TopCashBack.com Review – Is It A Scam Or Legit?

TopCashBack (TCB) is a cash back portal that allows you to earn money for purchases you make online. You can also earn cash for signing up for products, services and websites. It’s free to join and there are no on going fees or charges. They claim to offer their users 100% of the commission they earn from merchants and instead make their money from hitting bonuses with select merchants and displaying merchants prominently on their website/newsletters.

That being said, they definitely do not always have the highest cash back on every merchant. This could be because of two reasons: other cash back sites are running loss leaders (e.g losing money on certain deals in the hopes that they’ll make it up on other profitable deals) or topcashback isn’t being honest. In all likelihood it’s a bit of a combination of the two, if they are earning bonuses then I’d consider this part of the commission they earn from the merchant so to be a true 100% return of commission it should include this.

Before using any cash back portal you should always make sure you are aware of what other portals are offering. I personally use CashBackMonitor for this as it allows you to set up alerts for when a particular merchant starts offering X% discount.

You shouldn’t also always just go with the highest cash back rate, some portals offer airline miles or hotel points which might be a better deal. All portals aren’t created equal either, some track better than others. They also have differing levels of customer service when something goes wrong, ideally you want a cash back portal that does all of the following:

  • Pays at a high rate consistently
  • Has a good range of offers
  • Tracks offers quickly and correctly
  • Has a good customer service system if something does go wrong
  • Has a low payout threshold (there is no point earning 50% cash back on all your purchases if the portal requires you to have a balance of $10 million before you can withdraw)
  • Pays out in a timely manner

 

Offers

TopCashBack has a good selection of offers, for a lot of things they offer the best cash back rate on the market. They are sometimes below other portals so always double check before using them. Below are some of the offers worth looking at, this is updated whenever a new interesting offer becomes available:

Dedicated posts discussing the deal:

[catlist id=189]

Other good deals:

Tracking

topcashback review trackingI’ve personally never had a tracking issue with TopCashBack. In the side bar they have something which shows you the tracking statistics for each offer. Before doing any deal through TCB I’d recommend clicking “see more statistics”. This gives you a bit more information such as the average tracking speed and then the average payment speed. Take these statistics with a grain of salt, almost always the tracking stats will show 100% satisfied (or close to it), even on deals where you see a lot of tracking complaints on the forums. That said, it can be useful for getting an overall feel for an offer, pay particular attention to Auto Tracking Reliability & the Manual Claims required. This should give you a rough idea how likely it is that you’ll need to put in a manual claim.

Looking at the average payment speed will also give you a good idea of how long you’ll need to wait until the funds will be cleared for withdrawal. The last payment date can also sometimes be useful (e.g they might have always paid on time but the last payment date might have been months ago, in which case the merchant might be on the brink of non-payment or delayed payments).

When you make a purchase your cash back earned will first go to pending, the merchant will then confirm it whilst in these states you cannot withdraw the funds. After the merchant pays TCB it will change to payable, at this stage you can withdraw the funds.

We’ll be adding a post on tips to ensuring your portal tracks correctly in the next couple of days.

 

Withdrawing Funds

To request payout (remember that your funds must first be moved to payable status) click here or follow these directions:

  • Click Account at the top of the page
  • Click Payout

You can request payout via ACH transfer (this might be useful for trigger a bank account bonus), paypal or Amazon gift cards. If you choose Amazon gift cards then you’ll receive a bonus, the standard bonus is 2.5% but it’s almost always at the increased rate of 5%.

Unfortunately payout is not instantaneous (I thought it would be considering they make you wait for it to become payable) and you need to wait up to 14 days for the funds to actually be paid out. This post will be updated with how long it actually took each method to pay out:

  • Paypal payout: ?
  • ACH payout: ?
  • Amazon gift card payout: ?

Customer Service

As mentioned previously I’ve never had an issue with tracking, as such I haven’t had to contact TopCashBack for customer service support before. When researching this article I did notice that TCB make it difficult to find their claim form for missing cash back. You can access it directly by clicking here. The help page also has some very generic advice.

I decided to do some searching and find people who’ve had issues with TCB and how it was handled (please share your own experiences in the comments).

