My Experience Filing A Missing Cash Back Claim With Topcashback

In my recent review of Topcashback (TCB) I mentioned that I’d never had a tracking issue that resulted in cash back not posting to my account. I guess I tempted fate because I recently had ~$300 in pending cash back suddenly disappear (for those wondering it was all cashback from this booking.com promotion). I tried to reach out via social media to get the issued resolved (which is my favorite way of speedily fixing almost any customer service issue) but I didn’t even get a response let alone a solution.

How To Lodge A Missing Cash Back Claim

TCB doesn’t make it easy to find the page to lodge a missing cash back claim, the easiest way to get started is by clicking here. Then click “lodge missing cashback claim”. You then need to follow the prompts, Topcashback asks for a lot of information for each claim (e.g merchant name, date of when you clicked through, time of when you clicked through

Negatives To The Claiming Process

  • Takes a significant amount of time for each claim. I definitely wouldn’t bother if it was for a small amount of cash back, but for me it’s about the principal in most cases. I timed myself and it took at least 5 minutes per claim and that’s when I was doing multiple claims and had the process down to a T.
  • Lodgement section of the website is slower than the rest. I’m not sure if this is maliciously done or not, but the lodgement pages on TCB take significantly more time to load than the rest of the site. This makes the whole process even slower.
  • You can only make one claim at a time. I’m not entirely sure why I can’t just send topcashback a list of reference numbers and do multiple claims at once. It’s a real hassle making multiple claims and a time suck (see above).
  • It takes 4-8 weeks to find out the outcome of your claim. At the moment I’m stuck in a hard place, I want to make more bookings to take advantage of this $14 cashback offer, but I have no idea if TCP/Booking.com is actually going to honor it (it seems to be working fine for my girlfriends account but not mine).

My Final Thoughts

All of my claims are currently in the pending stage. I’ll update this post as the claim moves along in the process. At the moment I’m left with a sour taste in my mouth, I always make sure I read the fine print and stick to the rules of a promotion.

TCB doesn’t make me feel secure in knowing that I’ll get the cash back promised if I hold up my end of the bargain. I get the impression that they’ll pay me if booking.com agrees to pay them. I can understand this stand point as they don’t have any built in margins, unlike other cash back sites.

At the moment I’m less likely to use TCB for my own purchases and as a result less likely to recommend it to my readers. That said I don’t have a lot of experience filing missing cash back claims with their competitors so this could be an entirely naive view point. In all likelihood I’ll continue to use TCB and consider how likely the merchant is to pay out on a particular deal, rather than how likely TCB is to have my back in any dispute that pops up.

For those of you you’ve filed a claim before, were you successful? How long did it take? Were you more or less likely to use TCB as a result? Share your experiences in the comments section below. 

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18 Comments
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Jules
Jules (@guest_1518116)
December 24, 2022 14:27

I’ve been waiting on a Top Cashback Marriott claim for close to 5 months now. 5 months! Despite 2 nudges, nothing is happening.

I’ve also been waiting on a tiny Walmart claim for 3 months. Again, nothing happening.

Amanda
Amanda (@guest_320420)
November 27, 2016 09:59

I had claimed $500 cash back at TCB and they hold up for why have made so many transactions with that store? I explained and after few days still have nobody get back to me. Cant trust them, I am going back to Ebates. Topcashback don’t keep their promises.

Chuck
Editor
Chuck(@chucksithe)
November 27, 2016 14:55

I had the same. Just explained what the transactions were and they sent the money.

I don’t agree with how they about it, but it was manageable.

Liz
Liz (@guest_183107)
October 9, 2015 11:01

Not a fan of TCB. Their website is a bit confusing to use – I much prefer ebates. However, they offer 2% cashback on Raise.com, and so I used them the other day … and my purchase never showed up. I lodged a cashback claim – is there any way to find out the status of it on the website? They seem to hide it in the Help section which I also dislike.

Chuck Sithe
Editor
Chuck Sithe(@chucksithe)
February 3, 2015 23:18

Will, any update on the $300 claim? Did they end up paying out?

JB
JB (@guest_58971)
January 8, 2015 20:20

I’ve filed 3 cb claims so far.
1. Barnes & Noble – I ordered the Divergent trilogy for our daughter as Xmas present. They claimed that I bought an ebook and that wouldn’t be eligible. Been waiting since beginning of November for an update
2. Verizon FIOS – signed up for this service and never got anything. Claim’s been open since end of November
3. Expedia – booked a motel room for our upcoming trip to Wash DC in spring. They took my money but I never got the cb. Claim’s open since early December.
IME Staples and eBay purchases have no problem posting pretty quickly. I also have good experiences with Enterprise and Backcountry. Walmart is still “confirmed” although the purchase is from October…

Chuck Sithe
Editor
Chuck Sithe(@chucksithe)
January 9, 2015 00:05
  JB

I’ve had success in the past with submitting a support ticket, when things were going slow in my TCB account. Maybe give it a try.

Daniel
Daniel (@guest_35382)
October 29, 2014 16:04

I just had my first and only TCB claim resolved today: denied. I purchased $2k of AGCs back in July that didn’t track and filed a claim. I nudged them repeatedly and they finally wrote back today to say that AmEx denied it, and that I had either used a code (nope) or had clicked through from another affiliate (also no).

I’ve filed claims with BeFrugal before and they’ve been resolved promptly. TCB’s claim process took 4 months and did not end favorably. I’m done with them.

Mike
Mike (@guest_35329)
October 29, 2014 10:47

I booked pretty much a month of hotel reservations in Colombia for December into January through TCB to booking.com after reading about the promotion on this site. If they don’t pay promptly, I’ll certainly never use them again.

Oren
Oren (@guest_34730)
October 26, 2014 23:12

I didn’t receive cashback for some clothes from Jos. A. Bank. I went through the process. Top Cashback said that the merchant denied the claim. Despite that fact, Top Cashback offered me 50% of the cashback from their own pockets. I thought that was pretty good customer service.

Sergio
Sergio (@guest_34510)
October 25, 2014 14:10

4 months of waiting, 5 rounds of exchanges, indifferent CS and zilch instead of 3% on AmEx cards. Claimed another discount used, cookies, all the BS one could invent. Considering that i made sure none of those to happen, it was a lie. All but 1 emails from CS were pre-cooked one page formal answer-sorry-reject-itsyourfault letter. Would ignore their lies about CB from now on.

Paul
Paul (@guest_34496)
October 25, 2014 13:08

I had multiple AGC orders fail to track for a while. Had to submit claims for all. Took a while but eventually (8-12 weeks) got resolution in my favor. By contrast ebates took months to resolve a few claims (after multiple contacts via email and calling) and eventually denied all my cash back for what was a BS excuse. TCB was far better than Ebates IMO.