Best Shopping Portal for Amazon Purchases

As a sequel to our post, Best Shopping Portal for eBay Purchases, let’s take a look at the fine print of the portals on Amazon purchases as well.

Unlike eBay, Amazon only offers portal cashback on select categories which seem to change over time. It may be that they are testing out to see what works or it may be done as part of a strategy for the portal offerings to be rotated and non-fixed.

The Devil is in the Details…

Missing Cashback Claims

Both Befrugal and Topcashback mention an exclusion specific to Amazon cashback. While typically you can file a missing cashback claim if the portal payout doesn’t show automatically, you can not file such a claim for Amazon purchases. If it doesn’t track on its own, you lose out.

Ebates, Mrrebates, and Extrabux do not mention such a thing and will, apparently, accept missing cashback claims. More than likely they also can’t chase down the cashback from Amazon, but they accept claims and swallow the loss.

Bulk Seller 

Befrugal mentions a bulk seller exclusion.

Cash back not valid on bulk or reseller purchases. Determination of bulk/reseller status is made at the sole discretion of Amazon and is not reviewable by BeFrugal.com.

Apparently, Amazon tries to seek out resellers and invalidate their cashback. This will likely be just as true for any other portal, but Befrugal is the only one who mentions it clearly.

Recommended Portals

  • Ebates, Mrrebates, and Extrabux are all good options since they allow missing cashback claims.
  • If Topcashback or Befrugal is offering a better rate, you may decide to use those portals although you won’t be able to file a claim if it doesn’t track automatically.

I actually just made a clothing purchase on Amazon using the Topcashback portal; it didn’t track automatically and I lost out on the portal cashback. In the future, I’ll try using a portal which allows missing cashback claims.

Miscellaneous Points

  • We’ve written before about beginning a portal session with an empty shopping cart. For some reason, many portals mention it specifically regarding Amazon that we should be sure to start with an empty cart. Unclear if Amazon is different than other merchants or if it’s just very common for people to leave things in their Amazon shopping cart so they mention it here.
  • Only the USA site earns portal cashback.

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8 Comments
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W D
W D (@guest_169504)
September 9, 2015 08:57

What about swag bucks? Aren’t they 3% back?

Unrelated I use their FNBO VISA card rewards for gift cards and then the Sallie Mae for the purchase.. It comes out to about 1.42% cash back for Amazon GC (when claimed at promotion rates), and 5% back for balance, plus 3% in swag bucks portal.

C
C (@guest_169271)
September 8, 2015 18:50

Giving assistant is good, managed to triple dip cashback on an order, bought a GC with discover card through their portal and purchased item with GC in another browser through the same portal.

Dave
Dave (@guest_169153)
September 8, 2015 12:19

I made some relatively small purchases on Amazon and didn’t get the appropriate amount of cash back. I bought a $6 pan handle (kitchenware) and only got $0.06 back instead of the expected $0.30. I used my gift card balance to pay. Any ideas why?

Dave
Dave (@guest_169154)
September 8, 2015 12:20

One more thing– the item is by Lodge, but it does say Ships from and Sold by Amazon.com

HORACE
HORACE (@guest_169129)
September 8, 2015 11:38

CHUCK — Interested to know why you chose TopCashBack for Amazon purchase when you had Giving Assistant as an option?

Also, I have read that Kindle and associated purchases code as “Entertainment” when using the Citi Prestige/Premier cards and earn the double points for such purchases.

Anyone care to expand on what other purchases from Amazon may code as Entertainment to earn Double Thank You points?

AdamH
AdamH (@guest_169100)
September 8, 2015 10:25

Are there any good ones left for airline tickets?

Henrygeorge
Henrygeorge (@guest_169267)
September 8, 2015 18:33

Nice try Amex

Oren
Oren (@guest_169055)
September 8, 2015 08:06

I have a reader who said he filed a missing cashback claim from Giving Assistant and they credited him immediately. Obviously, they are not waiting to see if Amazon will pay them.