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Who would ever leave more savings for less? I would, and you should too, but for good reason.
Shopping Portals
First, for those who are unfamiliar, a rebate website is one that gets a commission from referring a customer who makes a purchase. The rebate website then passes some of that commission onto the buyer and keeps some for themselves. Some of the top players in the category are TopCashBack, Ebates, and FatWallet.
The principle is the same with all of them. You create a login, and every time you want to make an online purchase you first go through one of these sites, which will provide a tracking link and a pre-negotiated rebate percentage which will arrive in some weeks. If you would prefer to earn miles instead of dollars you can always use the airline shopping malls like this one. The balance in your rebate account builds and at some point, you may choose to cash out, I do so when I hit $25 or $50.
Cash Rebates Vary By Site
The goal, one would think and I would usually agree, is to then find the maximum rebate per purchase and build an account at that site. Let’s look at some examples. TopCashBack often has better rates and double offers, here is a limited offer for double the rebate on Accor Hotels.
Here is one from Ebates for Accor as well, but this at the normal rate of 5%.
And now one from FatWallet.
With that kind of disparity, it’s a simple decision, right? Go for TopCashBack and get 10% of your purchased stored in your account for later when the commission is paid out. Not necessarily.
For some retailers, there will be a variable rate, allowing better commissions for higher margin items, and lower commissions for those that have slim margins. Expedia, for example, will pay varied rates for different products. Here, the disparities are a bit less dramatic.
And here is a line from my actual payout for an airline ticket on FatWallet.com.
TopCashBack Lacks Tracking and Customer Service
In my experience, there is no question that TopCashBack has the best rates. The issue is their shocking customer service. After living in Britain for three years (and loving it) there is one portion of the society that remains lacking – customer service. Retail shops close 15 minutes before the time posted outside (US ones often allow you a few minutes after close to finish a purchase), restaurants tend to have poor service by servers who are paid much better than their US counterparts, and don’t depend on a tips left by patrons to survive. Hold times, sending complaints and requests by mail, and the list goes on and on. The reason why I rant here is because my experience with TopCashBack which is clearly a UK company with both US and UK websites has been appalling.
When I first started to use the site, I was thrilled. For hotels I already intended to book, I could earn, 3%, 5%, even as much as 16% back in some cases without increasing the cost of the booking, and still earning miles on my credit card. There was just one problem. The rebates are only good when you actually receive them. There are several that to this day I have not received at all, and others that I received only after disputing a non-tracked link, then chasing them up again and again to determine where the rebate was.
There is not a customer service number anywhere on the TopCashBack site at all. In fact, even an email is tough to conjur up. I finally had to get sleuthy about it, and pretend to have a media request in order for them to return an email.
If you have a non-tracked link you will receive the standard email that states, “We intend to respond within 10 days.” TEN DAYS??? For those of you in the UK, there is a simple shrug of the shoulders but for the Americans you might as well have just said, “We’ll get to it, when we get to it” and then of course if you have my experience, they will come back on day 9 just to say,
“We are investigating the claim and intend to resolve it as soon as possible, though sometimes this can take up to 3 months.”
How Bad Is TopCashBack’s Link Tracking?
If the site always tracked the links it would be fine, you would never need to contact their terrible customer service, therefor, you would never have to encounter this. In my own tests, no less than 60% of the links never tracked and 20% are still unanswered and I will never receive compensation for the rebate I am due.
Even for the Brits though, 10 days is a bit long for a simple email back, and while sometimes these matters could (I guess) take as long as a quarter of a year, even they would probably do business elsewhere.
So I did just that.
Alternatives to TopCashBack
I believe in a capitalist society the best way to make a statement (other than putting up a snarky blog post of course) is to talk with your wallet and your feet. If I don’t like the way that TopCashBack (TCB) runs their business, then I should shop elsewhere, right?
First I tried Ebates. I found though, more often than not, that the retailers I wanted just weren’t there. Links tracked for me at a rate of 50% which was on a mere two purchases, however, I was exhausted after digging up receipts, and emails and sending it back to TCB only for them to need further documentation all while communicating only through their internal message system (why can’t we just use emails like adults?). It’s probably unfair to dismiss Ebates for this bad experience, but I put them on hold while I tried FatWallet which came highly recommended.
I first tried the service and was a little disappointed because their commissions were smaller, but tried them anyway. The first thing I really loved was this little screen that pops up once you have clicked on a retailer link to be redirected to their site.
