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As a bona fide cheapskate (and author of the eponymous blog), I’m a longtime fan of the Entertainment Book. For about $30 (a little more in some states), it provides substantial discounts for thousands of local stores, attractions, restaurants, movie theaters, and the like.
In my experience, the book pays for itself within a month or two, then offers additional savings (often major savings) throughout the rest of the year. Killer deal.
Just one problem: a lot of coupons go to waste because we don’t know where the deals are. We might be out and about, looking for a place to have dinner, and miss a restaurant that’s one block over because we didn’t know it was there.
The Entertainment Book Companion app solves that problem. By tapping your iPhone’s GPS, it finds all the deals in your immediate vicinity (anywhere from 1 mile to 100 miles, with increments of 5, 10, and 35 miles in between).
All you do is sign into your account (the app is free but requires you to be an Entertainment.com subscriber or book owner), then look up the nearest offers. Keep in mind that most of them are tied to the book, meaning you’ll need the actual coupon to redeem them. (In an ideal world, you’d just flash your iPhone–no paper required. Maybe next year?)
The app lets you filter offers by distance or alphabetically, and you can limit the results to a specific category: Dining, Events & Attractions, Shopping, or Travel. You can browse by these categories as well.
For any given offer, you get the location’s address, phone number, and general information, plus an option to see it on a map–then jump to Google Maps for driving directions. There’s also a Saved Offers area where you can file your favorites.
The only thing I don’t quite get is that the app is apparently limited to showing “the discounts of up to 50% off and 2-for-1.” In other words, it won’t show the outright freebies and other more attractive deals.
Even so, I’d say the Entertainment Book Companion is a must-have app for anyone who owns an Entertainment Book.
