I seem to be catching myself making a series of stupid decisions recently, so I thought it might make a good series for the blog: Stupid Stuff I did this week…. Let’s start with TopCashBack.
I’m loyal to no loyalty program, I simply sign up for them all, and use whichever is best on that day. It means I win in the game of market forces. As such, I like TopCashBack a lot, but I’m just as likely to be shopping through BigCrumbs or Upromise. Anyways, TopCashBack shopping portal has an option to take your cash back as cash at a 1:1 ratio, or as Amazon credit with a 2.5% bonus… since I do buy things on occasion from Amazon, I thought it was a no brainer to take the extra 2.5%.. what a schmuck.
What I did was allow TopCashBack to buy Amazon credit at a discount, keep some of the spread, and pass me back the rest. instead if I had just taken the cash from them I could have cut out the middle man and made a bunch more money.
Here the $90.20 in Amazon Gift Cards I received shows the $2.20 bonus. So in other words, I started out with $88, they bumped that with a bonus. If instead I had taken the cash and put it into my left pocket, popped out to one of the many retailers where Amazon sells giftcards, I would have earned ‘at least’ 5% Cash Back.
I say ‘at least’ because it would have been 5% at Grocery or Drugstores (via Amex) or it could have been 5 Ultimate Rewards (worth more than 5% when you transfer to a partner) from an Office Supply store or maybe even as much as 10% if I had the ToysRus card (and if that proves to work with giftcard purchases). Remember, you can buy Kindle gift cards too, and use them as regular Amazon credit.
So, this week not only did I wait 4 days for them to process my Amazon Gift Card, but I also left money on the table… thinking I was the clever one.
Conclusion
There are times when I actually would encourage to cash in at a lower rate – that is when there is scale and time value to consider. However, this time, I just thought ‘wow 2.5% is a nice bonus’ and looked at the shiny things. I hope to continue the series of discrediting my expert knowledge next week, unless I forget.
PS if you haven’t joined TopCashBack yet do it NOW! Hurry.. you can use my link here and I’ll earn $10, I promise I won’t cash it in for Amazon credit next time. For full disclosure, I forget if you earn anything from this signup, but who cares as long as I get rich, $10 at a time?
I think I would reserve the schmuck designation for a more serious oversight. 5% of $90 is $4.50, and doesn’t take into account the cost of your time to drive and buy the 5% card. I know that focusing on percentages is important, and adds up after time, but the occasional slip on small amounts is not worth the self-flagellation. Sometimes, I knowingly “by pass” the highest rate possible, just to have fewer cards to manage, or fewer bills to pay. But I understand the gut feeling of “oops.”
Thanks for the vote of confidence 🙂
I too bypass, I mentioned that briefly in the post, I’m not willing to give up my time for perfect rebate optimization. That said, this time around I think I just thought it was a good enough deal and took it, without really thinking it through enough.
I’ve been leery of using TCB after reading so many people having issues with them. Maybe I should reconsider.
I don’t know, I just go with whoever pays me the most and is ‘reasonably’ well known. I avoid the new smaller operations for the most part.
That said, my Giftcard didn’t come through properly and they haven’t replied in over 24hrs…
I’d never take the Amazon bonus (FWIW, until recently, it was a 5% bonus). Why? Because I earn gas rewards at grocery, sometimes 4x. So a $500 Amazon gc purchase with a 5% card would have net cost of $475 and also earn as many as 2000 gas rewards for Safeway/Vons, valued at $50 since I my tank holds 25 gallons and can get two fill ups @ $1 off per gallon. With gas down around $2.50, paying net cost of $1.50/gal and filling up for $37.50 seems unreal. Almost as good as when FRN was letting you get gas rewards for grocery purchases. Then I was paying 10c a gallon = $2.50 for a full tank. And the only reason I was paying 10c/gallon was that was as low as the pumps would go – some people found pumps that would allow 1c/gallon and you’d fill up for a quarter…
Yeah I love me some gas rewards – we have them at Stop and Shop/Giant on the East Coast and they too sometimes have useful giftcards. Though recently I just lost a bunch of the points since the expire in 30 days….