Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Buying Movie Tickets at 55% Discount

My wife and I are huge movie buffs. For us watching at least one movie a week is a way of life. Needless to say that our monthly movie expense is a part of monthly expense budgeting process. So I am always on the lookout for movie deals. Fandango, a movie ticket vending site, always has some promo going on and it’s a great way to save some money. One of their long standing offers is in conjunction with Visa – getting 20% off on purchasing a $25 gift card. This allows me to buy $25 Fandango gift cards for $20 only and then use that gift card to buy my tickets, thus saving me $5 (20%), every time I go to watch a movie.

While this is a great way to save money, a better offer came along from Fandango last week, which is stackable with the AMC rewards stubs program and nets me 55% saving on movie tickets. Here’s how anyone can benefit from this offer:

First step is to enroll in the AMC Stubs Program – This is the most awesomest rewards program out there. 

For $12 an year, you earn points for every dollar you spend at the AMC theaters. Movies, pop-corn, soda, everything you spend at AMC. For every $100 worth of spend, you get $10 reward. That $10 can be used for buying movie tickets or for your popcorn and soda’s. Plus you get free size upgrade on your popcorn and soda. The best bit- there is no online ticketing fee – which can add up pretty fast for 4 movies a month. You can track yours through the online account, thus knowing how far you are from the next reward and also they keep a cool stub book of all movies you see.

Next up getting tickets for discount – This is where Fandango comes in. Fandango has a current offer going on – “+1 Movie Fridays on Fandango”.


Here’s the summary- if you have a Visa Signature card (who doesn’t ??), you can get one free ticket every Friday, for tickets purchased on Friday for a show that Friday itself. Simple enough!! That’s a 50% discount right there. They do limit it to 1 free ticket for one Visa Signature card every 30 days. So if you are like me, with multiple Visa Signature card in your arsenal, you can get one free ticket every Friday.

Now, on to making it slightly better – I use the Fandango offer to buy tickets for AMC theaters only. 2 tickets (worth $20), after discount cost me $10. But AMC treats it as 2 tickets purchased and hence gives me credit for $20. Five movies later, I hit the $100 mark and get $10 rewards from AMC.
So for a net spend of $50 only, I get to watch movies worth $110. That’s an awesome 55% discount on AMC movie tickets.


Are you taking advantage of this offer? Do you have a way to make it better?