Well, I’ve been much more focused this year on using portals and getting cash back rewards. I would say about 30% of the times I’ve tried this, the rebate doesn’t work. And folks are smart, it isn’t worth it to make a transaction for $1 work right and there is no record you have that you clicked through. But here’s a list of things that do and don’t work:
Tips
- Cashbackrewards.com seems like a terrific place to find actual dollars off, just make sure to avoid the trap that some folks advertise rewards but don’t deliver.
- Staples. They have a rewards program on top of the click through and this seems reliable. The program is free, so sign up.
- Best Buy. Same thing, not surprising a same store does.
- Bank of America Rewards Mall. Actually this works pretty well. The connection to Newegg and Rakuten works. The only site that has failed are Expedia and Giftcardmall. Expedia because they will only pay back on things direct billed to Expedia and they don’t tell you that most airlines are direct billed as are most hotels, so this only works on things. Giftcardmall worked once then stopped. I suspect this is because they don’t really support Amazon gift cards and don’t provide a rebate for them. Too bad!
- Chase Rewards Mall. Ditto for these guys, most of these come through.
- Befrugal.com. I’ve actually gotten a rebate from them and it was sent to Paypal. Hurray!
Tricks
- For both though I’d use paypal or something as an aside, all these sites are just so bad at leaking data (JCPenney, Target, PF Changs, etc.)
- Overstock. They do charge for their program but they also deliver on them. I probably won’t renew this one because I don’t use it much
- You can spent a lot of time optimizing this, so just be careful.
Traps
- Topcashback.com. Well, they typically have the biggest rebate but I haven’t gotten any of them except from smart home.com back in February. So avoid this one. I’ve sent a bunch of requests in, but they don’t seem to reflect anything except to Smarthome.
