Fatwallet Migrates their Shopping Portal to Ebates + $10 Bonus

Reposting this because people received more e-mails about it as per TaggingMiles.

The Fatwallet shopping portal is closing down, and they are directing everyone to use sister-site Ebates instead. They also offer a $10 bonus when you transfer your Fatwallet balance to Ebates.

Background

Fatwallet is a deals and personal finance site, somewhat similar to Slickdeals, with more of a personal finance bend to it. They’ve also had their own shopping portal as part of the site.

Back in 2011, they were bought out by the Ebates shopping portal. Ebates, presumably, wanted Fatwallet due to the many affiliate links that are included in all the deals posts, and due to the active shopping portal that Fatwallet themselves offered.

Since then, Ebates and Fatwallet each provided separate shopping portals. Most of the time, they offered the same rates, and, for that reason, we usually don’t hear people referring to the Fatwallet portal as we’ll just mention the better-known Ebates portal instead. Personally, I have used both portals since once-in-a-long-while the two portals had disparate rates.

Fatwallet Shutters Portal

Sometime within the past day or two, Fatwallet shut down the shopping portal part of their website, with an eye – perhaps – on focusing the site on deals, similar to Slickdeals which doesn’t have a public shopping portal.

Check out the difference between how the home page used to look a few days ago and how it looks now.

They aren’t calling it a shuttering of the portal, rather that the portal is moving over to sister-site Ebates. You might get this popup when visiting Fatwallet:

Screen Shot 2016-05-10 at 2.45.08 PM

As part of the shuttering of the portal, there is no longer a refer-a-friend bonus for referring someone to Fatwallet.

$10 Bonus to Migrate to Ebates

If you have a balance in your Fatwallet account, you can choose to cash out the balance directly from Fatwallet or to transfer the balance over to Ebates, either a new or existing Ebates account. If you opt to transfer the balance over the Ebates, they are offering a $10 bonus.

  • Transfer your Fatwallet balance over to Ebates, whether a new or existing Ebates account, and get a $10 bonus after spending $25 within 90 days.

Anyone can signup for an Ebates account and get a $10 bonus. What is unique here is that they are offering the bonus even for existing Ebates users. I assume this $10 bonus is only being offered to someone who has a balance in their Fatwallet account, but it may they are offering it to everyone so check out your Fatwallet account and see if there’s an offer for you.

My Experience

In an attempt to take advantage of the $10 bonus, I tried going ahead and transferring my balance to Ebates. This offer came at a good time for me since I have $105 balance in my Fatwallet account that I didn’t know existed. (It was from one of those unusual times that Fatwallet was offering a higher rate than Ebates.)

Oddly, when I went through the process, the system only gave me the option to open a new Ebates account, not to transfer the balance to my existing Ebates account.

Screen Shot 2016-05-10 at 2.46.12 PM

I tried selecting, ‘Create New Ebates Account & Transfer Cash Back’ with the hopes that the system would subsequently ask me if I already have one. To no avail – it instantly created a new Ebates account using the same email and password as my Fatwallet account.

I suspect that this is because I have different email addresses associated with my Ebates account and my Fatwallet accounts. To avoid this, I recommend making sure that both email addresses are the same and then hopefully it will go seamlessly for you.

Now, I’ve contacted Fatwallet to try getting my two Ebates account consolidated, and hopefully keeping the $10 bonus offer in the process, since I know Ebates doesn’t like when people have more than one account.

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22 Comments
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Kev
Kev (@guest_258581)
May 13, 2016 10:49

Unless I am mistaken, ebates only send checks while with fatwallet you were able to cash out with paypal. Thats the REAL difference between the two sites.

Megan
Megan (@guest_259639)
May 17, 2016 10:27

You can have your money sent to your Paypal account. That’s what I’ve done for the past year or so.

Day
Day (@guest_258164)
May 11, 2016 21:28

What about any pending transactions you have on FW? Do you think we will be able to transfer that balance in the future once it posts in My Cash Back?

Wyle
Wyle (@guest_258216)
May 12, 2016 00:18

If total pending is $20, you’ll automatically get it when it finalizes by the same method you cleared out the available funds (withdrawal or transfer)

Wyle
Wyle (@guest_258219)
May 12, 2016 00:23

wait. Where’d half my comment go. I bet left carrot / right carrot aren’t treated as characters.

Per FW, if total pending is less than $20 it becomes available when you transfer/withdraw. If greater than $20 it should automatically follow your other CB when it finalizes.

Throwaway
Throwaway (@guest_258146)
May 11, 2016 19:40

It seemed like Ebates usually had better CB rates than Fatwallet, and I find their CB shopping more seamless, so I don’t mind this change.

I’ll still go to FW over SD. I’ve received spam PMs before on various deal sites from Amazon 3rd party sellers offering me free products in exchange for posting their deals. SD regularly puts those scammers on their front page. Just think there’s a lack of integrity on their part.

Jackalope
Jackalope (@guest_258128)
May 11, 2016 17:07

My experience, in case this helps anybody:

I used two different emails for FW and EB, and changed the FW one to match EB in order to migrate. Even so, I wasn’t given an option to merge the two. I contacted FW customer support, and after a few emails back and forth, they merged the two accounts manually. Note that any money that could have been taken out of FW today is now included as part of the EB cycle, and will not be paid until the middle of August.

I also checked, and I am still eligible for the $10 bonus even though they manually did the merge for me.

Quan
Quan (@guest_258083)
May 11, 2016 14:02

Any update on if you are able to consolidate two ebates accounts? I too was rushing, and forgot to check my fatwallet account email so now I got two ebates accounts.

albrecht
albrecht (@guest_258059)
May 11, 2016 13:15

argh, just emptied my balance few weeks ago

Brian
Brian (@guest_258034)
May 11, 2016 12:07

Luckily I had a balance of 40 cents still on my account.

Jafafa Hots
Jafafa Hots (@guest_258027)
May 11, 2016 11:51

My existing accounts had the same email, when I clicked to transfer it took me to my existing ebates account… BUT it shows no money transferred. I have “lost” over $86.00

Jafafa Hots
Jafafa Hots (@guest_258030)
May 11, 2016 11:55

Nevermind, it took a few minutes is all…

farsighted99
farsighted99 (@guest_257871)
May 10, 2016 18:46

I didn’t realize I had $7.95 in my Fat Wallet account. I had forgotten about it. So now I just use Ebates for the next few weeks and I’ll get another $10? Not bad. Plus they doing 15% on some vendors…

Lucy
Lucy (@guest_257855)
May 10, 2016 16:43

Appears to only offer the bonus if you have a balance; too bad b/c I just withdrew my balance about 3 weeks ago.