I just wanted to publish a quick post about Capital One Shopping offers because I know that many readers noticed a sharp decline in offers over the past month or two. I have continued to sporadically see very good payouts and I wanted to write a quick post to remind people not to write off Capital One Shopping (reminder: you do not need to have a Capital One card to get these targeted rates!).
I mentioned in a post about Viator the other day that I continue to get an offer for 30% back on Viator on and off. It is important to note that you do not want to search in the search box at the top of the Capital One Shopping page. Instead, you want to hit “filters” and then choose the store you want.
As an example, if I search “Viator” in the search box, I only see 7.25% back. However, if I hit “Filters” and then choose “Viator” from the merchants list on the left, I see 7.25%….and 30% back if I scroll down to the offer at the bottom.
It is important to note several things:
- You may have to scroll. My browser resolution is such that even after selecting Viator, I could only see the 7.25% back offer initially. I knew to scroll down because those buttons will show different rates. After clicking through the higher 30% offer, I can confirm that the “Activate” button that comes up from the browser extension during checkout does indeed show the 30% offer in such situations.
- You do not need to buy the advertised product. In 98% of situations, buying any item sold at the associated merchant website will trigger the 30% back. For instance, I’ve clicked on the Viator button above showing tours in Paris and Rome and booked things in other cities multiple times and the 30% tracks no matter what I book. The same is true at nearly any merchant website. It is tempting to think that the increased payout is only valid on that one specific item since there are different payouts shown paired with different products in many cases, but in almost all cases the high payout will work on any item. An example of an exceptional situation is that we’ve seen Capital One Shopping show Visa Gift Cards as an example product at Office Depot — but since we know that Office Depot doesn’t process those gift card purchases, those never track for portal cash back at Office Depot. Apart from a few isolated instances like that, payouts work on any product (even things like Apple products that are often excluded in portal terms at other portals).
- Earnings can only be redeemed for gift cards. Your only option for redeeming rewards is choosing merchant gift cards. They have some generally-useful options like Safeway, Hotels.com, eBay, DoorDash, and GrubHub, but they removed some other useful options like Walmart a few months ago. Note that Capital One Shopping is not the same as the Capital One Offers you might see if you log in to a Capital One account — those offers provide statement credits. Capital One Shopping is a public shopping portal that does not require a Capital One account. See this post for disambiguation: “C” is for Confusion: Capital One Shopping vs Offers vs Travel Offers.
I’m currently seeing 30% back at several retailers. Note that these are targeted, so you may not see them and/or may see other retailers with increased rates. Some examples I’m seeing include 30% back at LG:
I also see a number of retailers with stacking opportunities. For instance, I see 30% back at Ray-Ban and there is a current Amex Offer good for $30 back on $150 or more.
Some of those pairs advertised for $30 are available in other colors for something in the $140’s. With tax, I imagine you could reach pretty close to exactly $150. Let’s say you find a pair for $140 that comes to $150 with tax: 30% back on $140 gives you $42 back from Capital One Shopping and you’d get $30 back from the Amex Offer (assuming you have that offer and have enrolled in it as required). Getting a total of $72 back in cash and gift cards drops your “net” cost to around $78 for the sunglasses, which could certainly be attractive heading into summer.
Another similar stack I noticed is that Uniqlo is currently at 15% via Capital One Shopping in my account.
I also noticed a Chase Offer this morning good for 15% back at Uniqlo up to $19 back.
There are plenty of other options and I continue to get targeted email offers (I got one for 27% back at Sketchers the other day). Speaking of emails, don’t forget to scroll those, also. I missed one the other day for $82.50 back at Hello Fresh that was at the bottom of the email. The link doesn’t still seem to offer that payout unfortunately (sometimes the email links continue to work for quite a while and sometimes they don’t — if it works, the browser extension should pop up with the associated payout during checkout assuming you’ve clicked through in a browser with the extension installed).
Anyway, I wanted to write a quick post to highlight that the targeted Capital One Shopping offers are not dead. I haven’t seen a great offer for GiftCards.com in a while and my targeted IHG offers have only been in the 8-12% back range, but Greg got one from IHG that was good for north of 20% back the same day that I only saw 8% recently. I have been making it a habit to check every day as the offers change regularly.
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Hey Nick!
For those personalized offers with “Up to % Rewards.” How do we tell what percentage in each category? Don’t think there’s a way to see it from the extension
If you’re looking at it on the Capital One Shopping website on desktop, next to the words “Up to 22% back”, there is a little “i” in a circle. If you mouse over that, it should say what the different payouts are. Like if you look at BJ’s wholesale, you’ll see the difference between a membership / tires / etc, or if you look at Allbirds you’ll see the difference between a new and existing customer.
Thanks for quick reply Nick! I do see it on some of the stores. However, under the personalized offers when you filter it doesn’t show. For example, Adorama. Please see screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/wpMiApG
Is it same for you too?
