The best promotion you have been a part of?

Legit Promotion:
Playstation House Party. Got a load of great games from them including Gran Turismo V XL Edition, Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time, and The Jak & Daxter Collection. Also a few cool collectibles. I missed out on a few games though that I'm hitting myself for (but I got deals for them later). Pretty decent for free. I hope they renew the program after March.

Pricing Error Promotion:
Kmart.com had $50 off anything in Electronics (was supposed to get this promo after buying a tablet, but it was applying to everything without needing to buy the tablet). They ended up cancelling all of the orders, but because Kmart cancelled the orders due to "processing issues" I ended up being able to place my orders again through customer service. I got some awesome games for a total of $13 shipped (after tax). Here's some of the games I got:
Resistance 3 - $13
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - $13
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim - $13
Spyro Skylanders (PS3): - $33

As a bonus, they first sent me the wrong version of Call of Duty so I contacted them back and they let me place another order. I ended up returning the wrong-version one to Walmart for a $60 Giftcard. So I basically got $47 for free on that one (Paying for my 3 $13 games with $ to spare).

The Kinect demo booth at the Mall of America.

They had a set-up with a bunch of kinect demos and after you played one, they gave you a card with a month of LIVE and 480 MSP. I ended up getting like 40 cards by the end, selling a lot of the codes, and keeping a lot too. Still have about a year and a half of Live and about $90 worth of MSP left after making a couple hundred from selling them.

[quote name='Mr Dude65']The Kinect demo booth at the Mall of America.

They had a set-up with a bunch of kinect demos and after you played one, they gave you a card with a month of LIVE and 480 MSP. I ended up getting like 40 cards by the end, selling a lot of the codes, and keeping a lot too. Still have about a year and a half of Live and about $90 worth of MSP left after making a couple hundred from selling them.[/QUOTE]

reminds me of the Netflix-Xbox LIVE promo, where you just typed in the same keyword, and it spit out 1 Month Codes (I got 3 years worth)

thanks for sharing

Legit, I won a lego kit of one of the walker robots for lost planet 2

Semi legit, got gas for 47 cents a gallon cause some one screw up a decimal

Legit: Xbox Retail Site - 2003 Office Pro (near release) for $10

Semi-Legit: BK's College Football scratchoffs (when I was in High School). Each week who ever won you got a free whopper if you scratch off that team. My buddy and I were given a stack of them at one visit. Needlesstosay, we had almost a month worth of whoppers each that we couldn't use all of them during the promo period.

Recently, Grab the ring promotion for Uncharted I got a ton of DLC most of it I sold or traded
I also did Find the Ring Promotion for Uncharted on Facebook that netted me some Uncharted 3 dlc, a few gift cards, and one copy of the game.

Back in 2008 and before in 2006 I used Trainn to net an ipod nano 2gb and a 1st Gen Ipod Touch for $50 ish out of pocket.

I got in on the penny games last year from Amazon Warehouse Deals! Scored multiple copies of Portal 2, KZ3, Brink, DA, Black Ops, LA Noire and more all for around .30!

house party so many free games.

A few weeks ago, WB Insiders had a survey worth 50 points. For whatever reason, you could refresh the completion page for an unlimited amount of points. A quick Chrome plug-in for auto-refresh netted me around 30,000 points (then redeemed for free Blu-ray codes from WB Shop).

I got the following, all free.



Not pictured: Best Of Blu v2 and Willy Wonka 40th Blu.

niceeeeeeee

Off the top of my head -

Ongoing:

Using E-Rewards and getting a $25 Gamestop giftcard every 6 months.

Swagbucks to get $5-$10 Amazon gift cards a month for web searching.

Goozex has saved me HUNDREDS of dollars (and lots of shelf space) by taking my old games and giving me credit to use towards other old/new games.

Contests:

A free movie ticket via a Moviefone contest for clicking a button.

A lotto scratch off ticket where I won $50.

Drawing:

I joined a site (HearItFirst IIRC) that has random drawings for prizes. I only posted in their forums a few times yet one day I received an email from them. Turned out my name was drawn and I won a $50 Amazon gift card.

I got dead space 2 last year free and an itunes 25$ giftcard from thegiveaway.com

Probably Club Live/Bing. I still have so much crap floating around (usually with the Club Live/Bing logo) from that including stuff I still use everyday like my keyboard, go to screwdriver, 360 controller, Zune... as well as a bunch of other stuff like a Waffle maker, an iron, duffel bags, t-shirts, binoculars, DVDs, webcam... not to mention like $1000 I made off selling crap like copies of Vista and Office and a dozen or so extra 360 controllers I had no use for, including a pink one that managed to catch the ebay market at the right time and rake in over the retail value. Granted, there have been some casualties. The refurbished 360 they sent me died although I did play it pretty hard. The awesome higher end bluetooth keyboard got ed up after I tried to take it apart and clean spilled soda out of it. It got to the point I knew every UPS guy and I was shipping shit to family members.