  • I have had three transactions with this company and only had issues. Others report fine service. All I know is I won’t dare pass my referral link to my readers. I have only had positive experiences with ebates. They may not pay as much but, darn it, all transactions register automatically and they pay regularly and, most importantly, they never wasted my time tracking down money owed to me!!  ~ George of Travel Blogger Buzz
  • Had issues with AmexGift cards. Filled out form, including order #, and they credited my account a couple weeks later ~ @spicpics
  • yeah lately I’ve had issue a few times and their CS sucked with one exception were they did help me…… ~@MordyNY

 

Referrals

TopCashBack allows you to “tell a friend” about the site, if that friend signs up using your link, authenticates their account and then earns $10 in cash back then you’ll receive a $10 credit to your account as well. Any sign up bonus they receive does not count towards the $10 they need to earn, there is also a list of programs that don’t count towards this threshold which can be found here.

We allow you to post your referral links in the comments, but to do so you must post a profitable offer that can be found in the TopCashBack portal. If you just post your referral link then it will be removed.

  • GOOD: Purchase X for $10, you can then resell it for $5 and TCB gives you $9 cash back. $4 profit
  • BAD: X has 10% off.

Please consider using the links of people who’s deals you find the most useful in the comments section. If the deal you post here is used for an individual post then your referral link will be included.

Our Verdict

As with most things in life, this is going to boil down to personal preference. TCB usually has higher rates with most merchants, but seems to have higher complaints in regards to tracking. If dealing with support isn’t worth that extra money, then you might be better off with another portal.

You should never assume any portal has the best rate, always check first to make sure. I personally use CashBackMonitor, but there are a lot of other sites out there. If you do decide to sign up for TCB, you can use my link here. Alternatively use one of the referral links that will be found in the comments section.

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Paul
Paul (@guest_1536535)
January 18, 2023 07:52

Avoid like the plague. High cashback percent but it always fails to track except the ones that are less than a dollar. Don’t use them if expecting cashback over $10. When you email them they’ll say that Home Depot(or whichever company) said that you used a different affiliate and/or coupon.

Iamthru
Iamthru (@guest_1512999)
December 17, 2022 07:38

Canceled my Topcashback account since none of the 2022 transactions successfully tracked even though I received the popup window indicating it was tracked. Required too much followup time/effort plus sending screen shots with no results. There are better cash back sites. Having a higher cashback percentage is of no use if you don’t receive it. Highly NOT recommended

Alena Abramova
Alena Abramova (@guest_1353325)
March 25, 2022 13:19

Stay away from this app. They are scammers. You will never see your money back. I do regret I shopped threw them. They owe me $130 in cash back
And tell
Me now my location isn’t payable. I live in the USA and can prove it. But they don’t care. Their customer service stupidly keep answering that my location isn’t payable. I told them
It’s a mistake and I live in the USA and was ready to
Prove it but they ignored all my inquires.. Pls read all the reviews before you start to use them. They are the SCAMMERS and should be sued for so many scammer cases. I can’t understand how they are still
In App Store and continue to cheat on people. Thus compony has to be sued.

Dan
Dan (@guest_1192115)
May 16, 2021 16:34

The only reason I might recommend them is they (claim to) give cash back on Accor which nearly no one else does. Basically, if TCB doesn’t honor the cash back you’ve lost nothing but if they do you at least get something out of the situation.

BobJ
BobJ (@guest_1080863)
October 28, 2020 15:37

Absolute scam site. They never pay out on anything larger than $5. I tried a few small cashbacks to test them out and it worked fine. Then they kept almost $100 in cashback once I tried them for larger purchases. I’ve used a lot of other sites for over a decade with almost zero issues, TCP failed three times in a row on larger cashback amounts. Fool me three times… I wish I’d read these comments before. Going to take the time to file a false advertising/fraud complaint with the FTC and NJ Attorney General (US TCB is headquartered in NJ). I’d invite anyone else scammed to do the same. They won’t do much with one complaint, but many complaints and they will investigate. Include the retailer you are buying from in the complaint. They are either in on it, getting cheap advertising (that’s why they offer higher percentages on TCB they don’t actually have to pay) or they will be annoyed having their reputation damaged by TCB and will pull from the TCB site. Don’t let this just slide. These guys should be put out of business.

