Rebates – Yen Kai's Idea Cast

Shopback $500 milestone

It’s been almost two years since I have used Shopback and I am happy to announce that I have just crossed the S$500 milestone!

Most of the cashback were accumulated from hotel bookings. Yes, I travel a lot, but most of us do travel every now and then and there’s no reason why anyone should miss out on rebates for hotel bookings. Hotel stays don’t normally come cheap, and the 6% you earn in cashback is very significant.

Earning cashback through Shopback is one of the few things that defy the saying “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is”. All it takes is a few clicks to get back a little of what you paid for online purchases.

If you haven’t signed up, you really should do it now! Free money, people.

The end of ANZ Optimum Credit Card is in sight

Received the mailer as pictured above today. ANZ Retail business taken over by DBS, and that would include the Credit Card business. It can only mean one thing – all ANZ Credit Cards will go.

As the saying goes, all good things come to an end. Also, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. You could say the 5% cashback without minimum spend and practically without cap was a dream. I am quite sure DBS will clamp down on this money losing business.

For those of us holding the ANZ Optimum card, we could probably continue to enjoy the benefits until June or so. Next best Credit Card? Well i guess, for me it will be UOB Visa Signature for overseas and foreign currency spend, and possibly OCBC 365, which gives cashback for a very wide range of spending categories. Once ANZ is no more, i will probably have to get this card.

Taobao is back on Shopback

For two months probably, Taobao went missing on Shopback. Apparently, they were revamping the mechanism for tracking Taobao purchases through Shopback.

Previously, you had to search for the item you wanted to purchase through the search bar in Shopback’s Taobao page. The obvious disadvantages of this approach were you would not be able to filter nor sort the search results like you could on Taobao website. For example, you wouldn’t be able to find the seller with the highest sales volume, and you normally want to do that. Continue reading Taobao is back on Shopback

Shopback ❤ ezbuy

Saw something familiar in the Shopback mailer today – ezbuy! 6% cashback for Prime, buy-for-me and ship-for-me (8% during the current 2 days promotion which you’ll likely miss out on unless you happen to have something in their China warehouses right now, or you’re planning to buy something from Taobao right now).

I don’t know when they will clamp down on the coupon code “65APP15” (case-sensitive), but until then i’ve been enjoying 15% discount off the shipping when i do ship-for-me (which is all i do). If i were to get another 6% cashback, it means overall, i will be getting a 20% discount off the shipping fee.

I suspect this is just for a limited period only, just like for Qoo10. In any case, you’re missing out on a lot of rebates if you haven’t signed up for Shopback, so do it now!

Update 13 July 2016

Promo already over. As suspected, this was just a sprint campaign to reach out to the Shopback customer base.

New to ezbuy? Sign up here and get $5 credit.

Save serious money on hotel bookings

I have just received S$166.16 in cashback for the hotel bookings of my recent trip, no kidding! Here’s how i did it.

Earn cashback through Shopback. Simple as that. Hotel booking websites take an average of 15% in commission from the hotel/accommodation provider for every booking done through their websites. Yes, that’s an awful lot of money! They’re willing to give you back 6% of that commission, so you better grab it! You can get this cashback if you do your hotel bookings through cashback websites, like Shopback.

Continue reading Save serious money on hotel bookings

Thank you Bank of China

All things too good to be true must come to an end, and so it did. Bank of China has finally clamped down on their “charity program” that dishes out 5% rebate on all online transactions, including payments to government services. Here is the official announcement.

I will no longer enjoy a 5% rebate for my HDB season parking payment, but the terms and conditions did not specifically mention about payments to Telcos (according to my credit card bill it seems the payment made to Telcos still count towards the 5% rebate), though there is the overarching clause that the benefits can be revoked at any time at their sole discretion.

Also, it is mentioned that the 5% rebate promotion applies from April to June 2016, which means it may be terminated completely after June. Moreover, the 5% rebate is now capped at S$30 (was S$50).

Well, i’ve enjoyed the very generous rebates for more than a year, and i must say Thank you, Bank of China!

Why i still use Ebates

There are 3 categories of spending for which Ebates works for me: eBay, US merchants and car rental. For everything else, there is Shopback.

Ebates rewards up to 5% for purchases on eBay, which is fantastic. In comparison, Shopback offers only 1% cash back for eBay purchases. The email notification pictured above tells me i have earned US$4.05 for a US$135 purchase, which works out to be a 3% cash back.

