This morning I decided to take the plunge and place an order that I’ve been mulling over for months. Gevalia coffee has an offer where you can purchase three half-pound bags of coffee and a travel mug for $3.00, with free shipping. The reason I hesitated was that by making this purchase, you are automatically enrolled in their “Coffee Club”, and will be billed for coffee every six weeks unless you cancel. According to their terms of service, you are welcome to try the $3.00 coffee deal and cancel your membership once it arrives; they say that you are not required to continue in the program or make any further purchases. I’ve seen this deal advertised for maybe six months or more, but wasn’t sure that I wanted to venture it – I’ve always been extremely suspicious of “free trials”, and anytime I hear the phrase “No obligation”, I steer clear!

However, I’ve learned that saving money also means being open to possibilities – and in the last year, I’ve seen examples of smart shoppers actually getting good deals with trial offers. In April, I took part in a “Free trial” offer for the first time in my life in order to earn a free Photobucket upgrade. Amazingly, it worked as it said, without me getting billed for anything.

And over the last few months, I’ve watched everyone from Deal Seeking Mom to Mummy Deals take part in this Gevalia offer with no problems, so I decided to bite the bullet and give it a go. I think the secret to trial offers if to be very organized and highly cautious. Know the terms and conditions, make sure to cancel immediately, and check your bank statements very carefully to watch for any billing issues. We’ll see how my little experiment goes; I’ll post an update once the coffee arrives, and I’ll let you know if it ends up being a good buy – or if it’s not worth the hassle.

The first 100,000 eBay users who click here to register for their “Daily Deals” email alert will receive a coupon good for $1.00 off their next eBay purchase. I’ve gotten some great deals on eBay, so this coupon will come in handy the next time I need to make a purchase!

Thanks to Money Saving Mom for the tip!

If you didn’t get in on the last Scwan’s food deal, then you might want to check out this one. Today only, the first 500,000 people who click here to visit their website can receive $10 worth of food free of charge – looks like the delivery free is waived also, although that could be regional. This promo is limited to those who have not ordered from Schwan’s in the last 14 weeks.

According to the ticker on the website, the promotion starts in about 2 hours, so heads-up! Shopping Frugal has more details here.

Money Saving Mom tipped me off about a good online deal at Schwan’s. You’ve probably seen their trucks driving around – they’re a delivery service that specialize in frozen foods. And you can order some cheap food from them right now, because they are offering an online promo code of $5 off your purchase of $5 or more. They have several items priced around $5, and the delivery fee is $1, so it could make for some pretty cheap food. Simply enter promo code D5 at checkout to redeem.

I ordered the Special Recipe Supreme Pizza, priced at $4.99. The delivery free brought the total to $5.99 – so after I applied the promo code, I only owed .99 cents. We like pizza and it’s supposed to serve 3, so I figured that three servings for .99 cents is not a bad price. Also, you can choose to pay cash upon delivery, so you don’t even need to provide a credit card to order.

Important note: From what I understand, once you order from Schwan’s, they will stop by every two weeks to see if you would like to order again unless you tell them not to. After reading the comments on Money Saving Mom, I feel pretty confident that they will respect my request not to come by unless I place an order – however, I’ve never used the service before, so I would encourage you to read the customer reviews that have been posted on the MSM comment thread if you’d like to get feedback from past customers.

My delivery is scheduled to arrive next Thursday, so I will post a follow-up once I receive my pizza!

Check out this cool promotion from Restaurant.com. Every day through December 25th, you can send three friends a $10 restaurant gift certificate, free of charge. What a cool promotion! Click here to sign up.

If you’re unfamiliar with Restaurant.com, they basically sell good coupons for restaurants all throughout the country. You can buy a gift certificate for a fairly small amount, and then use it to save money on your next meal at the restaurant of your choice. For example, most of the $10 gift certificates require a minimum purchase of $20 to redeem, so you get your meal for half price. This is a great way to cut costs if you’re going to eat out anyway! Just punch in your zip code, and it will show participating eateries in your area and their terms of redemption.

Click on over to Common Sense With Money to find out how to get 2 bras and a pair of panties for $16 at Victoria’s Secret! As underwear goes, this is a good deal, especially for this brand. Most VS bras that I’ve seen are $40 or more.

I also took advantage of the sweater deal that she mentioned, because I am in need of some sweaters now that we’re going into cold weather. I spent $39.99, which is a lot, but I got 2 bras, pair of undies, a sweater and a hoodie, so that’s $8 apiece. That’s comparable to Ross prices, so I was happy with it, especially for these practical items. I also shopped using Ebates, so I should be getting a small rebate back to sweeten the deal.

The sweater deal ends today, so act fast if you want to get in on it! I’m not sure when the deal ends on the bras.

Speaking of online deals, I got my Omaha Steaks order:

This deal worked out a little different than I had thought it would. I got my 8 hamburgers, but not the bonus burgers or cutlery set. I was informed by the company that I would not receive the free promotional items because you cannot combine special offers – they said that paying with certain tenders, such as a gift card, is considered a special offer. I wish it would have mentioned this during the checkout process, instead of successfully adding all the items, applying my gift card and processing the order without any errors or warnings. Obviously their checkout system needs some work – especially since other bloggers placed the same exact order and yet they received all of the items, including the freebies. And then, Omaha Steaks called me at 4 in the morning last Tuesday to tell me that my order would be late! Oh well, at least the burgers look super yummy!!

ETA: Sadly, this deal is no longer available. As of this morning (10/22), several readers who did this reported getting a message stating that they must spend between $50-100 to redeem their gift code.

An Eagle-eyed Super Coupon Girl reader named Nicole sent me an email to tell me about a fantastic deal she saw on Thrifty Florida Mama. I was able to order 14 hamburgers, a cutlery set and a cutting board from Omaha Steaks last night for only $1.98, including shipping! Here’s how it works:

If you register for a website called Geico Privileges, they will email you a gift code good for $25 off a purchase at Omaha Steaks. It’s free and you don’t have to be a Geico customer to sign up. Stephanie at The Coupon Game warns that this offer may be over, however the link still says “Register And Save With Omaha Steaks”, so it ought to still work if they’re advertising it, unless they changed the gift code to a different amount. UPDATE: Two SCG readers wrote in to tell me that they just did the deal, and it worked like a charm, so the offer is still valid!

My code took about 5 hours to get through yesterday, so it can take a little while to show up in your inbox.

Once you get the code, surf on over to Wow-Coupons and click the third link down, that says “60% off The Ultimate Assortment and The Sizzling Sampler + FREE Omaha Steaks Burgers + FREE 6-Piece Cutlery Set + FREE Cutting Board”. This code will give you these freebies with any qualifying purchase. The cheapest qualifying items that I found were the franks and hamburgers; I chose 8 Omaha Steak Burgers for $12.99. The shipping is $13.99 for orders under $40, but here’s the great thing – the gift code applies to shipping, too! So I bought 8 hamburgers, and my freebie code added 6 more, plus the cutlery set and cutting board. My grand total came to $26.98 after shipping. I applied my $25 gift code, and it went down to $1.98!! Wow! I will take some pictures when the package arrives. I’m stoked about the cutlery set, because I need some new kitchen knives.

ETA: Reader Lorrie pointed out another variation of this deal on Money Saving Mom. Basically, if you don’t want the cutlery and cutting board, you can choose 12 burgers as your freebie instead, by following this link. Cool!

Thanks so much to reader Nicole and Thrifty Florida Mama for the info on this deal! The Geico lizard couldn’t save me any money on car insurance, but he sure got me a sweet deal on hamburger.