Through February 12th, you'll earn 15% (vs. the usual 10%) at FTD!
Upromise has great ways to earn for college or cashback for yourself both online and off. Be sure to check out their dining program and their eCoupons! Not a member yet? Join UPromise.com here! (aff)
Updated daily!
Ebates.com has a feature called the Daily Double, where they double their usual cashback rate for one merchant.
Today, February 8th, you'll earn 5% cashback, instead of the usual 2.5%, at Circuit City!
Not a member of Ebates yet? Get a $5 bonus when you sign up and make your first purchase! -- Join Ebates today! (aff)
]]>Today, February 8th, earn 6 points per dollar (worth approximately 4.5% cashback) at Godiva! Free shipping on $50+ orders, too!
If you're not a member of MyPoints.com and you'd like to sign up, earning points redeemable for gift cards for doing things like reading emails, answering surveys, completing polls, and shopping, please click here (aff) -- thanks!
The Bing Cashback Valentine's Day Gift Guide features cashback increases running through the 10th including direct links to receive 10% cashback at Ebay and Sears, 20% at Sephora and Drugstore.com, 25% at Teleflora and Ghirardelli Chocolates, and more.
In addition, the deal forums are buzzing about the return of 20% Bing Cashback at Walmart, accessed by doing a Bing.com search for exercise equipment and clicking through the Walmart sponsored link with the gold coin beside it. Remember, the 20% rate will apply to ALL products you buy during that shopping session, not just exercise equipment! Choose site-to-store shipping and you'll still earn the cashback but will avoid paying shipping.
Ebates has a link on their main page to click, "Fall in Love with Double Cash Back! Shop now". Clicking it takes you to a page featuring 12 Valentine's-themed merchants offering increased cashback. The only problem is that although the banner touts, "Double Cash Back," only ONE of the twelve merchants actually has their cashback rate doubled (Blue Nile, with 6% instead of 3%). The other ELEVEN are increased, yes, but NOT DOUBLED.
Love you guys, Ebates, but CompareRewards is a no-BS zone. Increasing a rate from 6% to 8% isn't even close to doubling it. What say we back down on the hype just a notch and call these "Cash Back Increases You'll Love" or something to that effect? That'd be a little less egregious of a claim.
]]>As of this writing, go to Bing.com, search for HDTV, and click through the Tiger Direct sponsored link for 15% cashback on your entire order (you'll also get sponsored results offering 8% cashback at Ebay and 10% at Target).
You can also search for Macy's cashback and you'll get a result to click through for 25% cashback there.
Note: the search terms and cashback rates change frequently; use of coupon codes (even those provided on the landing pages when you click through) may invalidate your Bing Cashback.
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MrRebates (aff) has increased their already-great cashback rates on over 100 popular merchants through 2/14 in their I Heart Savings Valentine's Day 2009 promotion.
Examples of some of the increases: Chemistry.com at 75% cashback (was 50%), FragranceNet at 10% (was 7%), FTD at 17% (was 13%), Ice.com at 12% (was 6%), Restaurant.com at 28% (was 25%), and ULTA at 10% (was 5%). Plenty of other great rate hikes for your Valentine's Day shopping needs... check 'em out!
]]>The landing page offers a coupon code for 10% off $39+ orders plus a free vase, however, Bing says that using coupon codes "may" negate your cashback, depending on the merchant. I'd avoid using the code because the 30% cashback is a greater value than the 10% and free vase.
Proflowers has arrangements starting at $19.99 before cashback.
Bing has another hidden offer for 30% cashback on Ice.com; go to Bing.com and search for jewelry. The details say cashback's not available on sale items, engagement rings, or watches. Shipping's free on all orders to the continental U.S. through 2/10.
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Wellness360.com, which has been plagued with financial problems since its inception, is down this morning. Whether or not it's permanent is unclear; I left a message on the company's voicemail this morning requesting a callback with more information. (I had to use an alternate phone number I found via Google; the phone number listed in their email to members from May 27, 2009, in which the CEO admitted Wellness360's "difficult times," is not operational.)
I pulled up the company's mailing address from that email, 27201 Puerta Real, Suite 350, Mission Viejo, CA 92691, and found that it is now vacant and available for lease (scan down to the bottom of the page to see Suite 350's listing). In November 2009, Wellness/Aperture was mentioned in a press release as being headquartered in Laguna Niguel, CA, seven miles away. Perhaps not coincidentally, Aperture's founder and CEO, Thomas Banks, lives in Laguna Niguel.
Wellness360 is owned by Aperture Health and is publicly traded under the stock symbol APRE. They haven't filed financial reports -- or at least, I can't find any -- since the last quarter of 2008, in which they report a loss of $657,000 for the quarter. In looking for something more recent, I found that their stock was kicked off the OTC Bulletin Board last June for failing to filing financial reports with the SEC. They're now listed with the Pink Sheets. According to Investopedia, "Typically, companies are on the Pink Sheets because either they are too small to be listed on a national exchange or they do not wish to make their budgets and accounting statements public... they should only be purchased with extreme caution."