Also, Camel cigarettes. They sent me an offer when they first started those flavored cigarettes where if I mailed them a few UPCs from any smokes they'd send me a free pack before they were released. I filled out the survey afterward and after that, I did a few half hour or so surveys from them (usually on computer, occsasionally phone) where they'd send me a check for $20 or $25. One month, they sent me a thank you letter with a coupon for $30 off a carton (when they were like $40.) The cashier when I used it checked it for a minute or so and then said she had to make sure it wasn't forged. After that, they invited me to test even more new flavored ones and sent me 2 packs each of 4 different flavors and then at the end, a carton of my either my favorite or the winner (can't remember) in a black wood box. The packs were all white and in small black letters said Style/Type/something A, B, etc.

And a sentimental favorite would also be The Honey Nut Cheerios one from around that time where you could win a $5 check. I was winning at least once a month if not twice playing completely legit with one account the whole time. I lost track of how much money I cashed after $50. The funny thing was was the checks were printed with bright orange and yellow paper with the logo and everything on, so every banker I got would ask to show them off and I became referred to as the Cheerios guy. I think most of my luck came to working 2-10. I'd play at like 3 in the morning a little before going to sleep.

Then there was a survey group I got into run by one of the big cable companies. It ran for around a year and it was easy amazon gift cards. I made around $500 for very little time and effort. Through them, I replaced practically every VHS tape I had with a DVD. (Except Star Wars, I have the black box set)

Oh and I'd like to thank the guy from the street sign only advertised yard sale that collected all those Mountain Dew caps needed for the limited edition original XBox. ...And then selling it to me for $20. 

Hmmm, PepsiStuff from the free code bug that let me gets tons of DVD sets, MyCokeRewards for the thousands upon thousands of dollar in GameStop cards that let me preorder a ton of stuff, and the thousands worth I redeemed to Amazon cards, and the thousands worth of Barnes and Noble cards from it.

I won a Nexus 7 tablet from a Kit-Kat wrapper last fall. Sadly, I think that's the coolest promotion I've been part of.

I enjoyed the Pepsi Rock Band promo around 2008 or 2009. Damn near every cap equaled a free Rock Band song. I don't drink Pepsi, but someone at work did so I got a ton of codes for free.

n64ra said:

I enjoyed the Pepsi Rock Band promo around 2008 or 2009. Damn near every cap equaled a free Rock Band song. I don't drink Pepsi, but someone at work did so I got a ton of codes for free.

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Early 2009. I was working in a call center at the time and people there drank Pepsi like water. At the end of the shift, I'd go around collecting caps. As an added bonus, this place had a recycling bin just for plastic bottle, so if I felt up to it after everyone left for the day, I'd rummage around for those yellow caps.

It was a nice bonus for those of us who also had a Wii, since instead of getting the DLC, you were just given a code for 200 points.

pyoobez said:

Oh and I'd like to thank the guy from the street sign only advertised yard sale that collected all those Mountain Dew caps needed for the limited edition original XBox. ...And then selling it to me for $20.

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I picked one of those up last year at a local thrift for $25. It has a nice spot next to my R2D2 360 and XB1.

TRU around 9 or 10 years ago had a coupon mailed out that was $10 off any 2 video games and it took $10 off each set of video games in the transaction so if you bought 6 games, it took $30 off. They had games for $5 - $8, so it made a lot of the games free or a few dollars.

I see it was already mentioned, and I'm also going to say the PepsiStuff promotion with Amazon when there was a way to just click a page and get a new code. I ended up getting a lot of DVD sets and other Pepsi merchandise for free.

I don't know if it counts as a promotion but Circuit City used to mark down games to a penny occasionally. I remember picking up Star Wars Clone Wars/Tetris Worlds Combo Pack for XBox for a penny and a couple of other games I can't remember right now.

YoshiFan1 said:

TRU around 9 or 10 years ago had a coupon mailed out that was $10 off any 2 video games and it took $10 off each set of video games in the transaction so if you bought 6 games, it took $30 off. They had games for $5 - $8, so it made a lot of the games free or a few dollars.

I see it was already mentioned, and I'm also going to say the PepsiStuff promotion with Amazon when there was a way to just click a page and get a new code. I ended up getting a lot of DVD sets and other Pepsi merchandise for free.

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The more I think about it, I remember the Pepsistuff promo. I was very late to the part with that one, but I still made off with a few DVD sets.

And then there was the notorious Tropicana giveaway. I ended up with so many copies of Forza 2 and Fuzion Frenzy 2 from that one. I think I still have one or two of that's fugly-ass faceplates lying around somewhere as well...