What a simple, yet clever idea. When I make purchases here, I leave myself a note of how much I spent, what the rebate rate was at the time (sometimes there are bonuses) and the purchase number given when I close the sale with the retailer. In five transactions, four were tracked and posted perfectly, with one that did not.
I gave it a few days and when it did not track in my cash back screen, I submitted a support request. Response was quick (within 24 hours) and I provided my details as I had left in the note for myself. Within another day the click and purchase was tracked in my account and I was paid on it a couple of weeks later.
When I was first checking FatWallet out, I had made some clicks into stores to see how it worked, and got an email a couple hours later that said, “We saw you clicked but didn’t track a purchase, did you make one that we should follow up?” How awesome is that? What a contrast to TerribleTopCashBack.
So though the rates are lower the customer service and success rate is much better with FatWallet. Ultimately, I would rather have $1 back on a purchase that I know I will receive than $10 back from the Nigerian Princes over at TCB.
If you want to join in, you should definitely use my referral link (yes I get credit when you join, and yes you will get credit when you have your friends join), but just to clarify, this is not why I wrote the post. If it was I would be smarter to refer you to TopCashBack where the bonus is twice as much (though you won’t ever receive it anyway, right?). I wrote it to warn you about TopCashBack, and encourage you with FatWallet after my mix of experiences with the two.
Happy Shopping!
Have you tried TopCashBack and had a good experience? Really? If not, which shopping portals do you use?
I’ve had good luck with Mr. Rebates – not sure if you’ve tried it, but tracking in my experience has been near 100%, regular pay-outs, and decent rebate rates.
Thanks Becky – I haven’t tried them yet, but I may give them a shot on your recommendation.
Yes mrrebates is excellent!
@Angelina – Perhaps I will followup with a review on what Mr. Rebates has to offer. My chief concern was that TopCashBack gets a ton of press in the blogger community and at a glance they DO offer the best rates… but they never seemed to track and chasing TCB up was a nightmare. Thanks for the tip, I will give them a try!
I completely agree! Why go to TopCashBack with the promise of higher rates when they never track your purchase?! Their customer service is appalling. When you ask them to investigate, they take forever (even over e months!). And when you follow-up, they have the nerve to say that they can only track purchases within the last three months and that your appeal is no longer valid…even when it was their fault it took that long! I agree about FatWallet…they have a good track record.
@MT – Your experience echoes mine. TopCashBack were in touch with me yesterday and I will post a response from them soon. Thanks for the comment.
Sorry to hear you’ve had issues with TCB. I can’t think of a single transaction I’ve had that didn’t post automatically (though it does often take quite some time) – fingers crossed that it stays that way!
@FWM – I had a lot of success in the beginning, and then it seemed to be more time filing follow-ups, going through their long process (up to 3 months) to get the credit to post if at all.
Coincidentally, I just received a credit for a transaction posted in October for which I submitted a missing claim, but not because it took this long to clear, rather only after I filed a missing claim five months ago (and after this posted). As of today, I still have four missing claims that have gone unresolved dating back nearly a year (July 2012).
Hi everyone,
I am sorry to hear that some of you have had issues with tracking on TopCashback.
I have had a look at our records for the above merchants and cannot see a general tracking issue. For Accor Hotels, I see that transactions generally track within a few hours and it seems to be taking around 2 months for the transaction to progress to ‘payable’ status.
I have also spoken to our claims team on this, who can confirm that there are only a very small number of claims for untracked transactions.
Members can experience tracking problems from time to time, but I would certainly say that this is the exception rather than the rule. Where this happens, we usually find that PC or Browser settings are to blame and we have some useful information on this at the following page-
http://www.topcashback.com/help/100
I am also disappointed to hear that you feel that you have experienced poor customer service. On both the UK and US sites, we usually respond to support tickets within a couple of days. We would certainly not ask members to wait 10 days for a reply, unless a specific issue was being investigated.
We work very hard to resolve problems and always try to provide a quick and personal response.
If any of you would like me to have a look at your accounts or get an update on any claims, please feel free to email contact@topcashback.com.
Best Wishes,
TopCashback
Hi Sherpa,
Can you let me know if you still have any outstanding claims/cashback that I can look at for you.
Please email me contact@topcashback.com FAO SALLY and I will look into your account.
Have a great day!
Best Wishes,
Sally
TopcashBack
After having trouble getting TCB to track my clicks properly, I discovered that my browser settings (which on Chrome and FF, my primary two browsers, I had set to restrict third-party cookies) were most likely at fault. Since I use IE for literally nothing, I just made TCB my home page in IE and use IE for any online shopping I want to use a cashback portal for. 100% success in clicks properly tracking after that, and I’ve earned about $150 and cashed out about $30 so far.