I'll update this post as I get more information. But as it stands, Wellness360 appears to be down for good.
View past posts on Wellness 360: Wellness 360 Review, Wellness 360 is Sickly; Doesn't Pay Members as Promised, Wellness360 Acknowledges "Difficult Times."
]]>In 2007, LuckySearch started out as a simple search-and-win website, similar to others already out there like Blingo and Winzy (a more recent competitor would be Swagbucks): you'd be awarded points randomly for searching through their portal, and you could cash those points out for prizes. You'd win when your referrals won. The website was completely free.
Later, the site evolved into the Superpoints Network, with more ways to earn points, including shopping online. RewardLadder was added, which wasn't one of my favorite aspects of the site, but basically if you got enough referrals, who got enough referrals, in a specific timeframe, you'd earn a big prize. In 2008, they added an option to complete offers for points, and in 2009, they added the SuperLucky Button, basically a big button you click for a chance to win points -- the more referrals you had, the more times you could click it, up to a max of 100 times a day.
I hadn't logged in to the site in a while, but last week after receiving an email promising 500 points, "enough for a free $5 gift card from Amazon.com, ExxonMobil, Subway, Dominos, Blockbuster, Quiznos, and more!" to "all new members that you recruit...as soon as they sign up for free as a Basic Member," I thought it was time to revisit SuperPoints. What was this "basic member" thing, and gosh, giving your friends a $5 GC for free sounded too good to be true!
Unfortunately, it is.
First of all, when I went to the SuperPoints website, I was immediately prompted to either accept their new terms of service or forfeit my account. When I clicked to look at the terms, seeing all of the fine print and not knowing what it said BEFORE, I decided, "Okay, fine, I accept and once I do, I can access the site and see what's changed."
That's when it became clear what a complete mess SuperPoints has become.
There are now four levels of membership on SuperPoints, as you can see here. It's a lot of info to take in, but I'll summarize the high points for you:
The 500 points promised to new friends that you refer to the program in that email I received? CAN'T BE CASHED OUT unless your friend pays $9.95 a month to become a SuperMember, OR they refer 5 new members who validate their email addresses and complete a basic information questionnaire AND your friend validates his address, completes BOTH a basic and advanced profile AND uploads a valid picture of himself.
OR, your friend can hold onto those 500 points, NOT refer any friends, complete the basic profiler, and wait until he earns an additional 2000 points to cash out.
OR, your friend can hold onto those 500 points, send 10 email invitations to join (or get two friends of his own to join and validate their email and complete the basic profiler) AND validate his own email address, complete both the --
I don't really need to go on, do I? You get the point: the email I was sent was misleading at best. Okay, fine, they at least got my attention and got me to visit their website. Once there, I started examining these different levels of membership. What makes them different, aside from the amount of personal information you have to share, and the number of friends you have to have? What do you get in exchange?
A lower minimum to cash out, earn points when your friends shop, higher priority in surveys (which I didn't even know they had), more clicks of the SuperLucky Button (which if you're "super lucky" might net you 5 points a day), win when your network wins via a search -- up to 5 levels deep (does all of this "network" and "levels" stuff make anyone else uncomfortable?), and finally, the big one:
SuperMail: Opt-Out Available... but ONLY to people who pay $9.95 a month.
I sat there blinking at the screen, incredulous. You mean, I'm REQUIRED to provide all of this information to you, and you're going to send me daily email UNLESS I PAY YOU TEN BUCKS A MONTH?
That's got to be a mistake, I think. What does the Terms of Service say about this?
"Consent to Receive Commercial E-mail
BY AND AS A CONDITION OF BECOMING A MEMBER, YOU CONSENT TO RECEIVE COMMERCIAL E-MAIL MESSAGES FROM OR ON BEHALF OF WESTLAKE PRODUCTS, AND ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT YOUR EMAIL ADDRESSES AND OTHER PERSONAL INFORMATION MAY BE USED BY WESTLAKE PRODUCTS FOR THE PURPOSE OF INITIATING COMMERCIAL E-MAIL MESSAGES. You may change the settings in the Member area section of the Website(s) to discontinue receipt of email, but by doing so your Membership will be terminated and all Points will be terminated." [emphasis mine]
Bottom line: SuperPoints now requires all members to complete at least a basic-level profiler (including name, address, home phone number, cell number, and birthdate) that will be used to send you email advertisements, which you can NOT opt out of... UNLESS you pay them $9.95/month, or you forfeit your account. And don't get any smart ideas about providing bogus information: they say they'll terminate your account.
Why would you subject yourself to this when there are other websites on the internet that do the same things -- let you earn points/prizes for searching the internet, earn rewards for shopping and completing surveys, win points for playing games -- and that don't REQUIRE you to pay ten bucks a month for the privilege of not being sent "commercial e-mail messages"? I know of no other program that operates like this.