I do not see the filter option. Is it just me?
Nvm, I see it on the homepage now
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Capital one doesn’t actually honor these. When you try to redeem they frequently give you “blank” gift cards while they “review” your purchases for 90 days. Then after 90 days they shut down your account and you lose your cash back. Happened to several friends I (mistakenly) recommended the program to.
I tried buying a digital camera that was advertised as 30% back from B&H. When I tried to redeem I got blank cards then shut down 90 days later. Total scam.
How else do you find these high level cashback deals?
Doing individual merchant search seems unrealistic?
I literally check the site each day and filter to the stores that interest me.
I’m still waiting on a payout from a TripAdvisor tour in April. Is this normal?
It took almost 3.5 months for the pay out but it did pay
Booked the tour in late Jan for a Feb 2nd tour, payout didn’t occur until 5/15
just a DP
Most portals don’t pay out for months. For instance, Rakuten pays out quarterly. If you bought something today, you *might* get paid on August 15th, but there is also a very good chance that you wouldn’t get paid out on that transaction until the next quarterly payment on November 15th (5.5 months from today). That’s just standard operating procedure for portals — rewards don’t get paid out until enough time has passed for the merchant to send over a batch of verified, completed transactions (which I strongly assume the merchant only does in batches long after the window for returns / chargebacks has passed hence the long time before rewards become payable).
Have you checked the “My Rewards & Savings” section of your account on desktop? Do you see the Viator transaction tracked there?
Thank you for posting this — I’ve absolutely been among the group of people noticing that my 30% offers dropped off precipitously sometime in mid- to late April. I think maybe they wised up to the fact that you could basically get targeted for the maximum cashback by browsing any site with the extension enabled, and then leaving the page without a purchase. Even if the gravy train has mostly dried up, the competition from C1 Shopping seems to have pushed Rakuten to increase their payouts (at least in the short term), so maybe there’s still a silver lining.
One word of caution, because like many people I have developed a love/hate relationship with C1 Shopping: I used to contact customer service once a month or so, to request credit whenever a legitimate purchase failed to track (which was far too often). About two months ago I had a large tire purchase that was eligible for over $200 cashback, and — of course — it failed to track. As always, I wrote to customer service with screenshots of the claimed offer and a purchase receipt from the merchant. Their response was “We’ve already given you credit in the past for other purchases that didn’t track. You’ve gotten enough ‘courtesy credits’ from us, so we’re not giving you any more.” I guess the moral of this story is that it’s worth contacting them when their portal fails to pay out as advertised, but be selective when you choose to do so. It’s probably not worth squandering your requests on small dollar amounts, lest they arbitrarily decide they’ve fixed “enough” errors for you, right when you’re seeking to claim cashback for a large purchase.
I bought tires this winter from Goodyear.com. The $282 in cash back from that purchase tracked as expected.
So far, I’ve only had to contact them one time. I have heard from readers who seem to have run into more problems, but Greg and I have had very positive experiences with the portal. I’ve heard hundreds of dollars in a single transaction numerous times and thus far all but one tracked as expected (and the one that didn’t was an order from Lenovo where they immediately shipped a small accessory and didn’t ship the rest of the order for weeks — the order initially tracked for the full amount (likely based on the credit card authorization) and later updated to only offer cash back on the accessory. In that case, I’m guessing it was Lenovo’s fault, not Capital One’s, since they likely split the order into two transactions based on ship date and that messed up the tracking. I contacted customer service and they credited me with the $400 in cash back I was due.
I will note that I generally don’t always expect to receive confirmation that an order has tracked within days or even weeks. I remember when most portals didn’t even show an order had tracked for like 45 days, so I don’t sweat it until quite a bit of time has passed. I wonder if some people end up following up when something would have tracked automatically if given more time? I obviously don’t know.
I just tried to use the Viator link for the 30%. When it came time to check out the apply code box give the message that the code does not work. Any helpful tips?
Be careful with those 30% offer. A bunch of my friends and I received the 30% offer for giftcards.com during the 5% off on March. We got the rewards posted in the account, but they all are NOT able to cash out. Once you hit the redeem button, it tells to wait for 24-48 hours, but 2 month has passed, no redeem was successful. We all had tens of thousands of dollar legitimate purchase on giftcards.com. Moreover, in its terms, it says you have to pay all the legal fees for both party if you decide to sue them. Totally a scam.
I was able to cashout my rewards on giftcards.com with 18% and 30% offers, but I didnt take it nearly to the level you did (spent about $1000 total). Slow and steady wins the race i guess.
I also cashed out hundreds from giftcards.com purchases at 18% without an issue. I’m guessing the “tens of thousands” ended up being a little too hard to push it.
I’ve earned thousands in cash back total so far and haven’t yet had a problem redeeming for gift cards.
I hear of this happening all the time with much smaller amounts
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