As for support, I didn’t have the same dismal experience you did. I submitted about 10 follow-ups to TCB (from earlier this year before I discovered the Chrome third-party cookie issue) and they were resolved. Granted, I used the actual claim form on their site (since their site registered the clicks, so I was able to choose which click to attach the claim to) rather than emailing customer service directly, and it wasn’t overnight service, but they all did end up properly crediting to my account within a week or so (fine for me).
That said, having worked in U.S. customer service for many years, I agree that prompt responses should be (and are) the norm here. In my current position, the longest we have ever gone without responding to a customer email is 12 hours, and most emails are responded to in 2-3 hours (and often less). If I had an actual issue that needed correcting and needed to contact customer support only to wait for 10 days, I’d probably be miffed. Fortunately, a cashback portal support issue is rarely a life-or-death or urgent situation or even one where a significant amount of money/value is at stake, unlike, say, a complaint with a hotel or missing miles (although to be fair, airlines in the U.S. tend to have abysmal support response times, too–far worse than your experience with TCB, at least for non-elite flyers, and even [in some cases, like Alaska Airlines] for elite flyers). I’m not going to sweat if it takes a cashback portal two weeks to respond to my demand they credit me for 40 cents.
Chris:
Great response to the article! I agree that waiting 10 days for $.40 would not be life or death, none of this is life or death of course. But my cashback wasn’t $.40 and it wasn’t resolved for over 180 days in my case (one of them is shockingly still open)! Once the company works out some of the kinks it may be a great site. I tried switching browsers as well, but my other click through purchases had tracked so it was strange that TCB didn’t.
Everyone is going to have a different experience. Mine was not a good one so I won’t be back any time soon, but I’m glad it worked out for you!
Thanks for reading the blog and keep the feedback coming!
I’d strongly advice everyone to try MrRebates. All my purchases have properly tracked even if it does take a while. I also get commissions from purchases made by my referrals.
Topcashback actually closed my account without any prior questions or warnings given. When I asked them about it, they said their automated system did it because I had too many hotel reservations that have gone to zero. That’s adding insult to injury. I had so many transactions that never properly tracked and when I did file some claims, they were never updated for months. This seems to me fraudulent on their part and probably a way not to purposely pay commissions to their customers. They probably keep them for themselves or once a customer starts earning too much to their liking, they close your account and make some lame excuse. Don’t bother trying to contact them. They don’t have a phone or address and for a good reason.
Rachel – I was not impressed with their customer service even after the fact. They did follow-up with me, but only after posting the article and tweeting them. I had submitted so many requests (one of which is still unanswered), I would have been far happier if the system had simply worked. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is fraudulent, but I would state that their US business will suffer until their customer service and technology comes up to the level of their competition. Thanks as always for reading the blog!
Hi Sherpa and Rachel,
I thought I would just post a quick reply here.
Again I’m sorry for the issues that you have had.
@Sherpa, could you send me a support ticket from your account- It seems to me like all of your tickets are answered and claims resolved? I can see that you are waiting for a payment from one of the approved claims however. Is this the issue you are referring to here?
@Rachel, I’m sorry that you experienced this issue. I know it can be frustrating but please don’t feel like you are being accused of any wrongdoing here. We simply need to make sure that all members are meeting our terms and conditions and this was the reason for the response you received from the memberships team. I can chase this up with them if you like? Can you email me on contact@topcashback.com?
Best wishes,
John
@John – Thanks for looking into this. Still “awaiting merchant” from purchase on September 12, 2012.
Hi Sherpa,
No problem! I can see that the calim has actually been approved here. We are waiting on the funds, but I’ll ask the claims team to chase this up for you.
Best wishes,
John
I share your feelings regarding TopCashBack. I am in the US and have only made a few transactions with the site, but almost every one requires a missing cash back claim because the amounts are usually off. It is possible it is the merchants fault because TCB does respond to my emails promptly.
I agree with your review of topcashback. They are not worth my time. 0 payout and no customer service. Submitted tickets shouldn’t have to take months, and with zero communication.
There is so much competition, I don’t need them. Let them burn all of their bridges.
Thanks for this review, I’ll check out the other services from the article and comments.
OK, I am now convinced not to bother with any of these. Heck, it seems they all suck and you need to be diligent to make sure you’re getting your rewards. I am not that organized. It seems you can’t trust anyone. They get you to shop there and you have to be persistent to be rewarded.
