Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
TopCashBack is offering 10% back on gift card purchases at Raise.com today (7/30 only). That’s a great deal if you can find some of the more rarely/slimly discounted cards and you haven’t yet exceeded the lifetime purchase cap.
The Deal
- Get 10% cash back on Raise.com purchases today via TopCashBack
- If you’re new to TopCashBack, consider signing up through our referral link with our thanks.
Key Terms
- Individual orders under $20 or over $1K are not eligible for cash back
- “Raise Pay” purchases are non-commissionable (i.e. you only earn cash back on second-hand cards, not “new” gift cards)
- Once you have placed over $5,000 in lifetime purchases through Raise.com, you are no longer eligible to receive cash back
- See TopCashBack for full terms
Quick Thoughts
This can be a terrific deal if you’re able to nab cards that are rarely discounted or only typically discounted a few percent. Keep in mind that I’d only recommend buying cards for which you have an immediate or near-immediate use: while I’ve had great experiences with Raise, I wouldn’t buy a second-hand gift card and hold onto it for months.
It’s also worth keeping the lifetime cap in mind: if you’ve bought $5K or more in gift cards lifetime through Raise, whether through a portal or not, you will not earn cash back. I’d also mention that TopCashBack did offer 20% back one day earlier this year. I don’t know whether or not that deal will ever return, but if you’re close to the lifetime cap and don’t have an immediate need for a gift card, maybe you want to gamble that it does. Personally, I’d be pretty happy with 10% back, but it’s a consideration.
H/T: Doctor of Credit
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Can’t recommend TopCashBack. You stand a good chance of never being paid given their well-known strategy of denying for vague reasons, such as ‘other channel’, whatever that means. When pressed, they do not explain. Avoid.
Thanks for the tip. IF I receive it, is it a credit on their site, or on my credit card? At least I did get a gift card with a 7% discount + a $10 first-time discount.
All shopping portals basically work the same: you click through their link and shop. They earn a commission. Then they pay you your piece of that commission after they get paid. That process typically takes anywhere between 30-90 days depending on the merchant / portal (I imagine different merchants pay out on different schedules because they want to be sure they don’t pay a commission on a purchase you subsequently return).
Your money typically shows up as “pending” in your TopCashBack account within a few days of purchase. Then it changes to “payable” once the pending period is over. While it’s pending, you can click on the details to see the estimated time before it becomes payable. Some are faster than others — I just checked my account history now for recent purchases and I see estimated pending timeframes anywhere from 8 to 13 weeks depending on the merchant.
Once it becomes “payable” you have to request a cashout from TopCashBack. You can choose to be paid by check, PayPal, ACH, or via a virtual Visa gift card or an Amex gift card or various merchant gift cards — TopCashBack offers various incentives depending on how you want to be paid out.
That’s the basic model for all shopping portals (Ebates, BeFrugal, ShopAtHome, TopCashBack, MrRebates, etc).
I’ve personally placed many thousands of dollars worth of orders through TopCashBack over the years (as has my wife and plenty of readers) and I haven’t had any memorable issues — which matches my experience with most shopping portals. In fact, the only portal I ever had a major issue with is no longer in business.
I always recommend some best shopping practices: for instance, I shop (comparing prices and adding and subtracting stuff from a cart to save it) in one browser, but I use an entirely different browser when I’m ready to buy that I only use for buying stuff through portals — I don’t install any special shopping buttons or browser add-ons or anything like that in my buying browser as I find that those various add-ons that help you “look for a deal” actually steal the tracking cookie from shopping portals. So I keep a “naked” browser so to speak with absolutely no plugins or add-ons where I just go to the portal, click directly to the store, add the items I want to my cart and check out immediately to be sure nothing times out. Following that strategy, I’ve not had any problems with any of the major portals.
Ignore my comment. Sorry, I had not read the simple info on the Raise site: I get Raise Cash. Duh.
No, this isn’t Raise cash. You have to click through TopCashBack to get the 10% back and you get that from TopCashBack
Thank you, Nick, for the thorough explanation. I did click through TopCashBack, so I will watch for it there.
When do you see the 10% cash back?