Highest Cash Back Guarantee for Online Shopping Portals

[Update: Shopathome no longer offers their cashback guarantee program.]

The Guarantee

Most of you are probably familiar with the idea of using a shopping portal to get extra cash back or points when shopping online. There are lots of online shopping portals and cashbackmonitor.com does a great job at letting us know the best rate for each one. (There are other such sites too, cashbackmonitor.com is just the one that I use.)

Since there are literally dozens of portals, it could be tough to manage having accounts with all of them and using the one with the highest rate. This could lead to forgetting cash back in one of the dozens of available portals and the hassle of dealing with many different sites.

But it’s really much worse than that because most shopping portals have minimum payout amounts. They won’t pay you small amounts of cash back. They’ll only pay when you accumulate $5 or $20 or whatever the amount is. If you use the many different sites, you’ll be left with a few dollars at each portal and you won’t be able to cash out.

One way which I’ve had lots of success with is using the “Highest Cash Back Guarantee”. This is a guarantee offered by a few shopping portals in which they’ll match a higher rate offered by a competitor. If leveraged properly, it could allow us to minimize the number of shopping portals we deal with.

General Notes

• In general, the claim is submitted by sending in the URL of the competitor site. If it’s a time-limited offer, be sure to have a screenshot of the offer, and usually you should be able to get the match. Certain types of “flash”-type cashback offers may not be eligible for the Guarantee.
• This Guarantee will not help as a substitute for mileage portals; many people go through mileage portals in order to accrue extra miles for their purchase. This Guarantee works only to match a higher cashback rate.
• The Guarantee will not apply for a paid-subscription cashback site. Nor will it apply to the DiscoverDeals cashback portal or other credit card portals.
• Purchase must be made the same time the competitor website is offering the higher rate. No matching against a higher rate found the next day, for example.

Options

There are three cashback portals that offer the Guarantee:

• ShopAtHome They call it “Best Cashback Guarantee” (T&C ).  Submit claims here
•  TopCashBack They call it “Highest Cashback Guarantee” (T&C).  Submit claims here
• BeFrugal They call it “Best Rate Guarantee” (T&C).  Submit claims here

Let’s review the three options and see the pros and cons of each.

ShopAtHome

• ShopAtHome will not match all cashback competitors. Only these six portals can be matched: Befrugal, Ebates, Extrabux, Fat Wallet, Mr. Rebates, and TopCashBack.
• 110% Guarantee. Not only do they match the best rate, they actually add 10% on top of it. For example, if ShopAtHome is offering 5% and a competitor is offering 10%, they won’t just give you 10%, they’ll give you 11%.
• Must submit the Guarantee claim before making the purchase. Within 48 hours before the purchase.
• Guarantee won’t always apply to tiered/variable cashback rate offers. For example, if Ebates is offering 5% for clothing purchases on Amazon and 1% on all other purchases, ShopAtHome may not match the higher rate.
• ShopAtHome reserves the right to deny the Guarantee for bulk/reseller purchases.
• Maximum order amount of $10,000 per merchant per day.

TopCashBack

• Topcashback will not match all cashback competitors. Only these six portals can be matched: Befrugal, Ebates, Extrabux, Fat Wallet, Mr. Rebates, and Shopathome.
• 101% Guarantee. TopCashBack will match the competitors rate and even add slightly to it. I believe they add 1%.
• Submit claim after the cashback shows up in your account. Claim must be submitted within 7 days of the cashback showing up.
• Free cashback offers (such as this and this) are not eligible for the Guarantee.

BeFrugal

• Limit one claim per store. This means that you can not submit a claim against any single merchant more than one time. If you make a Guarantee claim for a purchase at Best Buy, for example, you won’t be able to submit another Guarantee claim for Best Buy 10 years later.
• Matches all cashback competitors. Does match Upromise, Ebates, ShopAtHome, BeFrugal and all other cashback sites. Does not match ShopDiscover or MyPoints, or any other points site.
• 125% Guarantee. This means that if you make a purchase at 2% cashback and you submit a claim to match a 10% rate that a competitor is offering, you’ll get 12.5% cashback. (I verified this interpretation with BeFrugal.)
• Maximum credit of $25 per transaction. I believe that would mean $25 more than the original cashback amount. For example, if you have a $10 cashback transaction showing up in your account, you can get a Guarantee match of another $25, for a total of $35.
• Submit claim within 24 hours or purchase.
• Only eligible at stores the “Guaranteed Best Rate” is displayed on its BeFrugal page. (This doesn’t really limit much; as far as I can tell, “Guaranteed Best Rate” is displayed on all regular merchants.)

Frequently Asked Questions

Let’s recap the details in Q&A format:

Which competitors can be matched? ShopAtHome and Topcashback will only match six specific competitors mentioned above, while BeFrugal will match all cashback sites. No paid membership sites or credit card portal sites or miles/points sites.

How much will they match? TopCashBack matches and adds a tiny amount (1%). ShopAtHome adds 10%. BeFrugal adds 25%.

What is the maximum claim amount? BeFrugal limits us to $25 per claim. ShopAtHome doesn’t limit the dollar amount of the claim but they limit the order to no more than $10,000 per merchant per day. TopCashBack doesn’t seem to limit us in any way.

How many times can I use the Guarantee? BeFrugal limits us to using the Guarantee only once per merchant. ShopAtHome and TopCashBack don’t have limits on the amount of times the Guarantee can be used.

When to file the claim? With ShopAtHome, file the claim within 48 hours before the purchase. With BeFrugal, within 24 hours after the purchase. With TopCashBack, within one week after the transaction shows up in your account.

Will they match tiered/variable rate cashback? BeFrugal told me that they will, and I believe TopCashBack does as well. ShopAtHome says that they won’t always be able to match tiered/variable rate cashback.

Which is Best?

Topcashback used to match all claims, but they’ve now moved to the Shopathome model of matching only the top portals. Both Shopathome and Topcashback are better than Befrugal for someone who wants to limit the number of portals they have to deal with since Befrugal will only allow one claim per merchant.

[RELATED: 10 Tips For Getting A Cash Back/Points/Miles Portal To Track Correctly]

Updated 10/14/15