Before we hit Black Friday & Cyber Monday, I wanted to post about something which I think is going to be incredibly helpful to you, if you haven’t already signed up for it. It’s called UPS My Choice, and it’s a new FREE service from UPS that allows you to manage all the items being shipped to you at a level UPS has never before offered.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come home to see the little yellow and white UPS stickies on my door, instead of the wonderful widget I was hoping to find delivered to my doorstep. It’s frustrating, not having a job that allows me to take deliveries at the office, but I know I’m not the only one in this position. Enter the solution I’ve been waiting for for years: UPS My Choice.

My Choice not only has tracking, it also lets you know when your UPS packages are due for delivery A DAY IN ADVANCE, and allows you to authorize delivery without a signature. Translation: NO MORE YELLOW & WHITE STICKIES! If you happen to have an Amazon Prime membership, you’ve probably noticed that all of your deliveries come via UPS (at least mine all do). The hassle savings on these deliveries alone made it worth my time to sign up!

But there are other great features; for example, I know I mentioned that they let you know about your deliveries a day in advance. What’s really nice, though, is that they notify you via your preferred method – email, phone or text. So if you’re not the type to check your email every day, but you always have your cell with you, you can get a text. Don’t have a cell or an active email account? They’ll call ya! I like that they’ve geared this toward more than just the younger set.

But what if you’re having something big and expensive delivered, and don’t want it left on your front porch all day? They’ve got that instance covered as well, and two different ways! You can either have your package delivered to the nearest UPS Store, or choose another address (say, a neighbor who’s a stay-at-home mom?) and have the package delivered there. I don’t know about your local UPS Store but mine (and all the ones I’ve ever had occasion to use) have reasonable hours like 8am-7pm, that let me swing by after work and pick things up. I can see where this option would also be happy if, for instance, a package you were expecting didn’t arrive before you were slated to leave town for the holidays; then you could just re-route it to a nearby friend’s house to wait for you until you get home.

Now, all of the above is, as I said, FREE (although if I understand correctly the changing-the-delivery-address option might have an additional fee). Interestingly, they also offer a “Premium” membership level that adds a few more niceties. Like telling the driver where to leave your package (why leave it on the rainy front porch when the back porch has a roof over it?) and getting a confirmed two-hour delivery window. Upgrading is an option once you’ve finished your registration. I didn’t bother with it, as the fee was $40 per year, but I realize everyone has different needs, so I did want to mention it just in case.

There was also a little bonus I noticed on the confirmation screen; look at the top right of the Confirmation screen once you’ve finished registering, and look for a link that looks like the one at left that says “Download Coupons.”

I’m betting that these coupons will be the same all over, but just in case they aren’t here are the coupons I was able to print (and they’re a .pdf, so I was also able to save):

• 25% off packing service (this will come in handy during the Christmas shipping season!)
• 25% off printing service (if you do holiday newsletters, you’ll love this)
• 3 months free with a 1-year mailbox agreement (probably not for most people, but hey, if you happen to need it, why not save?)

Naturally, these are all redeemable at my local UPS Store.

So if you want to save a lot of time, hassle & frustration this holiday shopping season, make sure you sign up for UPS My Choice now, so that when you need it, it’ll be ready and waiting for you!

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First up, if you or anyone you care about could use some free samples of Depend Undergarments, simply click here (or on the pic below). They’ll ask for your address for shipping purposes, as well as your gender & size preference, and you’ll have the option (but won’t be required) to opt in to their email offers list. That’s it! Simple & fast, and you (or your loved one) can expect to receive their free samples in 7-10 business days (which beats the tar out of the usual 4-6 week delivery time).

The other image shown above could lead to free allergy medication, if you qualify. As such, I wouldn’t call it a “freebie,” but rather an opportunity. It involves answering a questionnaire, and if you qualify, then you get not only free experimental allergy meds, but also compensation for your time, and free study-related doctor visits. I’ve never actually done a medication study, but it does sound like an interesting process. If you qualify (or even if you’ve done other such studies in the past), I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments!

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Did you miss Big Fish Games’ weekend Anniversary Sale? Not to worry! I just found a new way to get your game on with them…this time for free! Now, if you’ve been following me for a long time, you’ll probably already have these games. Since I pick up new readers all the time, though, and this is a new offer, I wanted to make sure I shared with y’all!

