Free Movie Ticket on Fridays

One of the things that I found expensive in the USA is going to the movies. Where I live tickets go from $8 dollars and up. So I’m always looking for ways to save.

I like to go to the movie theater at least once a month, sometimes 2 times. I know people that like to go every week and the money needed for that activity could be very high. If you have a family and add drinks and popcorn, you are looking at around $25 per person.

Introducing Fandango

Fandango is an online service that you use to buy ticket for the movie you want at your theater. The service is a convenient way to buy tickets without staying in line at the theater but they add a ‘convenience fee’ to the already high priced ticket.

I usually see the fee at $1.50 per ticket or even $2.00 sometimes (I guess this is theater and movie based, maybe 3D movies have a higher fee).

There are places where you can buy Fandango gift cards at discount, this way at least you can save the fee or even more than that. The problem with Fandango gift cards is that you can’t use them directly at the theater, you need to use the gift cards at fandango.com, so please don’t buy these thinking you can use them directly.

Right now there are promotions when you buy tickets or fandango gift cards with a Visa Signature card.

What is Visa Signature?

Visa signature is a special Visa credit card that has some extra features not available on regular Visa cards. Usually to have a Visa Signature card your limit on your card must be $5,000 or more. In other article I talked about the Bank of America secured credit card and how you can secure up to $10,000 on it (even when they say online that you can only have up to $4,900 dollars). My wife was able to get her card at $5,000 limit and she asked Bank of America to change her regular Visa card to a Visa Signature card. They had to send a new card with new number and now she can use it to buy fandango gift cards at lower price.

$25 Fandango gift card for $20

With a Visa Signature card you can buy a $25 Fandango gift card and only pay $20 for it. That’s a 20% savings and in fact $25 is 25% more than $20. I say this because is good to know this number when you are going to buy movie tickets and need to choose between buying them online or buying them at the theater.

Let’s say that the movie ticket cost is $8 and the convenience fee is $1.50. That fee is a little less than 20% more than the ticket price, so if you buy a gift card for $20 and they give $25 card, you are saving some money. In the other hand, if the ticket cost is $8 but the fee is $2.00, that’s 25% more than the base price, so you don’t save by buying the gift card because both numbers are 25%. Maybe you can save time or reserve your seat, but that’s it.

So be careful trying to save money and make sure that you are really saving.

+1 Fandango movie ticket

This is a ‘summer promotion’ that started in May and is good until August 2015. The promotion say that Fandango will pay for 1 of your ticket if you buy 2 or more on Friday for a Friday show. In other words, if you buy 2 tickets on fandango.com they will discount the price of 1 and you will end paying only 1.

Let’s do some math. If the tickets are $8 each and the fee is $1.50 and you buy 2 tickets, normally you will pay $19 dollars, but if you use a Visa Signature card you will end paying only $9.50. If you want to go with the family, and buy 4, the total is $38 dollars but you will only pay $27.50 with your Visa Signature.

This promotion say that you can only use your Visa Signature card one time per 30 days, so the only way to use this many times in a month is having several Visa Signature cards. There are some credit cards that always start at $5,000 so they are Visa Signature since approval, I know about the Chase Sapphire Preferred card and the Venture card from Capital One.

I was able to use this promotion last Friday when I bought 2 tickets for Jurassic World and Fandango/Visa Signature paid for one. Too bad that I can’t use it now to buy tickets for the family to see Inside Out.

 

If you want to use your Visa Signature to buy fandango tickets of gift cards, please visit this link: https://tickets.fandango.com/visasignature/

Did you use the information on this post? What movie you want to see? Please share a comment with us.