Free Coffee Giveaways & Other Great Freebies

Last night, this sign caught my eye: "Free iced coffee every Thursday." Every Thursday from May 22 through June 12, Dunkin' Donuts offers the iced giveaway in different flavors: french vanilla, hazelnut, coconut, toasted almond and other flavors.

Each franchise owner has the option to participate, and my local DD, which is also Kosher, opted to start giving away the free coffees last night. I had hazelnut coffee--with lots of cream and sugar--on the rocks. No charge.

Starbucks also has a weekly coffee giveaway that takes place on Wednesdays during May. We received special cards for this offer. Here are details in this blog post: Free Starbucks Coffee!

Meanwhile, the current issue of Woman's Day has an excellent list of freebies or almost free stuff. The offers are not scams and the author (Mary Hunt) sampled or researched the list.

Here are two of my favorite free offers from her list:

"Business cards

VistaPrint is an online printing company known for its amazing offer of 250 free business cards. They're good-quality, too. Visit vistaprint.com, create your card and all you have to pay is about five bucks for shipping.
Why's it free? VistaPrint would like you to join their 12 million customers who buy printing online, so they offer this enticement. Just know that once you get your business cards, you may hear from them a lot.

Expert computer help

If you've ever had a computer problem and wanted to pull out your hair in frustration, this is for you. Need to solve a hardware glitch? Want to learn how to use HTML? Submit your question at protonic.com and you'll get a pretty prompt answer e-mailed to you from a volunteer expert.
Why's it free? It's no secret that many computer manufacturers provide mediocre support for their own products and charge good money for it. The folks at Protonic are tired of this sort of treatment, and believe it or not, their service is free because they enjoy helping people."

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Former Random House Editor & Del.icio.ous Maven Create Free Online Book Service

Want a free copy of Moby Dick, Pride & Prejudice or The Prince and the Pauper? Those titles are available free online through a new service launched by a former editor of Random House and a former guru at del.icio.us, the "social bookmarking site." Classic titles are delivered via plain text emails in serialized installments. The service also includes a fee-based subscription for new titles, but books in the public domain are free and there are lots of them, including many titles on school reading lists.

Called DailyLit (www.dailylit.com/), the service was recently launched by Susan Danziger, a former Random House editor and her husband Albert Wenger, who used to run del.icio.us. The service was featured in the latest issue of Poets & Writers magazine (an excellent magazine). Readers can receive installments via "computers, cell phones and Blackberry handhelds and other tech devices," according to the article in P&W by Kevin Canfield. You pick the frequency of the emails. You can even opt to read far more than the daily portion.

This is how the service started, according to a statement on the DailyLit website.

"We got the idea for DailyLit after the New York Times serialized a few classic works in special supplements a few summers ago. We wound up reading books that we had always meant to simply by virtue of making them part of our daily routine of reading the newspaper. The only thing we do more consistenly than read the paper is read email. Bingo! We put together a first version and began reading "War of the Worlds" and "Pride and Prejudice". We showed it to friends, added more books and features at their request, and presto, DailyLit was born."

Here's how the service works, according to the FAQ section DailyLit:

"Why read books by email?

Because if you are like us, you spend hours each day reading email but don't find the time to read books. DailyLit brings books right into your inbox in convenient small messages that take less than 5 minutes to read. This works incredibly well not just on your computer but also on a Treo, Blackberry, Sidekick or whatever the PDA of your choice. In the words of Dr. Seuss: Try it, you might like it! (Oops -- it would appear that the actual quote from Green Eggs and Ham is "You do not like them. So you say. Try them! Try them! And you may.")

How long does it take to read a book?
That depends on three factors. First, on how many installments are in the book (shown when you browse for books). Second, on how frequently you choose to receive emails. Third, on how often you read more than one installment (by using the "send me the next installment immediately" feature). So here is a typical example. I am currently reading Dracula, which has 187 installments and I am receiving installments on weekdays, i.e. 5 days/week. So at most it will take me 187/5 = 37 weeks. But when I am on the train or waiting, I often read more than one installment, so I usually wind up reading about 10 installments/week. This means I will finish Dracula in about 19 weeks or 5 months. If that seems long to you, try something shorter!

