Three small cash back opportunities

A couple interesting cash back opportunities have crossed my desk recently that I wanted to make sure readers are aware of.

Lemoney Turbo Cashback bounties

Lemoney is a relatively new cashback portal. In general it has earning rates in line with other cashback and loyalty shopping portals, but it’s distinguished by a ridiculously complicated referral system, extremely long delays in transactions becoming payable, and what they call “Turbo Cashback.”

In its current iteration, Turbo Cashback comes in the form of credits that can be strategically applied to purchases made through the portal to maximize your total cashback (and the total amount of time you waste on the site). For example, at GiftCardMall.com you can you earn 1.5% cashback, or apply between 1 and 5 Turbo Cashback credits to raise your rate to between 7% and 23% on the first $80 of your order.

Like I said, it’s complicated, and I don’t fully understand all the moving pieces myself.

However, what I recently noticed is that Lemoney has introduced offers to earn additional Turbo Cashback credits by referring people or by making purchases above a certain amount at certain merchants. For example, you if you spend $50 at Barnes & Noble, or $100 at GiftCards.com, you earn a credit you can then apply to a future purchase.

Strategically, you would want to store up these credits and use them on a particularly large purchase at a merchant with a particularly high cap on Turbo Cashback. That’s a bit of a unicorn, but if you’re already planning to shop somewhere like Blue Apron (37% back on up to $200) or Fitbit (21% back on up to $200) there’s no reason you couldn’t save some real money.

As I mentioned, Lemoney has a very elaborate referral scheme I can’t even begin to explain, and you can find my personal referral link on the Support the Site! page.

Bumped is a gimmicky new in-person rewards app

It seems like every few weeks a new one of these programs comes along (remember Drop?), and this season it’s “Bumped,” the gimmick of which is that you receive fractional shares of the participating companies you shop at when you shop there using linked credit and debit cards. Shop at Netflix, get Netflix stock, shop at Dunkin’ Donuts, get Dunkin’ Brands stock.

This strikes me as a fairly stupid conceit, but they’re wasting their investors’ money, not mine, so I’m not in any position to complain.

There are a few hoops to jump in while getting set up in the program. Besides linking your credit and debit cards, you also have to select one merchant within each merchant category where you want to receive your rewards. The list is pretty limited right now, and many categories only have a single merchant. You can also change your selection once every 30 days, up to 3 times per year (and an unlimited number of times during your first 5 days of enrollment).

Finally, they currently are enrolling people off a waiting list, and I don’t know of any way to skip the line, so sign up now with your favorite throwaway e-mail address.

I do not know if they use the same technology as Drop, Ebates, and other in-person cashback schemes, so I don’t know what the options are for double- or triple-dipping with this deal.

Ebates/Lyft Partnership

This is a weird one, but a no-brainer for anyone who prefers Lyft to Uber for ethical reasons, or who simply keeps an eye on the prices in both apps when deciding which to order a car from.

To take advantage of this deal, you have to download the Ebates app. Then, log in and search for Lyft. Click “lyft Get a ride” and you’ll be prompted to open the Lyft app. Then order your ride as usual and you’ll earn $1 in Ebates cashback. There don’t appear to be any limits on this, as long as it lasts.

This is a classic case of Lyft riders who don’t participate subsidizing riders who do (if everyone participated rides would all have to go up $1 in price), so make sure you’re one of the riders who does.

You can also find my personal Lyft and Ebates referral links on the Support the Site! page.