Connie Dombroski
Through Refund Cents I have become an avid sweepstakes fan. It all began when my daughter won the Hersheys Great American Dream Sweepstakes. You may remember from a previous article, how she won $50,000 in that sweepstakes. She is using that money to fulfill a dream of hers and will be starting law school in two weeks. She just graduated from Kansas State University with a degree in English and Womens Studies. Anyway, while searching the internet for the information to that expired sweepstakes, I discovered an online site called Online-Sweepstakes. This site list sweepstakes, not unlike the way Michele list refunds for us. So now I have two hobbies, refunding and entering sweepstakes online. I always have entered drawings and sweepstakes and have won some nice prizes locally. Once I won a deep freezer and $200 worth of frozen food and another time I won a clothes dryer. Both of those wins were from entering at the local grocery store. I also sent a few entries in through the postal mail. Through the mail I won a $100 worth of toys. All of these wins were very exciting to me. But the chance to enter sweepstakes online for free had a definite appeal to that frugal part of my personality. I did eventually buy a premium membership to Online-Sweepstakes. It is a lot like Refund Cents in that the small amount of money that each of these subscriptions cost me is returned over and over in information.
When I won the freezer at the store it was March and that sweepstakes was sponsored by the frozen food industry. So now I know that March is frozen food month and I also have learned through my sweepstake hobby that May is beef month. Who knows I may need to know these things sometime for a trivia contest. It was fun when I won the freezer because it also came with the opportunity to get $200 worth of frozen food. This was in the 80s before there were all of the new yummy rice bowls and pizzas and froze entrees.
So we had a lot of ice cream bars. My daughters were small and they were telling everyone in the store My mommy won all of this for FREE! It was pretty funny.
My latest wins for this past year have been, a really nice Weber Q Grill that I won in a Home Depot sweepstakes and a $500 gift certificate that I won in the Yahoo Local Finds Sweepstakes. We needed a new grill so I had entered every sweepstakes that had a grill as one of the prizes. My husband has been thrilled with the new grill. The $500 gift certificate ended up being to The Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, Massachutes. I was worried because I didnt think I could afford a trip to Boston in order to use the gift certificate. I telephoned the store and spoke to a very sweet person named Emily who made arrangements for me to order online. I told my family to make their list and then I went shopping. What FUN! We are voracious readers in my family so it didnt take long to spend my winnings. Altogether, I ordered 16 books and 4 very nice sweatshirts with the HARVARD logo. It felt like Christmas getting all of these books and shirts in the mail. Now I have to find some time to catch up on my reading.
I think it all goes hand in hand, refunding, using coupons, entering sweepstakes and saving money. A lot of the companies sponsor sweepstakes in conjunction with the coupons and refunds that we submit. Always be sure to fill in the coupons that are also entering you into a sweepstakes. That way you have one more entry into the sweepstakes. There is just nothing like winning. It really gets your heart pumping. Either way you win, you win the cents off regardless of whether you win the sweepstakes.
Good things just keep on coming from my connection with Refund Cents. It was because of the great deals online that Michele kept writing about that prompted me to take that great leap of faith onto the World Wide Web. It was through Refund Cents that we found out about the Hersheys sweepstakes that Jessie won. It was Jessie winning that caused me to become addicted to the sweeping hobby. See all things are connected. There is a reason the word fun is in the middle of refund. At least in my opinion there is. Some people might not think refunding is fun but we all know it is. Dont we?
The photo is of the books and sweatshirts. I had already sent two of the shirts to my daughters. The handsome guy in the photo with me is my son Trenton.
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I just read your sweepstakes story,as on my way to refund cents .I was pleased you won the Hershey sweeps, The Hersheys would be delighted to know that their sweepstakes winner is furthering her education, I "m from that areHershey had /has a boys home,for fatherless boys,full education,farm,choc
Aug. 11, 2008 By:
jennie selingo
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