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I’m not sure when things changed, but I noticed yesterday that Rakuten now lists the payout for Dell as “up to” 10% back. That led me to notice that the Wyndham, Caesars Rewards, and Cathay Pacific portals are also now advertising a higher rate for Alienware and XPS laptops than for everything else at Dell. That’s really disappointing news for those of us with Business Platinum cards who haven’t yet used the Dell benefit for July to December 2022.
I went to buy something with one of my Business Platinum cards yesterday and I noticed that Rakuten was listing Dell Technologies as “up to 10% back”. I was disappointed when I checked the details and realized that only Alienware and XPS laptops and desktops are at 10% — all other items at Dell are listed at 2% back.
That’s a big disappointment as many of us have become accustomed to stacking either an Amex Offer or Business Platinum credit (or both!) with a good shopping portal payout, particularly from Rakuten.
Unfortunately, it’s not just Rakuten with this change. I opted to order through Wyndham Rewards Shopping instead of Rakuten last night without looking closely enough at the terms.
As you can see, it clearly says that you’ll earn a higher reward on Alienware and a lower reward for basically everything else. Based on the way that sentence is written, I’m not even sure what the payouts are. Do you earn a reward that’s higher than 7 points per dollar for Alienware, or is it just recognizing that whatever the Alienware payout is (presumably 7 points per dollar?), you’ll earn less on GPS, MPS, Camera, Phones, etc? I have no idea what to expect for my purchase (though, in fairness, I find that Wyndham’s math never matches the payout exactly anyway, so I don’t know if I’d have even noticed in this case). Caesars Rewards and Cathay Pacific Asia Miles appear to run on the same platform as Wyndham and they have matching terms.
Most other portals do not yet shoe different rates for different products at Dell, but I assume that a change is coming. For now, you might want to try ordering from a portal that does not yet show split categories, but I assume they will all eventually follow suit and that the party is over on great payouts on things other than computers. That’s certainly a bummer. One place where I think great payouts may still be possible if this change becomes widespread is potentially targeted offers from Capital One Shopping.
The jury is still out on this, but if you have Dell credits to use, you may want to try using them up through a portal that does not yet list separate rates for Alienware and XPS and a low rate for everything else.
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Suddenly, in about the middle of November, we started seeing this issue on shopping portals. I clicked through a few shopping sites like AA, UA, etc. for black friday’ish deals and they advertised amounts of like 8x or 10x to find that only specific segments qualified for the high amount. You’d see something like 10x on health and beauty, 4x on furniture, and 2x on other departments. It made it really hard to use sites like cashback monitor to compare the best route.
There are certain stores that have always been that way, but Dell hasn’t been one of them before.
FWIW, I noticed sometime in mid-November Dell made this change. Could’ve happened earlier but I first saw it over a month ago. I saw 10% back on cashbackmonitor looking to clear out some biz plat credits on like the 11th and it was divided the same way as you show above. Black Friday brought it back to 15% for everything and now it appears to be split again. Seems to me that it’s a reasonable assumption that they’ll keep it at an elevated rate for everything during holiday sales (black friday, president’s day, memorial day, etc.) and split it otherwise.
I can confirm that mid November Dell started this split rewards, I looked to do the same thing as Raylan. I also noticed and subsequently placed orders during Black Friday Week at the reinstituted nonsplt click through levels.
I agree that some stores have always done it but it has gotten much worse in the past month and is very targeted by Cartera portals I’ve noticed the most.
This is Dell driven, on BF/CM weekend, Rakuten were offering 15%. Dell cancelled every order I tried. I had to wait for the rebate to drop to 2% before my order would go thru. I was just happy to use up my AMEX credit as for a while I feared I was blacklisted
My 3 orders went through fine at 15% back.
Must be nice.
Right, I noticed that too, it was like 1-2 day and then changed back to 15% or so.They actually switched to 16% at one point for all items. This was huge…. not sure why they would cancel your orders though. May be because I have frequent and extensive order history but all my orders went through big and small. Another thing I noticed… Rakuten some times tracks purchase based on original price not discounted. It remains to be seen if they woud eventually reverse the points awarded but back to back purchase of exact same items are tracking differently, one at original MSRP and one at discounted price, BF sale + coupon. Anyways between my daughters Alienware laptop, Epson photoprinter, two Sony cameras, I have earned close to 100k MR points.with 20% off up to $1500 statement credit Amex offer, I made sizable profit reselling one of two Sony cameras I bought.