coinstar is one of the largest providers of this equipment to stores in the USA, they are not the only one so don’t assume your local grocery store is a Coinstar machine.
To find a Coinstar machine, you can point your web browser to https://www.coinstar.com/findakiosk and do two things from this page: (1) enter your zip code in the middle of the page to find a Coinstar machine near you, and (2) see a list of companies that have signed up for the gift card promotion. Then you need to click “Kiosk Services” followed by “See Brands” under the name of the store / retail location. When I just did the same for a location near me, in addition to an Amazon gift card my selections were to lots of major retailers, make a donation to a charity, or even receive bitcoin.
One thing to note is not all of the retailers will dispense an Amazon gift card – for example, WalMart will not, and I suspect that is because they and Amazon are fierce competitors. Check the participating Coinstar locations near you to see what type(s) of gift cards they dispense as many of them are different.
My old quart-sized Mason Jar I use to hold my change is almost full of coins, so it’s off to the Coinstar machine!
Hope that helps!
Michael
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