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Update 9/2/19: The rate is now 14%. The math for the original deal is now even better:
- Original price = $349.99
- 10% email newsletter discount = -$35.00
- 14% TopCashback = -$44.10 (cashback will be earned on the amount paid, so after the 10% discount from the email newsletter has been deducted)
- 10% Amex Offer = -$31.50
- Amex Business Platinum credit = -$100
- Visa prepaid card = -$100
- Total = $38.40 + tax
n.b. I’ve not had an opportunity to check out all their different deals, so there might be even better opportunities out there.
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Update 2: The 10% rate is available again.
Update: Shortly after publishing this post, TopCashback dropped its rate from 10% to 4%. The other four elements for stacking this deal are still valid, but if you don’t have an immediate need for a new laptop, it’d be worth holding off on ordering anything until you can get a better shopping portal rate.
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TopCashback is offering 10% cashback at Dell for the next few days. While shopping portal rates for Dell do sometimes go above 10%, it’s still a decent rate considering it sits at 4% for most of the year.
Even better, you can stack the 10% cashback with several other deals from Dell and American Express to make your net cost for a new laptop as low as $52 plus tax. Alternatively, you could likely resell the laptop to make a profit.
The Deal
- Earn 10% cashback at Dell through TopCashback.
- Direct link to offer.
Key Terms
- Expires September 1, 2019.
Quick Thoughts
One of the best aspects of this 10% cashback rate is that it can stack with a bunch of other deals. Your ability to take advantage of some of these will depend on which credit cards you have and if you’ve been targeted for the Amex Offer. If you do have all of these stacking methods at your disposal though, you should be able to get a new laptop for as low as $52 plus tax.
Note that the laptop I’ll be using as an example only has 4GB RAM. I made a mistake of buying one with only 4GB RAM a few years ago and it slowed to a crawl. I therefore wouldn’t recommend something with a small amount of memory like that unless you’ll only be using it for basic tasks. That said, the following stacking principles will work regardless of how much the laptop’s original price is.
Stacking 1 – TopCashback
First off, click through to Dell from TopCashback to ensure you get 10% cashback.
Stacking 2 – Newsletter Signup
Sign up for Dell’s email newsletter. I hadn’t realized they offered this discount, but Nick mentioned that it even discounts the cost of products that are on sale, plus the discount code is sent to your email straight away. You can sign up for the newsletter here, but be sure to have clicked through from TopCashback first.
Stacking 3 – Amex Offer
There’s currently a targeted Amex Offer that’s offering 10% back on Dell purchases.
Stacking 4 – Amex Business Platinum Credit
The Amex Business Platinum card has a hefty annual fee, but one of its benefits is a $100 Dell credit that’s available twice-yearly – $100 from January to June and $100 from July to December.
Stacking 5 – Visa Gift Card
Dell frequently offers some kind of additional incentive. That sometimes comes in the form of a Dell promo card that expires within a few months, but other times it’s a Visa gift card.
How These Deals Stack Up
There might be even better deals available, but here’s one that I found which means you can get a laptop for $52 before tax. The Inspiron 15 3000 is currently available for as low as $349.99 and comes with a $100 promo Visa gift card. Here’s how the math works:
- Original price = $349.99
- 10% email newsletter discount = -$35.00
- 10% TopCashback = -$31.50 (cashback will be earned on the amount paid, so after the 10% discount from the email newsletter has been deducted)
- 10% Amex Offer = -$31.50
- Amex Business Platinum credit = -$100
- Visa prepaid card = -$100
- Total = $51.99 + tax
One thing to note is that there’s a chance that TopCashback won’t track the transaction when using the 10% coupon code from the email newsletter signup. I’d say it’s still worth trying though as the worst case scenario is that you only get the 10% discount while the best case scenario is you get the 10% discount and 10% cashback.
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is it only for Dell preferred accounts these deals ? Its asking me to keyin Dell Preferred account number or social ? I am not comfortable giving social here
These deals should be available to any customer. Where are you being asked for those details?
i tried again it did not show up now.. thanks
How to get $100 visa GC? I don’t see it on dell’s website…
How long for email with coupon code to arrive? Me and my SO both signed up, and no email 1 hour later.
the laptop come with a $100 vgc that Steve showed in this write up here already expired… any folks knows of a current dell laptop that comes with the vgc at this time? TIA
Edit: nvm, found it
If you stack $100 Dell Credit by platinum card and 10% dell back AmEx offer on platinum card, the 10% back portion will be claw back by AmEx after several statements period.
In the early May, I stacked $100 Dell Credit by platinum card and 10% back AmEx offer successfully. And I had 10% back as statement credit after that however, the exact same amount of charge posted recently by AmEx. Pretty sure its claw back.
Hi, can you include a link to sign up for Dell’s newsletter please? Thanks!
I’ve just added that to the post – thanks for the suggestion.
I have the Amex Bus. Platinum, but I am not seeing the Dell $ 100 benefit. Is this only applicable to SOME, Amex Bus. Plats?
I think it should be all Amex Business Platinum cardholders. You need to enroll in the benefit first which you can find here https://global.americanexpress.com/card-benefits/enroll/shop-dell/business-platinum
Thanks.
fyi the 10% is back today as of now. think some new sales go live at 11, also.
Good to know, thanks for the heads up – I’ve marked the post as unexpired.
Wouldn’t that Newsletter promo code disqualify you from earning TCB cashback?
It might do, but as I mentioned in the post it’s worth trying anyway as it might track and you wouldn’t be worse off from trying.
Yeah, I see your point.
Btw, thanks for always responding, man 🙂
Any reports one way or the other on whether it cancels the portal payout?
