Transcript of Podcast #30: Take Advantage of Student Discounts While Shopping
In Attendance: Melisa Perut (she/they) & Elsie Yi (she/her)
Melisa: Hello everyone, welcome to another podcast episode. Today we’re going to talk about discounts, that’s something that is on the mind of many students and it’s a great perk, to be aware of. So we have the wonderful Elsie joining us today, she’s been on another episode as well. If you haven’t listened to that, I highly recommend, taking a listen, and she is going to share with us some, tips and insights that she has about student discounts, so thank you so much, Elsie for joining us today, can you introduce yourself for our guests?
Elsie: Yeah, of course Melisa I’m super excited to be here today. My name is Elsie, my pronouns is she/her, and I’m part of the Masters of Public Health program. So I’m originally from San Jose, which is up in Northern California, about an hour flight away or like a seven hour drive. And this is my 1st time being a mentor and being part of GIC and so I’m super excited to be here, I’m having a great time with all these podcasts. And in Irvine I love to walk around. I know like the states are not really a walkable city, but I find that UCI, the campus especially, it’s pretty walkable. You can go to different plazas, you can go to campus. And I like that. It gives me time to, I guess, get fresh air and just relax a bit after class.
Melisa: And it’s always sunny here, so the weather is always nice for a walk, right? So you can go to places, so thank you so much, Elsie for joining us. It’s great to have you, and so let’s get started. Can you explain to all of our listeners why student discounts are more than just a perk, and why they should be on the lookout for student discounts?
Elsie: Yeah so a lot of us don’t get paid very much. And we’re on, we’re on pretty tight budgets sometimes, so these student discounts could be really helpful. And I also think it’s great to take advantage of them while you’re still a student, because they’re there for you, they’re offering these perks, you might as well use them while you’re here. And it’ll open up new opportunities. You can check out things that you didn’t really have on your radar, but knowing that it’s a bit cheaper for you, you might wanna test it out.
Melisa: Yeah exactly, and you will be surprised at how some things are very expensive, while you’re shopping at the supermarket, so you’ll realize, like having a discount is actually kind of nice or, you know, having some coupons that could be helpful, especially if you’re on a tight budget like most of us. So Elsie, you share with us some of the, in person shopping deals that you benefit from.
Elsie: So I know there’s one right next to campus, the movie theater. If you show your student ID, you can get a dollar or two off of your movie ticket, which is really nice because movie tickets. They’re so expensive now. And then there’s also some grocery stores like Ranch 99, they’ll give you five percent off of your groceries if you show your student ID (Wholesome Choice also gives a student discount for groceries). And there’s also an app you can download called Retail Therapy. So a lot of places in Irvine are owned by Irvine Company and they have this specific app that gives you discounts for different vendors that they own and one of them is like Color Me Mine, which is you, you can do pottery or you can paint and stuff. And it’s a pretty good discount. I think it was buy one, pot, get another for half off. And so it’s a pretty fun activity, and they also have like Dicks Sporting Goods, you can get discounts on clothes there, and there’s one for Blaze Pizza right on campus, it’s a Bogo, so it’s pretty cool to use.
Melisa: Oh yeah, And you’ll also hear this word Bogo a lot. Can you tell us what it means, Elsie?
Elsie: Oh yeah, it’s, buy one, get one free, so it’s pretty nice (it can also mean mean buy one get one for a discount or a special price).
Melisa: If you see a Bogo, Bogo sale, Bogo deal, then you know, it’s a, it’s a good deal, I’ve also realized since students are coming back to campus, around here there are a lot of discounts, like at Target I saw there’s a 20% student discount, at the target right here. That’s a huge discount. So be on the lookout for, you know, these kinds of, you know, back to school discounts that can happen around this time while like schools are going back in session, because students, you know, there are kids, that are also students and then there are adult students like us. So just be on the lookout for those, and you, you can always ask, you can always ask if there is a discount for students. What about some online shopping deals that people can, take advantage of?
