I had previously reported (here and here) that it was possible to earn portal cash back when reloading Sears gift cards. A number of readers have since reported that, as of December 12th or so, cash back portals have begun tracking these reloads at $0. In other words, it looks like you won’t get any cash back via portals.
At this point I think its necessary to redo all of the previous Sears portal experiments. We’ll report our success or failure through the Frequent MIler Laboratory. If you’d like to stay up to date with Lab experiments, subscribe to that page by viewing the Lab page and adding a comment and checking the box to “Notify me of follow-up comments by email.”
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FYI, not only did TopCashBack not count my last reload (made a couple of days ago), but my other orders from last week which were showing as pending have now been zero’d out.
In the lab post there is no box for “Notify me of follow-up comments by email.” Can you add it so I can subscribe?
I forgot to add it’s pretty unethical for them to do that since the transactions were a couple weeks ago. I have not used any of the gift cards yet. I probably won’t do a chargeback because I don’t want to get banned by Sears even though they will probably go bankrupt soon. I may try filing a complaint against ShopAtHome with the BBB and see what happens.
Was it against the terms to earn cash back on purchasing gc? If so, how is it unethical? Maybe Sears is finally cracking down on some of their screw ups so they will actually stay in business a little longer.
The terms exclude gift cards. It is unethical because the terms do exclude gift card reloads. Buying a gift card and reloading a gift card are not the same. A gift card reload requires whoever reloads it to already own a gift card, so I was not buying a gift card.
Sorry, I made an error and should have typed it is unethical because the terms do NOT exclude gift card reloads.
I just looked at the terms of the SAH offer. They are below. I would actually side with them. If it had said “purchasing gift cards” your point may be valid. It just says “gift cards” which is probably their way of encompassing reloading and purchasing. It doesn’t hurt to file a claim though to see what they’ll say. I’m not sure how you could justify doing a chargeback though. Didn’t Sears give you the amount you paid for?
“Cash Back not available on ShopYourWay partners, from associated stores such as Kmart, Home Services, Outlet, Installation fees, gift cards, layaway, electronics, Apple Products from Marketplace. “
Yes Sears did give me the amount I paid for, however, I would not have bought a reload if I knew ShopAtHome and Sears would reverse my cashback. I don’t want to burn any bridges with Sears because I have Shop Your Way points that I still need to use and would risk being taken if I did a chargeback, so I probably won’t. I plan on filing a BBB complaint against ShopAtHome and will post the result.
Here’s an update on my BBB complaint against ShopAtHome. Of course they try to claim gift cards is an all encompassing word to include reloads. I still disagree, not because I don’t want to admit that I am wrong. I disagree because by definition a reload is not the same as a gift card. Similar but still not the same. Nothing can change my mind about this. If ShopAtHome wants to exclude reloads that’s fine. Just put it in the terms. By the way ShopAtHome is offering cashback on gift cards from 12/20/16-12/22/16 only. Strange timing, I file a BBB complaint and all of a sudden they are offering cashback on gift cards, which they rarely if ever do.
It looks like shopathome has reversed cashback from gift card reloads. Even worse is that they went back the last couple of months and reversed them. I reloaded during their 12% promotion along with extra cashback if purchase amounts went over a certain amount and was credited each time. Now it looks like they reversed them all. I entered it in the laboratory. Sucks that it’s now dead as it was a terrific double dip.
Same here, they reversed cashback on the $700 that I reloaded during the 12% promotion.
Just got a note that Giving Assistant is taking back the cash back from a gift card reload over the weekend…
Quick Update
We were informed by Sears that a change occured to your order and we believe it was due to one of the following reasons:
* Partial or Whole Order was returned, canceled, or exchanged.
* A discount or credit was applied after we first learned about it.
* A backordered item failed to ship or process.
We’d like to inform you that we’ve subtracted -1.50 USD from your cash back since they’ve taken this money back.
If you feel this is in error or have questions reply to this email and someone from our team will get right back to you.
Thanks,
– The Giving Assistant Team
I just got that exact email from Giving Assistant. But, I am pressuring them to have Sears provide the order number for the order I cancelled or returned. LOL!
subscribe
Do we know if it’s just the cash back portals or is it the points earning portals as well
Boo, for absolutely no good reason I’ve been putting off doing this. Looks like that just cost me ~$45 in portal cashback. Dammit!
Blogger killing another deal.
LOL. Yeah. It’s been going on for years. And you think he killed it this week? lol. Come on.
Thanks to Greg reporting on this over the years, Sears got me a Companion Pass is one day. I appreciate that. If it’s dead now, c’est la vie and on to the next one — but the blood of this death is not on his hands. It just means that someone with 25% of a brain finally got hired in the accounting department and realized, “Wow…we’re paying commission twice on everything…once to buy the GC and once to buy the merchandise….that’s dumb.”
The credit for catching and stopping this should much more likely be attributed to a summer intern than a blogger. That said, I wish that intern had gotten hired somewhere else.
Imagine where we would be if it wasn’t mentioned over and over and over and over again. Bloggers fingerprints are all over this one.