@Linda
I would say that is the case for TopCashBack but certainly not the case with FatWallet. FatWallet will even send you an email a few days later to say that they tracked your click but it didn’t look like you made a purchase, and if you did to reply to the email so they can start taking care of it right away. My experience with FatWallet has been excellent and I would encourage you to try them before giving up on the experience. For me it has been very valuable.
I had very bad experience with tcb. Our of more than $200 cash back I should get, it only credited $11. I filed a few missing cashback reports and some of them already being there fore more than 2 months without resolution. I finally gave up and tried to withdraw $11 out of my account that request has been in pending state for a few days. Except the fake “we have filed your missing cashreport to merchant” replies, any queries I sent to them just got ignored.
Looks like a total scam!
@Xun – I wouldn’t go so far as to say they are a scam, I just think they have bad IT (tracking seems to work with most other portals) and poor customer service for the United States. It may work in other countries to deliver really slow customer service replies and create arduous processes for correction in the case that their link did not track (other portals are 95% tracked or better in my experience), but in the States I don’t believe this is acceptable. I routinely opt for lower payouts with their competitors because in reality, the cash back is only worth something if you are ever able to actually get it.
My husband and I both have a TCB account. When its was time for us to cash out – we never received out money. 1.5 years later, after numerous time of emailing them. We still haven’t got the $60 for me and and the other $60 for my husband. They keep telling both of us that if the payout wasn’t successful, then the money would have returned to us…Since our account are separate accounts and the same thing happen. I am very likely to feel that they are scams .
I buy a LOT on eBay everyday and used Ebates previous to discovering TopCashBack (TCB). I’m having a huge problem with my click throughs not tracking. When I first started out all my purchases were tracked except one. Then on 9/19/14 an entire day’s worth of purchases weren’t reported by eBay but the clicks appeared in my history on TCB. About 10 in total. However, the following day all my clicks were tracked. I had to spend a good amount of time creating support tickets for each transaction which is a huge hassle and not really worth the extra .5%. And now again all of my purchases from some time on 9/22 all the way up to 9/24/14 are missing. I have to open tickets for all these transactions and wait months to get the missing money, assuming I even get it at all.
Nothing has changed on my end either. I am using the same computer, same web browser, no ad blockers and even the same click through link on the TCB page which forwards me to ebay properly. Very frustrating and it has forced me to switch back to Ebates where my clicks are more accurately tracked. I don’t have time to enter all these tickets.
@Chris – What I find so interesting is that through many discussions with TCB, including both their UK and US offices, these problems were to be fixed in “just a few months” which at the time I thought was too long for me to wait. I seem to get a comment like yours every few months from this post created in March of 2013, yours now some 18 months later and the same problems (both technical and of a service nature) persist.
When will TopCashBack get it right? Bribing users with higher rates that they can never actually claim is deceptive, and if it’s not – if their technology is so bad that they truly are not tracking the activity and thus they are not getting paid either – then how are they still in business?
This sounds really horrible! I just registered with TopClickBank, but after reading all those bad experiences with TCB, I will cancel my membership with them in no time as I don’t want to go through the hassle with missing cashback claims and failed customer support. Thank you for sharing your experiences with TBC, it’s always valuable to hear other people’s opinion.
HATE Topcashback! Everyone stay away! I’m on a mission to let people know that they have the worst customer service I have ever seen! I even submitted a claim to BBB and they STILL won’t respond!
DO NOT USE THEM! You will NOT get what is promised EVER!
@Kaylene – I got tempted to try them again as they were giving great cash back on AMEX gift cards that actually made them less than free. Then I read back through the horror show and couldn’t bring myself to do it. They LITERALLY couldn’t pay me to go back to them.
Sherpa
I enjoyed reading this article and decided to give fatwallet a try by clicking on your referral link but the sign up page has a place underneath it that says refer by a friend? So I clicked it and it asks for email. I just wanted to check in to be sure if I use that link and sign up that it will give you credit and I don’t need your email address also. I’ve personally only used tcb once and it was awhile ago and had much excited success. Last night however, I had problems. So reading this def made me wonder if I should try this other site to be safe. I did submit a claim ticket but guessing I won’t hear anything bank ugh. Thank you for your time and your review.
topcashback is the worst.. I stayed 3 times at Hilton for 5 nights each with an expected cashback of 125$+ for all 3 stays combined.. After 4 months the cashback never posted, opened a case with customer care, which they investigated for 3 months and then declined stating that I did not use topcashback site to make the purchase although the transaction could be found in the tracker on their website.. Bizarre company with crappy customer service
I have only used topcashback once and received my rebate in a very timely matter with no problems whatsoever. Perhaps their service has change?
