Drop Adds Terms to Exclude Manufactured Spending (Gift Cards, Repeat Transactions, and Business Spend)

Drop has added language in the terms to exclude points from being earned on, “certain manufactured spending including, but not limited to, repeat purchases, high-value purchases, purchases of gift cards, and purchases made for business or corporate purposes.”

6. Qualifying Transactions

Drop always maintains the right to determine if certain transactions qualify for Drop Offers (“Qualifying Transactions”). Certain manufactured spending including, but not limited to, repeat purchases, high-value purchases, purchases of gift cards, and purchases made for business or corporate purposes, may not, at our sole discretion, be considered Qualifying Transactions and may be ineligible for Drop points.

If your account is terminated or disabled for any reason including but not limited to multiple attempts at non-Qualifying Transactions, then your existing Drop points will be forfeited and any further transactions which might otherwise earn you Drop points will not be deemed to be applicable.

Drop reserves the right to reclaim or make balance adjustments to your Drop points where it has been established that any Drop points have been earned or applied in error. This includes but is not limited to transactions that Drop deems to be non-Qualifying Transactions or Drop points awarded for Qualifying Transactions that not been received from a merchant or its agencies. This can include transactions in which Drop points were previously rewarded. Drop reserves the right to apply fraudulent prevention measures as it sees fit.

For the avoidance of doubt and notwithstanding any other provision of these Terms of Service, all payouts of Drop points have always been and remain at our sole discretion and we may refuse to issue Drop points to you for any reason whatsoever.

You can view the old terms on Way Back, but basically this entire paragraph was added into the new terms. All else is the same.

When the Drop app launched in the USA with bonuses like 2% on Amazon, 1% at Walmart and Walgreen’s, and 1-2% at the grocery,  it was too good to be true. Now, we’ll have to see if the app gets better for normal transactions going forward or if they’ll be busy a whole day trying to figure out which transactions they want to pay out on and won’t ever get the app working normally.

What bothers me the most about the new terms is that they’ll apparently ban someone for doing business purchases, repeat purchases or gift card purchases. That makes no sense. Sure, they don’t have to pay out for gift card or repeat purchases, but why is the person banned for linking a account which happens to have what they call “manufactured spend” transactions on it? It’s not like the user ever submitted that purchase for points – they simply charged their regular credit card for a business expense or a gift card purchase or whatnot. Essentially, Drop is saying you’ll have to think twice about which card to register or not to register which seems a bit crazy.

It seems Drop is under the impression that people are making certain purchases specifically to ‘game’ Drop. In truth, that’s probably only a small amount of purchases, most are just purchases people would be making regardless for their own reasons.

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18 Comments
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Nicole
Nicole (@guest_439239)
July 13, 2017 20:39

I had 22k points clawed back from Safeway! 😣

Jeff
Jeff (@guest_437672)
July 11, 2017 14:07

Another one bites the dust. Not really entitled to anything, was fun while it lasted. Time to move on, folks.

scodcr
scodcr (@guest_437371)
July 11, 2017 00:49
Matt
Matt (@guest_437473)
July 11, 2017 08:47

In all seriousness, if Drop doesn’t pay out on purchases made before the T&C were paid, there may be some traction here for an enterprising class action attorney. This is precisely the type of case that is amenable to a class action — numerous claims for relatively small amounts of money.

Note the orginal T&C (and current T&C) don’t have an arbitration clause. There is a choice of law provision claiming the terms are governed by Canadian law. However, a company doing business like this in the United States is nonetheless still subject to American law.

Matt
Matt (@guest_437475)
July 11, 2017 08:48

*before the T&C were changed

J
J (@guest_437677)
July 11, 2017 14:19

Please check your kohls comment. thanks

Toby
Toby (@guest_437365)
July 11, 2017 00:34

Submitted a complaint to the CFPB. You all should do the same. We signed up expecting to get rewarded for access to our data / spending history. Drop is not holding up their end of the bargain while still accessing our spending data which is totally unacceptable.

Not to mention the fact that they haven’t even communicated with a single one of us about what’s going on- totally shady. They also increased the referral bonus to 5000 points today- trying to get new customers while still not assisting old ones is really unethical

Toby
Toby (@guest_437592)
July 11, 2017 11:57

I think they are reading this post- they removed the referral bonus entirely now. It also says “we’re experiencing issues posting Chase points” on my account

Preacher
Preacher (@guest_437344)
July 10, 2017 23:47

Has anyone been able to redeem for a reward in the past week? None of our accounts can cash out our points.

SP
SP (@guest_437341)
July 10, 2017 23:40

CFP! CFPB! CFPB!

Matt
Matt (@guest_437373)
July 11, 2017 00:56

CFPB actually applies to more than just banking vendors.

Another problem, though, is that it’s a Canadian company. The T&C are explicitly governed by Canadian law. I plan to file a complaint with the relevant authorities if they refuse to honor the terms.

Chucks
Chucks (@guest_437333)
July 10, 2017 23:31

This is BS. I could easily see my entire, ordinary Amazon purchasing get flagged. I have dozens of Amazon purchases through subscribe & save and a lot of the time each purchase is billed separately. Are those going to be flagged as “repeat purchases”?

“High value” purchases also just seems like a loophole for Drop to wiggle out of awarding significant points. Am I going to have my account suspended the next time I buy a laptop through Amazon or a big screen TV at Walmart?

This could be a very easy loophole for Drop to, well, drop customers who aren’t profitable. I’m sure a lot of readers do a significant amount of organic spending at Amazon, Uber, Walmart, Target, Whole Foods etc. and could easily milk a few hundred dollars a year out of the program. There’s no way the present payout rates are in anyway sustainable. If Drop doesn’t cap or reduce rates they’ll have to do something else or go under.

I think any readers should cash out points very frequently with Drop to avoid getting burned.

Deb
Deb (@guest_437355)
July 11, 2017 00:06

I just bought 6 boxes of diapers through amazon prime deal and did each purchase separately because of the way my credits apply. That would for sure get me dropped, except I never signed up. Every single item they mention can be applied to anyone because it is too vague. Initially I felt like I missed out on something, but now it seems I did good to skip this one. Good luck to everyone on getting the points they are due and getting them redeemed. This is a shame it has to go this way. Whoever came up with this solution has caused more issues than they fixed.

MSer
MSer (@guest_437330)
July 10, 2017 23:23

Bunch of thieving scumbags. They should make good on all purchases prior to this change in T&Cs.

SP
SP (@guest_437329)
July 10, 2017 23:20

Any chance this is CFPB’able??

NoonRadar
NoonRadar (@guest_437347)
July 10, 2017 23:53
  SP

I never signed up for this (I was concerned abt security and suspected some bait & switch might happen after they got a bunch of signups), but for people who did and might see Drop remove rewards and/or do similar things, definitely document things with print screens and take it from there.

Coincidentally today (whether or not this applies to companies like Drop, it is worth knowing) CFPB announced a new rule that gives consumers the class action lawsuit option for wide spread abuses. As I understand it, this was previously not available due to arbitration clauses that financial institutions put in their fine print: youtube.com/watch?v=boQ2tRW_AwE