And this Public Service Announcement post was born.
What is ebates?: Ebates is a website that gives you cashback for shopping certain websites online.
How does it work?: You open an account (there's a USA ebates and a Canadian ebates and I have accounts in both). Once your account is opened, you click the website you want to shop on from the ebates website and once your transaction is complete, your cashback is posted into your account. The cashback amount is paid out every quarter through various forms. In the past, I've had a check mailed to my home, got an Amazon.com credit and got my Paypal account credited.
In the past, I used ebates to get cashback from
- buying clothes online at Gap, BananaRepublic, LeChateau and Hudson's Bay,
- buying a vacuum cleaner from shop.ca and an air conditioner from Amazon
- booking hotels for our vacations. For our upcoming road-trip, I'm getting 8% back on our hotel bookings
Bonus: They always have a double cashback promotion for current events so right now the double cashback category is full of stores that sell school supplies and vacation themed online retailers.
Look out for: Black Friday double cashback event. It's super! I've seen stores give up to 20% cash back.
How much did ebates pay me for this enthusiastic post?: Nada! I'm just another happy customer who wants to share BUT if you sign up using the links in this post, I get a Tell-A-Friend bonus paid into my account....you know, for the Netflix ;).
PS: There are a few other websites that do the rebate thing for shoppers in US and/or Canada but ebates is the only one I've tried. Certainly if the retailer you want to shop is not on ebates, you can check the other cashback people