Sounds great, how do I get started?
All you need to do is pick a book (browse the collection or use the search box), select how often and when you want to receive messages, and provide your email address. Click on the big Subscribe button. DailyLit does the rest.

How much does it cost?
Public domain books on DailyLit are free in their entirety. Most copyrighted books require payment after some number of free sample installments (some copyrighted books are free). The price for a book is displayed clearly on the book detail page. We encourage you to try out paid books -- you only pay if you like the free sample installments and want to continue reading."
source: FAQ for DailyLit

Here's a small sample of the extensive list of free titles:

Popular Titles (all free)

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen



Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy



Many Thoughts of Many Minds (Quotations)



Moby Dick by Herman Melville



War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy



The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas



Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky



The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle



A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens



Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Friday Freebie Tip: My Inner Diva Sips Free Tea at the Mall

Teavana, a national chain that sells tea, is a great place to go for free samples of hot tea and iced tea. You're encouraged to try small cups of brewed teas with exotic names like Jasmine Dragon Phoenix Pearls and Rooibos Tropica.

How do I know this? A few weeks ago, I followed my daughter, age 10, into Teavana while we were in the Aventura Mall to see the Hannah Montana 3-D concert movie. While we were at the mall, my daughter kept raving about the free tea at Teavana. I was clueless. I limit the spending power of my Inner Diva, by avoiding malls, which give me headaches anyway. My children, however, are regular free-tea sippers when they visit the mall. They drink and drink the free tea.

Once I found the shop -- which smells great and has a blissed-out Zen energy -- there were several canteens filled with delicious, lightly sweetened samples of hot and warm tea. What's more, the staff was friendly and encouraged us to sample more. (They could feel the spending vibe emanating from my Inner Diva.) Lingering is encouraged. We really liked the Blueberry Bliss tea, which was served cold. We drank a lot of free tea.

Of course, I purchased a few ounces of loose teas in two different flavors for a total of $17 (not cheap). The two flavors were brewed together as one of the featured samples. We purchased 2 oz of Rooibos Tropica for $4.80 (excellent frugal choice) and the Jasmine Dragon Phoenix Pearls (2 oz for $12), not a thrifty choice.

At first, I winced at the resurgence of my Diva spending self. This is why they give you the free tea, I whisper shouted to myself, so that you'll be foolish enough to buy a lot of pricey tea. As the saleswoman packaged my loose tea in pretty foil bags, I wondered about the wisdom of even going into Teavana in the first place.

But when I got home, I compared prices. Our favorite herbal tea is about $3.50 for a box of 20 teabags that weighs less than one ounce (total), including the cardboard. A comparable amount of the pre-pacakged tea would have cost about $7, versus the $4.80 that I paid for the Rooibos Tropic, which was fresher. And even when my favorite grocery store brand is on sale, the Teavana Rooibos is a better deal and tastes fresher. I've compared the two in an informal taste test.

The Jasmine tea was yummy, but a little rich for my budget. In hindsight, I should have saved my $12. My kids love the Jasmine Dragon Phoenix Pearls, (little balls unfold like baby dragons in hot water), but I'm a little annoyed that I busted my budget to buy that tea. Maybe it was just good Karma to buy it because my kids have consumed and will consume gallons of free tea at Teavana. I don't think the company had my tea-loving children in mind when they offered unlimited samples of free tea.

Besides, having the tea around the house during the last few weeks has helped me to sustain the frugal push to limit soft drink purchases. The kids are drinking more teas, which are pennies per serving. And packed with fresh minerals, vitamins and anti-oxidants many of the teas are healthy. What's more, due to the bright natural flavor, the teas taste great without sugar or honey.

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Sharon Harvey Rosenberg is the author of The Frugal Duchess of South Beach: How to Live Well and Save Money... Anywhere!, which will be published in June of 2008 by DPL Press.