Jet.com is the new online retailer vying to take on Amazon (hey, don’t we all want to). Curiously, aside from their main business of selling products, they also offer a shopping portal for purchases at other merchants that consumers can use, same as any shopping portal.
It’s called Jet Anywhere.
Contents
Portal Currency
Instead of giving cashback on your purchases, the portal provides you JetCash back.
What can you do with JetCash? You guessed it – you can shop at Jet.com. Jet.com sells lots of everyday items, and offers free shipping on orders $35+, so we can put the value of the portal currency close to cash, albeit with some hassle to redeem.
One dollar in JetCash is worth $1 on Jet.com.
Restrictions and Limits
- Max $1,000 in JetCash can be earned per calendar year (January 1 – December 31)
- You may not earn cashback on gift cards, gift certificates or other similar cash equivalents
- You may not earn cashback when a gift card or loyalty points are used as a payment method
- You may not earn JetCash on the purchase of collectible items that have a readily available trading market, such as coins, stamps, sports collectibles or similar items as determined by Jet in our sole discretion
- You may not earn JetCash on orders shipped outside of the United States
- You may not earn JetCash on purchases of items for resale or rental
- JetCash does expire after 12-months, but only after your Jet account is inactive for 12-months
- JetCash earned from the portal will show as pending for 30-days before it can be used
- You don’t earn JetCash dollars on Jet purchases – only on purchases made at other merchants
- Jet Anywhere does not have any referral bonus (that I am aware of) the way most other portals have
How to Get Portal Credit
One odd feature of Jet Anywhere is that to get the portal credit you need to forward the confirmation email to Jet; nothing posts automatically. This is probably because Jet, strangely, doesn’t even have affiliate relationships with all the merchants that they pay out on, thus, they only know about the purchase when you forward the email.
Whatever the reason is, you only get the JetCash credited by forwarding the confirmation email to [email protected] for verification.
What I don’t like about forwarding emails is that means there is scrutiny of items purchased. Many merchants will pay out on purchases of gift cards or other kinds of digital goods, same as ordinary purchases, but when you need to go through human scrutiny, they’ll likely disqualify it from earning portal credit, even if they did, in fact, get an affiliate commission.
Portal Rates
Jet Anywhere does not have many of the top brands like Walmart and Target, yet they do have hundreds on merchants overall. What’s appealing to us about the portal is the high rates offered. For example, currently, the best cashback rate for Saks Fifth Avenue is 12% with Splender and 6% on Nike. Or you can use Jet Anywhere and get 20% at those merchants.
Many retailers have Jet as the top paying portal at the moment. It may be they are doing this to get their name out, or it could also be a permanent plan to offer top rates so as to draw people into Jet. Since they pay out in Jet credit and not in real dollars, they can afford to offer better rates.
Travel Rates
They also have many popular travel merchants at top rates. For example, they currently have hotels.com at 14% back, double the top rate of 7% from Splender, and Avis is 8% back versus the top rate of 5% from Upromise. Many others too. (HT: TheRewardBoss)
From the Jet site: “Please forward us your purchase confirmation following completion of travel, and ensure that your documentation indicates that travel has been completed and paid for.” (Link) According to a reader, they’ll only pay out on travel if you can document that it was completed, like by getting an invoice from the hotel. Quite a hassle.
Final Thoughts
I’ll be honest in saying that I’m not entirely clear on what Jet’s goal is with this portal. It was introduced together with the initial launch of the Jet market, and it’s also prominent on every page of the Jet website, suggesting that they consider it a driving force in their business. I guess they hope to get people into the Jet ecosystem by having to redeem their JetCash, and then they’ll be hooked.
It’s still quite odd that they offer cashback for stores that they have no affiliate relationship. Apparently, they just swallow the loss on those merchants as a loss leader to pull people in. Initially, they even had Jet Anywhere links for places like Walmart and Macy’s (without their permission), but they pulled those after backlash from those retailers.
All-in-all, since I just had a chance to try out the Jet site due to the recent Amex Offer (ending soon!), I could see myself using the portal when they are offering top rates. It would have to be enough of a gain to make it worth dealing with forwarding the email confirmation and using up the JetCash – I wouldn’t use it to get an extra $1 in portal cashback – but at the right price I’m in.