The only thing I do not like is that you need to link to a store with an empty shopping cart. A lot of times I find something I want and put it in my cart before I go to topcashback. In that respects I prefer other rebate sites better.
@Laura – I am glad to hear that you are receiving your commissions normally. I received some commissions correctly, but widely did not. Perhaps they did shore up their customer service issues, but others continue to post problems. In my opinion – whether it’s an airline, a hotel, a cash back site or any other business for that matter – I don’t measure them by whether or not something goes right or wrong (every business has issues, every company makes mistakes), but rather how they deal with those issues. When things fell apart in the process for me, TopCashBack was not responsive and did not correct the issue in a meaningful and time efficient manner.
Thank you for your comment and for reading the blog. I welcome your additional feedback regarding TCB or any other method you use for getting more of your money back on purchases!
NEVER, NEVER, NEVER USE TOPCASHBACK. I made large purchase via TOPCASHBACK, they are using all sorts of excuses not to pay you. It is almost a headache to talk with them. The funds are available in my account, they just won’t pay you. Now it has been 15 days, I have not received a penny.
Date Requested Payout Type Payout Amount Status Breakdown
May 14, 2016 PayPal $578.37 Payment Requested View details»
May 08, 2016 $152.61 Payment Requested View details»
@Steve – That’s rough. I tried phone calls, emails, anything to get them to do their part. Their media department contacted me shortly after this post went live, and yet the answers were in essence that they are not equipped to offer US level customer services in the US yet (it is a UK company). This was some time ago so things might have changed, but they were quoting response times around “10 Business Days” no more than “45 Business Days” — that’s four months and totally unacceptable.
Never use them, and tell your friends about the experience you have had.
@Steve–I’m having the same issue! I just requested a payout on June 14 that totals over $326 and I still have not received anything. When I submitted a ticket to customer service for help, the response was, “I’m not equipped to handle this, but I’ve sent it to a colleague.” That was 4 days ago and I’ve heard nothing since. So frustrating! Did you ever receive your money?!
@Steve – I am so sorry for your troubles. I never did receive my money. It was the inspiration for the post, I would stay on them if I was you. Keep fighting. My experience was that they liked to drag it out, I hope yours is resolved.
I was an early user of FW and never had a problem. Then ebates bought them. I HATE ebates website. It is way too busy I stayed at two hotels recently and was very careful to book through the ebates link and ebates denied me on both. Over the years I have had many times where I tried ebates and did not get my money. I do not like topcash at all either. Since FW sold to ebates I have not even been using any cash back sites. It is too frustrating.
If you find one you like, or anyone else has recommendations, I would love to hear where everyone is putting their spending now.
I started using befrugal.com They do not have a forum but they also are not littered with ads and crap and they seem straightforward in the cash back and tracking your payments. So far I am pleased.
Yep they are good stay away from TOP CASH BACK i have never been paid on the last 5 purchases!
Topcashback.com is horrible. I would never use them again. Made 5 purchases…. never received one cash back.
I use TopCashBack, eBates, Mr Rebates, and BeFrugal depending on the rebate amount. I always check right before a purchase because the rebate rates can vary as they all have “special deals” on certain merchants on different days. Cashbackmonitor.com has been very helpful in finding the best rebate. I haven’t had problems with any of these sites although I agree that TopCashBack seems to take an extraordinary amount of time to actually go from confirmed to payable. On their FAQ page, they specify 90 days maximum, but sometimes it is easily 6 months and twice, I’ve had to send them a claim request asking about a certain transaction that seems “stuck” at confirmed. But I’ve always been able to get paid across all these 4 sites.
All the other sites do wait until the stores’ return policy has passed since it wouldn’t be right to give you a rebate if you then return the merchandise. Usually this is 90 days for most stores so usually it is at least 90 days before you get paid out. Also, some sites require you to have a minimum amount before you can get paid out.
Very disappointed with TopCashback. My first purchase was on August 8, 2019. Made about 50+ purchases in the following 4 months. My cash back is totaling in almost $900 but 4 months later it’s stil in pending status. Most of my purchases are from Macy’s.
I wrote 5 letters to customer service but they give general reply that I have to wait. I believe this site scams accounts that have large amount of cash back. Can we sue them?