I won a really nice bluetooth headset in 2006 from Radioshack I sold to my boss at the time for 50 bucks

Shopkick was good to me, I pretty much paid for almost all my PS4 at launch from points for giftcards to Gamestop. I live in an area surrounded by scans and walkins in very close proximity so it was common to get $100 in points in 3 months. Then I was banned for scanning and kicking too much legitimately.

In 2012 Best Buy had a promotion for 2x points for Elite Members that also stacked with the Gamers Club, with the 20 dollar pre order bonuses I was getting almost 25 dollars per game I preordered. I was pre ordering games and just selling them on ebay for retail price

And that Buy 2 Get 1 Deal Games from Target I got matched at Best Buy and had got the 25 back in RZ Certs from buying specific games and 20% off for being GCU. Sold 1 game at retail

I won 2 copies of WCW Mayhem for the N64 from Sprite or Surge caps. I won from collecting them and the next day from an instant win

In 1998 I went almost 2 whole weeks without having to buy a Sprite because I kept on getting free 20 oz Sprite caps every time. Got a free Sprite every day

The earliest "promotion" I was part of was actually Heat.Net.  I was a game "mod" for some time, mostly hosting SiN competitions.  Between that, actually playing on there and through bonus ad-clicking, I earned a TON of points and was able to redeem them for some pretty cool things.  Most memorable of those was the Diamond Rio PMP300, which was one of the very first MP3 players on the market.  It held like 6 songs (more at shitty, garbled low bitrate), but it was a neat toy to show off.  I never would have paid the $200 MSRP for it, though.

I also ended up with a cutting edge video card, a Thrustmaster full flight setup and a ton of games. 

A local radio station back home would do online giveaways to midnight movie premieres in the area.

I entered a few times and won.   Eventually I quit entering and they would just call me and say come to the theater we've got tickets waiting for you.

Saw all the major movies that year for free with a friend.

sp00ge said:

Early 2009. I was working in a call center at the time and people there drank Pepsi like water. At the end of the shift, I'd go around collecting caps. As an added bonus, this place had a recycling bin just for plastic bottle, so if I felt up to it after everyone left for the day, I'd rummage around for those yellow caps.

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Besides the original Pepsi Stuff promotion, I think the best I did was a Madden one. I worked at a small factory and everyone was giving me Mountain Dew/Diet Pepsi caps. I ended up winning an Eagles cap and a copy of Madden 2007 or 08. Stupidly, I ended up adding the original XBox as I just got one to the list of systems I wanted so they sent me that instead of the 360. Still, gamestop gave me $10 in credit. A little later through Wendy's, I also won NCAA 10 or 11. I used Amazon's trade in and netted $20-$25 and it helped get one of the bonus offers (either the $7.50 for a year of OXM or the 50% off video game accessories that I used to get the 120 gb XBox HD.)

LiquidSnape said:

I won 2 copies of WCW Mayhem for the N64 from Sprite or Surge caps. I won from collecting them and the next day from an instant win

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That reminds me of the copy of WCW Nitro I have. My friend entered a contest, that was meant as a joke in an article on IGN about Star Wars. Enough people entered submissions that they decided to award the top two or three winners with what seemed to be stuff they got into review that noone who worked there wanted to take. My friend won first place and picked WCW Nitro. When he was downsizing to move to NYC, he gave me the copy as I remembered the story and we joked the game was so bad, IGN didn't want it and neither did he.

pyoobez said:

Besides the original Pepsi Stuff promotion, I think the best I did was a Madden one. I worked at a small factory and everyone was giving me Mountain Dew/Diet Pepsi caps. I ended up winning an Eagles cap and a copy of Madden 2007 or 08. Stupidly, I ended up adding the original XBox as I just got one to the list of systems I wanted so they sent me that instead of the 360. Still, gamestop gave me $10 in credit. A little later through Wendy's, I also won NCAA 10 or 11. I used Amazon's trade in and netted $20-$25 and it helped get one of the bonus offers (either the $7.50 for a year of OXM or the 50% off video game accessories that I used to get the 120 gb XBox HD.)



That reminds me of the copy of WCW Nitro I have. My friend entered a contest, that was meant as a joke in an article on IGN about Star Wars. Enough people entered submissions that they decided to award the top two or three winners with what seemed to be stuff they got into review that noone who worked there wanted to take. My friend won first place and picked WCW Nitro. When he was downsizing to move to NYC, he gave me the copy as I remembered the story and we joked the game was so bad, IGN didn't want it and neither did he.

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Downsizing....woo that 1 PlayStation disc is just too much to move!!! Lol

Through my work I can buy MS Office for 9.95 every couple of years (Whenever we get a new version and they update I can buy again).  I've also gotten Visio and some other MS programs through this.  It tends to vary year by year, but Office is always there.