You may be wondering what is worth buying on eBay. Let me tell you – beauty product samples. Guys, don’t back away and think this does not apply to you. You have no idea how much money you may be saving when your spouse buys the sample instead of the full retail product. Even when you buy the full retail products on eBay, you’ll be saving lots compared to buying from the local store. What i do is to find those eBay sellers who have collected a large quantity of samples, where, often the total quantity is more or less the same as the retail product, but at a fraction of the price. Sometimes, you can find sellers with overstock items at less than wholesale prices (for the lower cost products only of course).

For other US branded goods, it is also great to use Ebates for cash back. There’s no stopping you from grabbing Black Friday deals, or clearance sales that happen every now and then, and earning cash back at the same time when you’re already getting a good deal. Shipping is easy, and relatively cheap (don’t use the shipping service offered on the merchant sites, they’re rip-off!).

Finally, there is car rental, for which i doubt Shopback will ever bother to offer cash back, because the demand is probably too little compared to the demand for car rental in the US. For my upcoming trip to Korea, i have two car rental arrangements with Sixt, and i’m earning cash back for the rentals, so the cash back actually works for worldwide car rentals. As you can imagine, car rentals easily cost hundreds of dollars each time, so the cash back, even at just a few percent, is very significant. Don’t lose out on such savings. Sign up for Ebates and get the cash back.

And as i have said before, for everything else, there is Shopback!

UOB Visa Signature test drive result

Got hold of the UOB Visa Signature card only recently and took it for test drive immediately. The requirement to earn 5% rebate is to spend a minimum of S$1000 of foreign currency equivalent within a statement period. It is stated in the terms and conditions that the regular 1X UNI$ (0.5% rebate) is reflected in the current statement period, and the remaining 9X (4.5% rebate) will only be given in the next statement period.

To be able to make a redemption, however, you need to accumulate at least S$2000 worth of foreign currency spending to earn the UNI$4000 required for redemption. This means you either spend S$2000 one-shot in a single statement period, or S$1000 each in two statement periods.

Continue reading UOB Visa Signature test drive result

Visa ♥ Shopback

Not wanting to be left out, Visa now partners with Shopback and dishes out more cashback if you go through the Visa promo page. However, they can’t actually force you to make payment with a Visa credit/debit card on the actual merchant’s site. All you have to do is to fill in the first 6 digits of a Visa credit/debit card to gain access to the extra cashback. On the other hand, MasterCard has already been running a similar deal with Qoo10 for a year or more, and they do enforce making payments with a MasterCard.

I seriously can’t figure out how such deals can make a difference to Visa or MasterCard. Does anyone decide on which credit card to use based on whether it is a Visa or MasterCard? I really doubt so. I guess it is just a general brand marketing campaign. The Qoo10 MasterCard promotion does give you very good discounts (more than 20%), almost unbelievable.

For one day only (1 April 2016), Visa is giving up to 20% cashback through Shopback. Redmart is one of the merchants, and i wasted no time to grab this deal. I happen to have on hand a $5 coupon code as well for answering a questionnaire from Redmart, so no better time than to utilize it than now.

20% cashback as promised — 20% cashback from Shopback as promised

Since i made payment with BOC Shop! card, i do get another 5% rebate. All in, i got $16.78 of discount for $49.10 worth of purchase, which is a whopping 34% discount!

There was also a 20% cashback for Groupon, and i bought a $60 dining voucher for $34.90. With the $6.98 cashback and 5% rebate from BOC Shop! card factored in, it is an overall discount of 56%, which is not bad. The 20% cashback promotion for Groupon lasts until 5 Apr 2016, so you might still have a chance to grab something worthwhile.

If you haven’t signed up with Shopback, why not?

Qoo10 ♥ Shopback

I never thought this would happen, but Qoo10 is now also on Shopback. All along i thought Qoo10 was doing well enough, but i guess all businesses need avenues to capture new customers. That makes life slightly more difficult for me – i need to keep track of promotions on Qoo10 that gives me discount coupons, accumulate and utilize Qpoints which are equivalent to cash, make payment using the credit card (Bank of China Shop! card) that offer rebates for online transactions, and now, i also need to initiate my shopping via Shopback. Well, if that means saving money, why not?

Update 16 Jun 2016: It must have been quite some time already that Qoo10 is no longer on Shopback.

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