Elsie: yeah, so there’s always like Amazon Prime if you need to order things, they give the 1st six months free and then after that it’s, I think, six or seven a month and you can always split it with like your roommates or your friends, so it’s even cheaper. And if you like to listen to music you can get spotify premium, it’ll be about six dollars a month. And you can also get hulu (free with the student discount or on its own) so you can watch movies and tv too. Or you could just do like a family spotify premium and share with a bunch of friends and it will come out to be like two three dollars a month. That’s what I do right now. And there’s also student beans and uni days, where you basically just give them your email, your school email, and once they verify it, they give you a bunch of coupon codes for different websites. It can be electronics, clothes, like there’s one for FlixBus right now. So if you wanna like take a little trip, but yeah, it’s just constantly changing and there’s so many options. And also like you mentioned about this season Apple has an education pricing for back to school where you can get Macs or iPads for cheaper and then like this year they’re giving you a $150 too (in a giftcard for Apple). And I just did that cause my, my old laptop was super old and it wasn’t working that well anymore, so it was a pretty good like chance to take that opportunity.
Melisa: There are a lot of you know when you’re buying electronics there are a lot of student discounts especially during this time uh they make they advertise it more but I think it’s widely available all around the year (Apple educational pricing is all year but bonus gift cards are generally only available at specific times like back to school). But definitely should you know sign up for these different websites to get these coupons because you will definitely use them somewhere and they’re super helpful when you’re trying to buy something it’s a little bit on the expensive side or if you want to try something out as well as Elsie mentioned earlier you will find there are like student discounts. I mean our ARC is a student discount gym, right the Anteater Recreational Center. If you want to sign up for a rock climbing class outside of campus it’s pretty expensive but it’s like fifteen dollars at ARC, at least as of 2023. But yeah you, you should definitely make it, take advantage of all of the discounts that are available to students, because we need it. Do you have any other final tips and tricks for finding discounts?
Elsie: I think just keeping an eye out, you could also do like a Google search cause sometimes like new ones will pop up that weren’t around before. And what you mentioned before, asking never hurts. Like sometimes I’ll just ask and I remember one time I was at, I can’t remember what it was called, but it was like a restaurant nearby and I just asked if they had a student discount. Cause I remember seeing like something on their menu about student pricing a while ago, but they said they no longer had that but still gave it to me just cause I asked. So like it doesn’t hurt to ask.
Melisa: Exactly, and as students we get free access to like, a lot of resources us. But if you wanna go outside, like go to the museum, they also have student discounts. Groupon has a lot of discounts as well. So there are a lot of things with a simple Google search you could find, just keep it on your radar and also always know that there might be a promo code somewhere out there, that could help you. I know I used Honey for a very long time as part of my browser, which would plug in different promo codes that are collected from other people, into like the website that I was trying to check out from, and from there I would just like get discounts. Even if it’s like, I don’t know, 5%. I, it still made me happy. Another thing is, some stores will price match. Which means that they will, if they’re selling an item and somebody else is selling the same item for a better price, you can go to their, customer relations desk. Usually they’re at the entrance. And you can ask them to a price match and they will price match it for you. So rather than, let’s say, going to BestBuy, you can get the same price at Target as well (our little Target by campus is sometimes more expensive than other ones. You can check online for prices and see if it is cheaper online and they will price match to online prices from their website as well). And this applies to a lot of goods, I’ve used it for electronics just by showing like Amazon prime, pricing for like, I think I was trying to buy like a hard disk, for that, and they just priced the matched it for me. So I didn’t have to order it and I could just get it immediately. So be on the lookout for these. And if you have any questions or have any great tips, please share with your colleagues and friends so all of us can benefit from them. Awesome. Well, thank you so much Elsie for joining us today. I think this was a wonderful podcast and super helpful and if anybody has any questions, always feel free to reach out to Elsie and myself. Of course, I forgot to introduce myself as always. This is Melisa, one of your GIC mentors, so take care we’ll see you on the next episode.
Elsie: See you next time.