According to their story, consumers that bought the Snuggie through the TV offer have been receiving “rebate” checks in the mail for $8.95. However, we you read the fine print you see that by cashing or depositing the check you are enrolled in a program called Great Fun, and if you don’t cancel within 30 days you will be charged for a year’s membership at a rate of $149.99. Unfortunately many Snuggie owners didn’t see that fine print and end up getting charged the membership fee for a service they weren’t even aware they were enrolling in. The practice isn’t illegal (long distance companies did this for years where by cashing a check you were agreeing to switch service, and other programs have used similar tactics), but it certainly qualifies as sneaky and makes a lot of folks irate.

For my longtime readers, you probably recognized the name Great Fun. In fact, Great Fun is a program run by Trilegiant Corporation, who I have posted about in the post Rape and Pillage Trilegiant for Free Gift Cards back in 2007. Yes, you can get tons of free money and gift cards by signing up for their trial offers and cancelling in the trial period. Just work the system in moderation, as they seem to be catching on a lot more quickly to those of us who are gaming the system for free stuff. However, if you do it right you can end up with hundreds of dollars in free gift cards and rebate checks for only the effort of signing up and calling to cancel the service.

A common misconception about the program is that you have to put the money into a 529 plan, but that isn’t the case. See my previous post on how to withdraw your earnings in the form of a check. The program pays you for purchases of select products and from select retailers, which is tracked through either your credit card or store loyalty cards. The program is super easy and you can sign up by clicking the UPromise logo in the left sidebar.

I also had two more checks of free money from Trilegiant, one for $15 (Q4 grocery Billfighter rebate from Buyers Advantage) and one for $5 (Q1 gas rebate from Travelers Advantage). Less the two stamps to send in the rebates, that makes another $19.18 in free money.

Add the Upromise and Trilegiant funds to my prior total and adjust my prior total for the three stamps I forgot to account for and my YTD Frugal Funds total is up to $324.15. If you want to see all the things that have gone into this total, just click the Frugal Funds category link to the left.

But if you are willing to be patient, you can play them again before canceling. For most (but not all) of their services, they will offer you some type of incentive to stay with the program. Additionally, you can request an extension of your free trial so you don’t get charged while you are waiting for your other freebies.

I had some of these offers sent to my mom’s house in Louisiana, so I had a nice haul waiting in my mail when we visited yesterday. Here’s a summary:

• $20 check from Buyers Advantage ($20 credit card billfighter rebate)
• $10 check from AutoVantage ($10 gas rebate)
• $10 check from Travelers Advantage ($10 gas rebate)
• $40 Visa gift card from Complete Home

Add that $80 plus $0.13 in change I have found on the ground in the last week to my YTD Frugal Funds total, bring it to $233.13.

DeductionPro 2007 Software Download

I have used DeductionPro for the last several years since I got it free after rebate in a TaxCut software bundle. The software is still sold as a stand-alone product, however it is also included in the premium versions of TaxCut for 2007. It is a great tool for tracking donations and provides suggested values for many common items. It will also generate the necessary forms for your return and export the data to TaxCut for your return preparation. My only complaint about the software would be that I would like to see more items listed, but I’m basing my opinion on the 2006 version, so that may have improved with this version.

I would caution anyone would itemizes household good donations to use one of these types of programs instead of just trying to guess the value of the item. If we try to guess we often fall on the low side (I guess most of us think about what would the item fetch at a garage sale and not its true market value), so these types of programs help to make sure we get the full deduction we deserve.

Good luck!

Enfamil Family Beginnings – I list this one first because we have already received the first big sample pack. We registered with them several months ago and got in the mail this past week a sample pack with a can of powder formula plus a few formula checks (serve the same purpose as coupons.

UPromise $3 Bonus from Enfamil – Using this link, join UPromise with the promo code “DIAPER3″. This is valid only for new users. It is a pretty neat program where you register your frequent shopper cards and credit cards and are given a rebate of sorts when you purchase selected products or dine at participating restaurants. The rebates can then be transferred to your 529 college savings account, or you can request a check for cash. The rebates tend to accumulate slowly (I’ve only accumulated about $50 over 5 years), but it is free money.

20 Free Prints Online from CVS Photo Center – Simply go to CVS Photo Center online and use the promotional code “NEWMOM20″. The flyer also says that you get 10 free prints for registering as a new user, so you could probably end up with a total of 30 free prints.

Doing a Google search this evening, I also found a pretty good listing of freebies for new parents here. It will take a while to get through that list.