Not really a promotion but once before their box stores died in a CompUSA they had a giant bin of games.  All of them had a $10 rebate.  Most of the games were $5 or less.  I bought one copy of everything they had, figuring I'd get them free when they matched the price with the rebate and if they refused I'd just return everything.  This did not happen. They still sent the full $10 rebate for each game.  This paid for my first DS and an expensive flight controller system for PC that I'm still using today.

Mine would be when I purchased my Zelda themed 3DS in November of 2011 when GameStop had an offer for a $20 gift certificate with its purchase. This may not sound special so far but the best is at the end.

To order this 3DS I purchased a Gamestop gift card with cash at a grocery store and used that as payment to order in their website. Less than a dollar of change was left in that gift card After purchase. The 3DS console arrived along with the email with the $20 e-gift card as normal. I also sold the included game since I had already purchased the Ocarina of Time game for the soundtrack at Club Nintendo.

Here's the best part. Two months later I was at a GameStop buying a motion plus adapter for my Wii remote and thought why not use the remaining change from that gift card I used to purchase the 3DS. As I was about to take out extra cash the receipt printed after which the clerk said the purchase was covered in full by the gift card. It was not until I looked at the receipt that the gift card somehow had a previous balance of $194. Since gift cards don't have a transaction history and calling CS would raise flags I just went on not knowing how that balance appeared. The remaining was used to purchase other 3DS games including a New Leaf pre-order.

Between that, the $20 rebate, and selling the included game I actually made a little more than the purchase price.

This one time a local radio station of mine had what they called "The players card club" where at local places or concerts or whatever you could sign up and get a card you would swipe at these events and win random prizes. Something as small as a sticker or CDs up to major promotions or concert tickets.

One day it was my birthday and I heard on the radio they were at a Hooters across town so feeling lucky I took a trip down and after swiping my players card the prize name popped up with some promo crap I thought it was nothing and I just got a lame prize. Then the lady handed me a form with no expression at all.

I was walking away while I read it and to my suprise it was actually one of the grand prizes and I got to bring 10 people myself included to that Hooters for a feast of 300 free wings. That was probably the best thing I have won.

Also if it counts working retail and participating in vendor programs like Expertzone and on.playstation have beem AWESOME getting xbox controllere for $15-20 cheap games, 32gb vita card for $20, every sony game for $10 shipped including the last of us, Resistance trilogy, killzone trilogy and so much more. Highly motivated employment decision. Also free xbl time and valuable dlc

reviving

Circa 2004-2005,

Eb games had trade in any 4 current gen games and get $60 game for $10.

Everything except old sports games.

I was able to nab prince of Persia sands of time and KOTOR for $20

Turned out ok as those are two of the best games ever.

Anyone remember the deal that the Microsoft store had back in Fall of 2010? They were giving away a $20 gift card with the pre-order of four games, including Reach and Gears of War 3, plus a $20 gift card upon pickup of the game. I can't remember what the other two games in the promotion were, but that was probably the best one I've ever jumped on

Link2999 said:

Legit Promotion:
Playstation House Party. Got a load of great games from them including Gran Turismo V XL Edition, Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time, and The Jak & Daxter Collection. Also a few cool collectibles. I missed out on a few games though that I'm hitting myself for (but I got deals for them later). Pretty decent for free. I hope they renew the program after March.

Pricing Error Promotion:
Kmart.com had $50 off anything in Electronics (was supposed to get this promo after buying a tablet, but it was applying to everything without needing to buy the tablet). They ended up cancelling all of the orders, but because Kmart cancelled the orders due to "processing issues" I ended up being able to place my orders again through customer service. I got some awesome games for a total of $13 shipped (after tax). Here's some of the games I got:
Resistance 3 - $13
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - $13
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim - $13
Spyro Skylanders (PS3): - $33

As a bonus, they first sent me the wrong version of Call of Duty so I contacted them back and they let me place another order. I ended up returning the wrong-version one to Walmart for a $60 Giftcard. So I basically got $47 for free on that one (Paying for my 3 $13 games with $ to spare).

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Man, that PlayStation HousrParty thing was so great. Almost too good to be true. Lots of great, free games for doing almost nothing. The golden age of being a CAG.

Deamn, I realize that I never have such a promo that I can proudly share of)) I do not think  it bad but feels tricky) 

I haven't posted in this thread since 2014, but let us continue down history lane. I won three IGN contests nearly back to back at the turn of the century. 

1) NFL Blitz - a copy of the PS1 game and a Blitz t-shirt

2) Korn - all their CDs plus an autographed copy of a Spawn comic

3) Me, Myself and Irene - two t-shirts with the injured cow on it. Yes, two of the same shirt.