There IS one other feature that your $9.95 a month buys you -- the chance to win prizes. Paying money for a chance to win prizes = gambling, doesn't it?
Based on this most recent experience with SuperPoints.com, I'm changing my recommendation for the SuperPoints Network -- including its LuckySearch, RewardLadder, and RewardShopping sub-sites -- to AVOID. I hope that their management reconsiders their new membership structure as well as their requirement to accept commercial emails if someone wants to be a member (or else pay the monthly fees)...and I'll reconsider the site when and if that happens. Terribly disappointing.
Fridays are Mega Swagbucks Days at Swagbucks.com (aff) -- and I just snagged a nice four-buck win when I was using their site to search the web for a coupon code I needed. Got the code and four SB toward my next $5 Amazon redemption. Sweet! They've already paid me one $25 Amazon GC and two $5 ones this month, and I have three more $5 Amazon GCs in the queue for payment at the end of the month. It all adds up, especially if your friends search with you and if you set Swagbucks as your home page so you remember to use it frequently!
If you're not a Swagbucks member and would like to join, please click here (my referral link; thanks!).
QuickRewards.net has just been recognized in Alert! magazine (the monthly journal of the Marketing Research Association) as one of a handful of groundbreaking companies doing business as a survey panel for residents of Russia. As you can imagine, survey sites are active in many countries overseas, but Russia has been a difficult market to get into. Alert! says that about half of survey panel members have only been a member for less than 6 months...and at the other end of the spectrum, only 10% have been a survey panel member for 2 years or more. So this is a very new, evolving business... and QuickRewards is in on the ground floor.
According to Dmitry Beker, founder of QuickRewards.net, the company's Russian survey panel has over 100,000 panelists including members of specialty panels in IT, Business Decision-Makers, and Healthcare Professionals... quite impressive for a business segment that was virtually non-existent in the country just two years ago!
How will this impact QR members? The survey site is incorporated separately, says Beker, so its success or failure won't directly impact members of QuickRewards.net. However, the experiences gained by QR's staff in developing the Russian survey panel will continue to help bring new survey opportunities to QR that aren't available through other rewards programs.
QuickRewards.net pays members for completing surveys, printing coupons, visiting websites, playing games, reading emails, and shopping online. Members can cash out at any time to PayPal with no minimum balance required (and payments are usually processed within 48 hours), or members can save up for emailed or snail-mailed gift cards from many major retailers. The program is also one of the few rewards programs that waive the "return period" for online shopping purchases, making it possible for you to shop, be credited cashback, and be paid to PayPal within a week.
If you're not a member of QR yet, please join QuickRewards.net with my referral link -- thanks! Please note: I work with QuickRewards.net as their shopping blogger at QRDeals.com.
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YouData (aff), a site that pays you to view ads tailored to your demographic profile, hasn't gotten much mention here lately because, since they don't send out emails, it's your responsibility to remember to check the site to see if there are paid ads available to view... and I keep forgetting to check! They had two 10-cent ads there for me this morning and I wanted to tip you off to check your own YouData account and see what might be waiting. (If your profile's different from mine, you may have more...or less.)
Every Friday, YouData auto-deposits any earnings for the week into your PayPal account. It isn't a huge amount of cash, but it isn't much investment of time, either...and I've found some really nice websites through the ads there that I might not have found out about otherwise. Definitely worth checking into if you're not a member already... and if you are, here's your reminder to go to YouData and view the ads available for you!
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According to an email to all members sent out this week by SunshineRewards.com (aff), the site is celebrating its fourth year in business this week -- quite a milestone for any rewards program, particularly given this economy.
The site is celebrating with increased cashback at several merchants daily throughout the week, as well as giveaways in the site's forum.
Says founder, Tricia Meyer, "Every year we try to find more ways to help people save money and earn rewards online. We've changed a lot since we started four years ago but our end goal remains the same."
She attributes the site's success to, "the loyal community of members that helps us keep the site fresh year after year" and feels that what sets her site apart from the rest is, "that we are not just a business but a family."
Sunshine Rewards' members can earn points, redeemable for gift cards and PayPal, by completing surveys, visiting websites, playing games, and shopping online. If you're not a member and would like to try them out, please join here (my referral link; thanks!).
Congrats to SR on its fourth birthday!
MrRebates (aff) has increased their cashback rates at 50 of their popular stores through January 24th, in their "New Year, New You" promotion.
Their rates on these merchants were already great but now they're even better -- 3% instead of 2% at Kmart and Walmart, 7% instead of 5% at Avon, etc. Some of the increases were substantial, like Botanic Choice which went from 8% to 20%, Beauty.com which went from 7% to 11%, and Elizabeth Arden which went from 6% to 11%.
MrRebates pays cashback for shopping monthly when your available balance exceeds $10.