Right now you can get two games for free – Mystery Case Files: Huntsville ™ and Mahjong Towers Eternity ™. I love both of these games, and have wasted endless hours on them. If you’d like to do the same, just click here, fill in your email address, and Big Fish will send you coupon codes good for both of these titles. Then you can just go to Big Fish, add them to your cart, fill in your coupon codes, and voila! Free games! Of course, this will also sign you up for Big Fish’s mailing list, but if you prefer not to stay on it, they make it very easy to unsubscribe, by putting a link at the bottom of each of their emails. I’d encourage you to stay signed up, though, as they do have some great offers for their repeat customers.

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OK, not literally, but I did want to point out to all of my readers that in addition to the daily free Android Apps that Amazon has been giving away (I hope you’ve been checking back there each day – today’s app is The Secret of Grisly Manor, a game that combines working puzzles and locating items to solve a mystery), they have also recently introduced a couple of other great free services.

First up, Amazon quietly sneaked their Cloud Drive onto the market a couple of weeks ago. Cloud Drive is a lot like having a five gigabyte hard drive accessible from anywhere. It’s secure (though I wouldn’t recommend storing your tax records on it…or anywhere else but your local drive, for that matter), and it’s accessible from any computer you can log into your Amazon account from. This means it’s compatible across Mac, PC, and yes, I just verified that it even works with my Android-powered smartphone!

All you have to do is go to the Cloud Drive site, click Get Started, accept their Terms of Service, and solve a letter/number captcha. Then you’ll be taken to a screen that allows you to select the location to which you wish to upload your files (Cloud Drive lets you make folders, just like your local hard drive), and you just choose the files you wish to upload there. You’ll see the progress as your files upload, and once they’re uploaded, you’ll have them with you anywhere you go that has an internet-connected computer.

If you’ve ever used the Dropbox web interface, you’ll find Amazon’s Cloud Drive just as simple to use. Although Cloud Drive does not feature the automatic synchronization that the Dropbox downloadable app does, it gives you five gigs of free storage right off the bat, as compared to Dropbox’s two gigs. And if you buy just ONE mp3 album from Amazon (and they have albums for as little as $3.99), they’ll up your free storage to 20 Gb for a year! You also get free storage for all the mp3s you’ve purchased via Amazon, and that storage DOES NOT eat into your free 5 (or 20) gigs of storage space. Pretty cool, eh?

But wait, it gets better…

Speaking of Amazon and mp3s, they have also launched a new service called Cloud Player. It’s like an extension of their Cloud Drive, only geared specifically toward mp3s, so that you can not only retrieve your music, but also stream it (play it) from any PC, Mac or Android phone. How cool is that?! That means that no matter where you go, if you have access to an internet-connected computer or an Android smarphone with an unlimited data plan, you can play your favorite tunes! You can play both mp3s you’ve purchased from Amazon, as well as your own mp3s that you purchased elsewhere. Just bear in mind that when you upload mp3s you purchased somewhere else, those will be using part of your 5 (or 20) GB of space on the Cloud Drive, whereas the tunes you purchased from Amazon do not.

To get started with Cloud Player, just go here, click on the words “Cloud Player for Web” in step 2, accept the terms and conditions, solve the captcha, and start uploading! Or, if you’d prefer to start with the music you’ve already purchased from Amazon, you can access your Amazon mp3 Settings page, and set it so that your Amazon mp3 purchases will automatically be saved to your Cloud Drive. I haven’t figured out yet how (or if it’s even possible) to move the mp3s I’ve already purchased from Amazon to my Cloud Drive automatically, but I’m betting that they’ll be implementing that functionality soon enough. In the meantime, you can just upload these to your Cloud Drive manually…or be like me and wait until they get it together on their end.

Finally, Amazon has quite a few new free Kindle books on offer:

Tales of the Revolution: True Stories of People who are Poking the Box and Making a Difference by Seth Godin
Allies and Enemies: How the World Depends on Bacteria by Anne Maczulak
The Heart of Memory by Alison Strobel
Serial by Jack Kilborn
Be a Dividend Millionaire: A Proven, Low-Risk Approach That Will Generate Income for the Long Term by Paul Rubillo
Complete Without Kids: An Insider’s Guide to Childfree Living by Choice or by Chance by Ellen L. Walker PhD
Heir To The Everlasting by Janice Daugharty

Enjoy all the freebies!

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Get yourself a Free Sample of Maximum Strength Zantac 150! They only ask for the basics (name, address, email and birth month/year), and there are no annoying hoops to jump through. Free samples with low requirements like this go quickly, though, so make sure to hurry!

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