I’m a discount coupon tragic, I
was always the first person to buy the new Entertainment Book® from my local
school, Boy Scout club or football club even though my children have long left
home and these organizations. I also would use my shop-a-dockets® and
fuel vouchers from Woolworths® and Coles® and the handles on my handbag would
strain under the load. Now I have found the solution to all of my
problems.
I was introduce to My Phone
Vouchers by the nice lady at our local gymnastics club and WOW! I have an
Apple® iPhone® 5s and she helped me bookmark the mobile site to my phones
home-screen so now it looks and feels just like a mobile application
should. The application is like the cross between Entertainment Book® and
Google® Search. First you put your email address and password into the
settings screen and it also has how many kilometers I’m willing to travel for a
discount, I put in 5km and started the searching. I instantly found the
first difference between most discount coupon systems. Most discount
systems like Entertainment Book® or Kidbiz® and targeted on a theme such as
dining or children’s activities while MPV seems to be a much broader mix of
discounts in categories such as automotive, Business and Office, Entertainment,
Fashion & Beauty, Food and Catering, Health and Wellness, Home and
Gardening, Shopping and Travel and Accommodation. I’m told that these
categories only show up if there is offers within my travel distance from where
I’m currently located. There is a little gotcha here that I found.
It’s doesn’t automatically find my current location. There is a button on
the main screen and called “Use GPS Location” which updates the current
location using the built-in GPS. At first I thought this was a bug
however late decided it was a carefully thought out feature, as you can use the
“Choose a Location” item from the front screen to set a location that you might
be later. I can say that tonight I’m going to the movies in Northbridge and
would like a meal there; I can search for Northbridge in and set it as my
location to the cinema. Then when I search in “Food & Catering” it
will show all of the restaurants and cafes within 5km of the cinema that are
offering me a discount. Cool Hey!
The next thing I found since
using this rather than the Entertainment book is that many of the vouchers come
back after a day, week or month of me using them. So if while the
discount might be slightly smaller than on some voucher systems I can always get
a discount at my favorite place. I noticed that some places actually have
two vouchers.
The first voucher is a large
discount that might attract me to try somewhere different and the second one
was a smaller discount that is offered more often so it might keep me going to
the same place. Interesting but I’m not sure which side will work
best. I guess both vouchers have merit and I guess I’m a tragic so I
might try and new place and if I like it will use the loyalty type
discounts. (Not sure if they uses that type of terminology but it seems
to fit the few with two vouchers.) So how many vouchers are there?
Too many to count and they keep adding new ones. The stats on the web
site says that if you take into account all of the vouchers that can be used more
than once there is more than 52,000 vouchers available across Australia from
around three thousand different businesses.
One last benefit I can see is
that I went to Melbourne to see my daughter for a holiday and I would usually
buy a new Entertainment Book ® for Melbourne but with MPV I got off the plane,
turned on my iPhone and pressed the “use GPS location” and there was all the
businesses in Melbourne that wanted to give me a discount Bonus two books for
the price of one and at only $39.95 it’s also cheaper than the alternatives and
the gymnastics club I bought it from told me that they get $20 of the
transactions for their fundraising..
I love my iPhone and I love it even more with My Phone Vouchers.
