Back in early December, Capital One Shopping offered an incredibly generous $200 referral bonus. Both the referrer and the person being referred earned $200 when the referee set up a new Capital One Shopping account and spent at least $10 through the portal.
Those $200 bonuses started posting for some people a month ago, but not for everyone. I’d signed up in order to earn $200 and had been patiently waiting for that to credit, but a post by Travel With Grant gave me the impetus to follow up with Capital One Shopping and it was worth the effort as I had the $200 on my account that same day.
After signing up for Capital One Shopping, I made a purchase with Columbia Sportswear, then StubHub. A few days later I bought something from Dell and made an IHG reservation.
All of them tracked correctly and showed as pending. Despite people reporting that they’d already gotten their $200 bonuses, I decided to wait as I figured perhaps the transactions needed to go from ‘Pending’ to ‘Confirmed’ before the $200 would become payable.
The Columbia and StubHub ended up crediting to my account a few weeks later. The $200 still didn’t show up and I procrastinated doing anything about it. That is, until I read Grant’s post.
He shared that he sent them an email, explaining that he’d referred his wife (side note – they have an awesome origin story) and that he’d not received the $200. Within a few hours they’d replied, advising that his wife hadn’t met the requirements but that they’d credited his account with $200 as a courtesy. When emailing on behalf of his wife for her $200, they got a similar reply – that she’d not met the requirements but that they’d been credited with $200 as a courtesy anyway.
Reading his account prompted me to send my own email to help@capitaloneshopping.com. In the morning I woke up to a reply which matched the same canned – but successful – response that Grant had received:
I am sorry to hear you did not receive the promotional bonus as expected. After looking into it, it looks like the referral did not meet the program requirements. As a courtesy we have manually issued $200.00 in Shopping Rewards to your account. Your Shopping Rewards balance is available to view and redeem on the Rewards & Savings dashboard.
If you get a similar email reply and check your account, it might initially look like the $200 still hasn’t been credited despite them stating that it has been. That’s because the menu bar shows your earned cashback and that only displayed what I’d earned from Columbia and StubHub.
It wasn’t until clicking on that dropdown and then selecting ‘My Rewards & Savings’ that I was able to confirm that the $200 had indeed been added.
While it can sometimes not be worth the effort of following up on missing cashback from a shopping portal, taking one minute out of your day to drop an email to help@capitaloneshopping.com in order to get the $200 (or $400 for both sides) you earned is most definitely worth it.
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Unfortunately it isn’t always so easy. I’ve been back and forth with them for almost 3 days now. Despite sharing screenshots of a qualifying purchase, they keep saying the referral didn’t qualify and they can’t share information about someone else’s account.
Same here, I was told I did not sign up using the link correctly, whatever that means. They probably got too many people asking for the referral bonus, now they realize they can’t fulfill them all. Very disappointing.
Same for me. I’m so sad. ☹️
Same here. I wanted to give it a few more days to avoid following up. Foolish of me.
“We are not currently offering referral bonuses for referring new users to Capital One Shopping. After reviewing your request, you are not eligible to receive a referral bonus as your account was either created after the program period ended or not all referral program requirements were satisfied.
For qualifying Capital One Shopping accounts created through referral links while our program was live, bonuses will be automatically issued within 30 days of satisfying all program requirements.”
Even though I absolutely completed the terms. My P2 sent a similar email and got the exact same response from a different CSR.
Yeah, if anyone has success, please let me know. I’ve sent proof and the purchases show in my account, and all they can respond with is “I’ve confirmed you did not meet the requirements. Have a nice day!”
Sounds like they ran out of money between legitimate credits and courtesy credits but aren’t willing to admit it. Very frustrating.
Same here…This looks like a scam to me. I’m going to report to FTC.
Thanks! I was able to get the $200 bonus after emailing them 🙂
Capital one a disaster of a bank – got their cc venture x – as soon as I got approved like others they decided to go under review, than a half year in they remove restaurant benefits than they have to manually issue the rental credits cause after 2 months they still never came through.. their high interest bank account another story – they decided to trick their longtime customers by creating a new similar name account that had the interest rate rise but kept the old account with a low rate – mind you that account used to go up but they decided let’s trick our customers till they catch on… thank goodness someone is suing them for that!
Wow! What a great tip! I sent off an email to Capital One Shopping yesterday, Jan 23, after reading this article.
Received $350 courtesy credit today!
Thank you for the tip!
Received a $200 “courtesy” bonus about 20 hours after sending email. Glad to see Capital One remediating a bad situation.
Got my $200 bonus and two $100 referral bonuses (for a total of $400) all from sending one email!!
Awesome, glad it was that easy for you too 🙂
Definitely gonna inquire I totally do but thanks y’all I’ll see what happens.
Got my $200 pretty promptly after sending an email a few days ago. Now I guess it’s a $200 door dash gc for me… don’t see too many other interesting options.
Same thing for me… it was easy, even though I wasn’t expecting it to be. I ended up getting the eBay gift card, as I buy things there several times a year.
Hey Stephen, I’m glad you got the $200 bonus, despite the “After looking into it, it looks like the referral did not meet the program requirements” BS response.
Redeeming the cash back for a gift card is also a process that takes about 10 more steps than necessary, but I will let you experience that for yourself 🙂
Oh, I’ve already had that joy!
Glad to hear you made out through the process 🙂
I used my partner’s referral link, made legitimate purchase. My partner received $200 however I did not receive my bonus. I emailed them and they insisted I am not qualified. Capital One Shopping response:
“Some common reasons a referral bonus may be missing include:
· It hasn’t been 30 days since completing all program requirements
· The referee didn’t sign up for Capital One Shopping through a referral link
· The referee didn’t install the Capital One Shopping browser extension within 30 days of signing up
· The referee didn’t make $10 in Qualifying Purchases within 30 days of signing up
· The referee canceled or modified their Qualifying Purchase, or purchased an excluded item
· The referee has previously created another Capital One Shopping account
· The referrer has already reached their referral bonus limit for a referral period
Check out our referral program FAQs for more info on the referral program requirements.”
Is keep asking the only way to reach solution?
I think they are doing a bait and switch…too many of us are experiencing the same thing and not getting the bonus despite doing what was required. Please report to FTC.