While I appreciate everything you all do at FM, this post title is pretty heavy on the click-bait. I know it says or implies “as low as” $52 but how many of us really have a free $100 VISA/Dell gift card lying around or a $500 Amex Business Card. When you make post titles that assume people have two rare things so that it attracts people to read more on your blog thats total click-bait. I know you guys are better than that and this is just some sort of fluke but I’m just pointing it out because I don’t want to feel misled or see it continue in the future.
With regards to having two rare things, you get the $100 Visa gift card when buying the laptop – you don’t have to have that lying around beforehand.
As for the Amex Business Platinum card, while a lot of readers won’t have that card, it’s certainly not a “rare” card. A lot of readers also likely picked it up less than a year ago when the annual fee was only $450 and so will want to use up their $100 Dell credit before potentially cancelling the card in the next few months. This deal offered an opportunity for them to do that to buy a cheap laptop for personal use or to make a profit when reselling it.
I hate clickbait titles too and refuse to click on them on other sites. That said, this wasn’t meant as a clickbait title – there’s just a limit as to how much information we can include in a title. When a lot of readers see a title including ‘Dell’, they’ll already be aware that the Amex Business Platinum card includes a Dell credit and that that’ll likely be one of the stacking opportunities.
When looking at this site’s home page, the title I used already wraps so that it covers 6 lines – if we included even more information in the title to something like ‘Earn 10% Cashback At Dell Through TopCashback, Stack Deals (Including Amex Business Platinum Credit & Amex Offer) For ~$52 + Tax Laptop’ then it’d probably take up 12+ lines which is far too long. A more concise title would be ‘TopCashback: Earn 10% Cashback At Dell’, but that’d mean people who only read the post title wouldn’t realize they might be able to get a super-cheap laptop.
I’m sorry that you felt like it was a clickbait title, but we have to balance providing as much info in the post title as possible with needing to keep it concise. If I’d written the title as ‘WOW!!!!!! Banks Hate These 5 Weird Tricks To Save Money On A Certain Product That I Won’t Tell You About Until You Click This Link (Slideshow)’ then I’d understand the concern about a clickbait title 😉
Haha yeah I get it. Well, I suppose I misunderstood the thing about the $100 VISA gift card. I thought that was something sent to people before the purchase. Afterwards makes more sense and I would agree that this should be included in the title consideration since its available to everyone without having to spend $450 on a premium Amex Business Card. I guess if it were me I’d exclude the $100 Amex Business Dell credit for the purpose of calculating the post title then just add it in the post body like a Bonus/Optional/Pro Step. Anyways, thanks for your response and for considering my point for future posts.
No worries – I appreciate the feedback as the last thing I want to do is write clickbait post titles!
I also appreciate the feedback. I’ll weigh in as well and say that FM is all about leveraging opportunities to earn miles and use credit card benefits. Of course not not every reader has every card — but many readers do have Business Platinum cards and the post is indeed about stacking deals as the title says. I honestly don’t see how one could label that as being click-bait — the title is exactly what the post is about. If an airfare sale is valid in October but I can’t take vacation in October, is it clickbait because the available dates don’t apply to me? I’d say no — it’s just a deal that doesn’t apply to me. But personally, I’m still interested in hearing about that airfare sale because maybe it’s about a place that I could choose to go someday now that I know whatever nugget of wisdom was found within the post.
In terms of including or excluding the Dell credit from the post title, that goes back to the fact that our shopping-related quick deals are usually about stacking credit card benefits / bonus categories / shopping portal payouts / etc. While again of course not every reader has every credit card, I think it would be less of a service to readers not to let them know what the best deal they could stack would be from the get-go in the title. Frequent Miler is less of a “deals site” and more of a “loyalty programs and credit cards” site. That’s not to say that we won’t occasionally post a great deal that doesn’t fit into those two categories, but as an example we would be less likely to post an increase in portal payout for Lenovo since that news wouldn’t really fit in with the loyalty programs and credit cards side of our focus, whereas a deal on Dell does fit FM’s audience specifically because there is a credit card that offers a twice-annual-credit at Dell (on the flip side, if there were a great Amex Offer at Lenovo like there has been at times in the past, we’d be more likely to post a great Lenovo deal since that would suddenly be more relevant to our readership, many of whom may have that Amex Offer). While the Business Platinum card may not be a good fit for you, I definitely wouldn’t consider it a rare card among our overall readership. If this QD were about stacking a pepperoni pizza discount from the Chuck E Cheese credit card, I’d probably agree that it’s a bit obscure (though still fits our focus on loyalty programs and credit card benefits) – but the Business Platinum isn’t particularly rare among those in the hobby. Further, we’re not really the type of site to post a random deal on a laptop that has nothing to do with a credit card or airline miles / shopping portals, so I think it’s reasonable for readers to assume that any kind of stacking deal posted here likely involves credit card benefits / bonus categories / Amex Offers / Chase Offers / other things that apply to some folks but not everyone — whereas a site like Slickdeals is aimed at the masses rather than credit card enthusiasts, so I wouldn’t expect them to consider credit card benefits in the title.
I hope that at least helps frame why I would have titled it the same way Stephen did.
When does TCB go to 10%? It’s still showing 4%
That’s strange, it was 10% when I looked earlier and it specifically said that the rate ended in three days – it’s still showing as 10% on Cashback Monitor too.
You’re right though that it’s now showing as 4% on TopCashback. Thanks for letting me know – I’ll mark this as expired.
what morons, i planned to do my 1000$ Dell order today and it disappears it said valid till end of month.
TopCashBack is playing games again: generate referral links at rates they have no intention to pay, reel in the marks, and then quickly change the website and go into deny mode.
Why even bother with TopCashBack? They’re unethical!