If you require the use of software applications within the Microsoft 365 suite (formerly Office 365) and have already used up the free trial period, note that there are a number of office suite competitors available including some that are free, like FreeOffice or LibreOffice.
Should these other software packages not meet your needs, or if you want to upgrade your OneDrive to the 1TB of storage that Microsoft 365 offers, use an online shopping “cashback” or “rebates” site when subscribing.
These types of sites receive affiliate compensation when referring shoppers to a variety of participating online vendors. In turn, these sites give a portion of that $ received back to the customer – which can then be cashed out by a variety of payment methods including Paypal or e-gift cards after a specific threshold has been reached.
Popular rebates sites catering to the Canadian market include Rakuten.ca (formerly eBates.ca) and Great Canadian Rebates (GCR).
I personally find myself using GCR more as it tends to offer higher cashback rates for the sites I shop at.
For purchases at Microsoft Canada, the following are the current rates through GCR:
In the case of 1 month of Microsoft 365 Personal, the resulting cashback effectively gave me a discount of practically half off, after tax on $8 ($9.04).
Tip:
Should you require the license for an extended period of time, cancel prior to the monthly rebilling and repeat the purchase (auto-renewals do not earn cashback).
Do you have additional tips or questions about anything in this post? Please leave a comment below.
