Review of Jet Anywhere Shopping Portal

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.

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.

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18 Comments
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Alex
Alex (@guest_231851)
March 8, 2016 20:52

the travel portion is a HASSLE.
First they didn’t mind that i booked for someone else, i got my jet cash right away.
Then they said they couldn’t issue me my cash cause i need to book it myself, ( i changed the reservation to my name instead of my wife’s) and re-sent the email confirmation.
They wouldn’t accept the final receipt for my Expedia account.
Later, i find out that they actually CALL the hotels to verify that YOU’ve stayed, even with an itemized receipt! WHAT A JOKE.

I definitely do not recommended this for travel. Stick to Ebates.

Jim Davis
Jim Davis (@guest_221215)
January 30, 2016 00:38

Three orders, all shipped within 2 days. Food items and some electronics, well packed.

Some decent prices on the food odds and ends even before the $20 amex rebate and 10-15% off coupons.

Ryan
Ryan (@guest_221192)
January 29, 2016 22:43

Wrote a fairly lengthy post about my positive experiences with JetAnywhere, and the post appears to have been stuck in moderation purgatory.

Very interesting.

William Charles
Admin
January 31, 2016 06:35

If you haven’t commented before then it goes into approval, once your first comment is approved it’ll show up instantly. I had to manually approve this one and I imagine the same is the case with your previous comment. This is a hobby for us, so I don’t always approve comments straight away.

Joanne
Joanne (@guest_221169)
January 29, 2016 20:12

If the portal rates stay this high i am a fan, for real online spending.

The limitations aren’t that big of a deal. Even at a 10 percent cashback rate (which wont always be in play), your first 10,000 can go through Jet. Not many are going to spend more than that on real items, especially if you are splitting spend with Discover Deals which is also generous (especially for those getting Double Cashback still).

As for “no gift cards”, this constraint does make it a weak manufactured spend avenue but comparable to many portal policies. “Real” spend not impacted.

For the recent Amex offer on Jet, i priced checked everything i bought and didnt have to look to hard to find things where Jet was lowest price on entire internet, so for now, i agree that Jetcash is pretty close to virtual cash (could change if VC funding starts to dry up).

Daniel
Daniel (@guest_221157)
January 29, 2016 19:07

One more thing to note.
There’s a clause in T&C that redemption of Gift Card or Certificate will void cashback as well.

Binny
Binny (@guest_221150)
January 29, 2016 18:20

I’ve been banned from Jet for abusing the first time order 15-20% off deal. In my research I have concluded that the ban is based solely on billing address, in case anyone is interested.

Ryan
Ryan (@guest_221121)
January 29, 2016 16:45

Completely disagree with the negative comments. Forwarding the e-mail is not a hassle at all. In fact, I prefer it to the setups at sites like TopCashBack and others. I forward the invoice to them, they confirm receipt, and I have my JetCash ready VERY quickly (a couple of days most times). TopCashBack takes a much, much longer time to post. And I find JetCash to be almost as good as cash back. Items like toilet paper and paper towels are reasonably priced, and I find the shipping to be incredibly quick as well. 20% on stores like Nike is ridiculously good. I totally agree that the business model is questionable at best, but I plan to take full advantage while it lasts.

Philip
Philip (@guest_221048)
January 29, 2016 12:57

JetAnywhere is a HASSLE. I booked a Hotel stay, they wanted me to forward the confirmation. Did that. Then they said, ‘Once you complete your stay ask the hotel for a detailed invoice and email that to us’. I was like REALLY! I have to MANUALLY email you twice, no-one is gonna remember that. What a hassle

Susan
Susan (@guest_221032)
January 29, 2016 12:07

Are they tracking clicks to merchants? If it’s just forwarding order confirmation to pull people to Jet to use the Jet Cash, then you can double dip. For example book from Hotels.com and get 14% from Jet and 7% from Topcashback.

Sa
Sa (@guest_221014)
January 29, 2016 11:16

Portal aside, when I took advantage of the 20/50 Amex offers, I had the chance to try them and my impression was very good. They function as a marketplace for others as well as fulfilling orders themselves. Their prices are competitive and they ship very fast. Unlike amazon that sits on the order for days before they mail it, and they are not collecting state taxes (yet). I recommend them instead of amazon.