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:
- Sign up for myhabit: $2 (takes 1-2 minutes and no purchase required)
- American Express Gift Cards: 3%
- Cardpool: 4%
Tracking
I’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)Â 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 $10Â 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.
