A couple of readers recently tipped us off to a rebate website called RebateKey which offers free or highly discounted products via rebate. The way it works is you browse various items on Rebatekey.com and find something you’re interesting in buying/getting with a rebate. The rebate is sometimes for the full price back and other times for a partial rebate. Then you go ahead and buy the item at full price from an online retailers. Then you submit a claim, and you’ll get a check or Paypal 35 days later with the stated rebate.
RebateKey works with products being sold on Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Jet, and Shopify – those are the retailers you’ll be making the actual purchase from (mostly Amazon, I believe).
For free items you can actually net some free credit card points or use up some gift card balance without incurring any cost at all. You can even use a shopping portal when making the purchase (you don’t need to use RebateKey’s cookies) and get some extra rewards there as well. Just keep in mind that even items which are entirely free you’ll be on the hook for the sales tax if it’s an item and area which has sales tax.
Here’s a few pointers from the RebateKey website:
- Why 35 days? Most online stores allow return of the items within 30 days. To avoid situations when you are given a rebate plus you get a refund for a returned item, we have to hold the funds for 35 days. Also, the seller can dispute the rebate within the last 5 days.
- You are only allowed one account per address/household. You can not claim more than one Rebate for the same product. Please, stay away from cheating or fraud. It’s not worth it!
- Reselling the products acquired via RebateKey is against our Terms of Service, and will result in cancelation of all the Rebates and suspension of the buyer account.
- Buy the product at full price. Products purchased with discount codes will NOT get a rebate.
- You have 1 hour to buy the product and report back with RebateKey. Use Order ID as the Rebate Key to confirm your purchase to the seller. Don’t postpone! If you don’t report the Rebate Key within 1 hour, the purchase will not be registered.
- There may be situations that arise where a buyer enters an incorrect key, or the seller of the product denies a key entered for various reasons. This is rare, but may occur. If it does, we will work with both the seller and the buyer to find a solution that works for both parties.
The main reason sellers use RebateKey, as I understand, is for reviews. There is no obligation to leave a review (if there was, it would be against the terms of Amazon and probably other retailers), but the seller is able to message the buyer through RebateKey and encourage them to leave a review. It’s possible some sellers do it for legitimate feedback on the product as well. Or to artificially increase their sales numbers for the SEO gods.
Overall looks like an interesting way of picking up cheap or free items, and even possibly netting a bit from points or portals. Makes more sense for people who like trying out different things or tchotchkes and enjoy interacting with sellers. Just keep in mind there’s always a risk of the company going under or denying your rebate for some reason.