Vail
Vail (@guest_1070647)
October 9, 2020 11:51

Agree with all the other comments here. They are 100% scam. It will show cashback tracking, but you need to wait months for it to credit. Months, years later it will never credit, and customer service is not only useless, but verbally abusive and flat out lie without remorse. The company is Indian run based in UK.

Use something more reliable, like Rakuten/Ebates or RetailMeNot (occasionally has cashback in addition to coupon codes).

exShoYoGuy
exShoYoGuy (@guest_1039824)
August 20, 2020 13:52

Total scam, they never pay for anything. They offer more than eBates or other places but those places almost always pay. I rarely get from topcashback. Stopped using them a bit ago once I realized my balance was 40 cents. Yup, 40 cents when it should have been easily $50+.

Bill
Bill (@guest_970500)
May 2, 2020 21:00

Topcashback is a scam. They repeatedly fail to track both items and offers. Most of the offers that they have not only fail to track but Topcashback make opposing rules to the retailers, meaning that whatever offer a retailer has, Topcashback will never pay you the money because they say that you never completed the offer. A pure example here is search lotto. You need to perform 25 verified searches to get cashback. Search lotto say that they will only verify 20 searches a day. That is fair enough. Topcashback say that all 25 searches has to be completed immediately and fully online. See, there is no way that 25 searches can be completed immediately and fully online because search lotto just does not allow that.

Search lotto is just one example of how Topcashback screw you over. Most of their offers are just like search lotto. Retailer lays down the rules and then Topcashback make up their own rules so that you can never complete the tasks.

Don’t touch Topcashback with a barge pole. They will screw you over.

TopCashBack is HORRIBLE!
TopCashBack is HORRIBLE! (@guest_821326)
October 9, 2019 21:09

Hello!

I AM SUPER UPSET w/TOPCASHBACK.COM! They are a horribly run site that does not make a lot of very important info clear or even shown at many points along the way. They are scammers!
I am super pi$$ed w/them & their customer service is ridiculous! I joined them after checking an aggregator to see who had the best cash back percentage for a store that I was planning on making multiple purchases from over a weeks time. It happened to be Cash Back…
1st there site is a terribly generic site that is misleading & does NOT have any info or pop ups when you try to do something like cash out your funds,,
Nowhere when I signed up, made the 5 purchases I did in less than a week & tried to cash out many times, do I see any info or a pop up w/the info that you can’t cash out u til 60-90 days after your purchase!! Ok jackasses, try making that clear instead of making people think that THE ONLY THING you need to cash out is a balance of $20 or more w/no additional info like there’s a time period before you can cash out!
So now it’s going on over 60 days & my money + signup bonus that I spent a ridiculous amount of $$ on to actually write a review about cash back sites & their services, has screwed me!
I’m now wondering if they’re just a total scam…. I’ll stick w/eBates or some of the other FAR MORE RELIABLE cash back sites. I will never use TopCashBack again… they suck, have the most horribly awful site that is misleading & lacking it very important info, their customer service is a joke& I don’t think they speak English very well because they’re responses to my messages about “Where the hell is my $$ and what is going on?” Have all come back w/ridiculous generic replies that never really answer or address my questions & concerns!

**DO YOURSELF A BIG FAVOR & STAY AWAY FROM THIS TERRIBLY RUN, MISLEADING JOKE!**. It is not even close to being anywhere near as good as most all other cash back sites!
I wish I NEVER would have used them!

Burton
Burton (@guest_814448)
September 24, 2019 23:36

I’ve made three purchases and each of them tracked properly but I’ve still yet to see any come out of pending 8 weeks later. My first purchase originally showed 7 weeks estimate then bumped to 8 last week, expecting it to bump to 9 soon. The others are 6-7 weeks old and then the new account bonus and a special $5 bonus they had for making a purchase over a certain weekend.

Its great that everything tracked properly, but not planning to use it again until they actually pay me the $50 or so that I’ve earned but is still sitting in pending.