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When reader Drew pointed out earlier that the Capital One Shopping portal ended referrals, I went looking for the messaging on the website even though Drew had provided a mobile screen shot. That led me to an awesome find: while it was easy to see your pending rewards under “My Rewards & Savings”, I discovered that you can see when the rewards are scheduled to post / become available to redeem. Just click “Help” in the menu bar on the desktop site.
Many readers have commented or written to ask when Capital One Shopping rewards will become available to use. I frequently remind people that competitor Rakuten only pays out once a quarter, so it can be 4 or 5 months until you get paid on a Rakuten purchase. However, Rakuten makes it easy to see when to expect to get paid out.
I also typically don’t count on portal rewards posting for at least 2 or 3 months. Most retailers have a “return” or “money-back” period and aren’t going to pay commission to a shopping portal until sometime after that period has passed. In turn, most portals aren’t going to make rewards available to the end user until they know that they are receiving their expected commission.
As you can see above, the amount of time between purchase date and “Available” date varies wildly by merchant — as I would have expected. But there are a number of really positive things with this Capital One Shopping page:
- You can click to “See exclusions” to easily see what would not earn rewards
- You can know how long you may need to keep something active to receive rewards. For instance, I now know that I should probably keep my Consumer Cellular account active until March 10th if I decide that I ultimately want to cancel.
I wish that Capital One Shopping included this information on the main “My Rewards & Savings” page, but I’m glad to see it is findable somewhere. This will be incredibly useful moving forward to track when to expect rewards to post.
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Just completed the purchase of the $ 20-month plan with my activated offer of $225, how long does it take to show up in Pending Rewards? Currently, there is nothing.
As an update and data point, it was posted eventually and immediately as a reward ready to redeem but never showed up in pending rewards.
data point – Received my $150 referral credit today and my wife received her $150 today as well for signing up with my link. Bought $300 in gift cards with no problem.
Nick – thanks for this update I am learning so much from your site and podcast! I joined CapOne with a referral code on your FB page when they were offering the $200 referral. How long does that take to hit and where will I see it? I can not see any bonus from my joining or the two family members who used my referral code for $100 each?
took me 14 days from the day I referred my wife (she spent the $10 minimum that day) for us each to receive $150
Posted for me
some of them show”Adjusted” it means I earned or donot earned?
BTW what to redeem these days? Expedia gift card?
Great insight, I never would have found this feature (apparently my wife is right that I dont like to ask for ‘help’).
My experiences have generally matched yours with portals taking a few months, but the Chase portal (which admittedly doesnt usually have the best rates) seems to be quicker than that. I pool all the earnings on all my chase cards monthly to one account, and have found one of my freedom cards has had a negative balance for the past year because I earned shopping portal rewards (Walmart.com) and returned an item after moving points around.
Mine was for a trivial number of poiints (~1,000) and I’m sure if you try gaming this at scale they’d eventually shut you down, but its interesting nonetheless.
They are showing under “Help Center” in the app as well.
Thank you, Nick. Very helpful post – I just asked this question yesterday in a comment to another CapOne post. It’s a bit odd that the various Cartera sites pay out giftcards.com purchases within a couple of days and CapOne holds on to the funds for three months. I assume they get their money from giftcards.com within days. Hope they haven’t forgottenthat I referred my spouse for $150 when that purchase reward finally posts.
What Cartera sites are you talking about? The American Airlines eShopping portal is the only one I can think of where I’ve ever seen a purchase become payable within a couple of days – and it’s crazy that they do that. I think you’re totally wrong in the assumption that they get their money within days. Almost every portal on earth takes two or three months to make rewards payable. I don’t imagine that websites are sending over commissions any sooner than that because they want to know that you’re purchase is gone through and not been returned or reported as fraud. And I can’t imagine that they are all processing individual transactions immediately. I imagine many of them probably batch process once a week or once a month to indicate that commission is due on a sale and then again probably initiate payments once a week or once a month or something like that.
Not sure why they would forget that you referred somebody? I think we noted several times that the referral bonuses posted within a couple of weeks, much faster than the rewards from purchases (as another commenter notes below).
These time frames are pretty industry standard.
I purchased a bunch of things on AA Shopping during the BF shopping period. Some of the items (clothing, shoes) are still returnable and yet I have received the miles and LPs. It usually took a few days, less than a week.
I also made some GC.com purchases on other portals when Cartera sites had the 1000 miles bonus offer for installing the buttons. Most of those have posted; the only exception is UA. They were all miles portals, not cashback, so perhaps Cartera has the ability to claw back miles?
I doubt that AA Shopping and other Cartera sites would payout the miles before they receive their kickback from the online stores.
The only portal I use that has a lengthy waiting period (other than now a Cap One) is Rakuten with their quarterly batch payment approach.
I’m scratching my head over your response, Nick. In addition to American, the United MileagePlus shopping portal pays out within a couple of days as well. So does Alaska. Rakuten records Membership Rewards earned within a few days too, even though they only transfer those MR in your account quarterly. Although not a portal, MileagePlus X (which I use a lot) normally pays out within an hour. What does happen (rarely) is point reversals for reasons unknown (probably the merchant calculated the points owed differently than the portal), but the payout itself is pretty fast. I think the airline portals actually do process transactions individually and not in batches.
So what happens when I have clicked thru everything, see there is NO pending rewards, but when I click on My Rewords and Savings, I see the transactions captured BUT the shopping Reward Status shows INELIGIBLE. I have made sure I complied with all T&Cs. The note for this states:
Ineligible
The retailer has indicated that the order was either cancelled or returned in full, or that the product purchased was ineligible to earn rewards.
NOTE: This is for a Tripadvisor experience at 21% or more due to link they sent in email. The experience is not happening till early 2024, so my HOPE is that it converts to Pending/Purchased at some time.
I’m not sure about that. I’ve booked things several months in advance numerous times and got in the payouts as expected so far. At the same time, if that’s your only purchase, it’s probably worth finding something else for a couple of dollars. They have tons of great targeted rates. I just got another email today at 12% back at gift cards.com and 18% back at Hertz.
I’m seeing this as well on many transactions that are accurate like Klook, Walmart, etc. now show as “Ineligible”. It’s like someone broke this deal. I should have seen the writing on the wall when they stopped allowing redemptions for Amazon gift cards. I think they have killed this golden goose for me.
I hate to repost on this but I was just thinking that these “Ineligible” purchases hurt worse than they seem at first glance since you had to choose to go through Cap One Shopping and may have missed using another shopping portal. So not only did you not get what you should have but you missed out on other rewards as well. I just deleted the Cap One browser extension so we’ll see if this helps to reset this for me down the road.
I’ve had a similar experience with the C1 shopping portal. But I’ve had success contacting their customer service, who extend a manual award in the correct amount. It’s a pain submitting screenshots, but I’ve had better luck appealing with C1 than Rakuten or Top Cashback. I assume C1 is being more generous so folks continue to use during the “growing pains” period. This experience (and the cash out via gift card requirement) narrows where I use C1 Shopping to significantly better returns than other portals but still a purchase that I’m OK not receiving anything on. But with the targeted offers, I still find that I’m using it quite a bit.
I have screen captures and read the T&Cs before purchase. It is a Tripadvisor which is 2!% targeted. What is the custoemr service email that works as I have tried the “help” email and have gotten no response. This email, not response. help@capitaloneshopping.com
That’s the email address I use. I emailed them on 02-Dec and received a response on 04-Dec. I had to submit my documentation twice but ultimately received what I should have a couple of days ago.