Of course the deal said "up to" 7%, so after I made the purchase, I read the fine print. 7% back was for hotel and rental car packages. Yeah, okay. Then it dropped to 5% for just hotels, 3% for just rental cars... and for airfare? Well, you get $1.50 per ticket. Yep, you read that right. One dollar and 50 cents, no matter how much you spent on the ticket.
Then I thought maybe it was $1.50 for each leg of the trip. After all, I had to purchase two flights there and two flights back. $1.50 x 4 legs = $6. It's not $22, but it's SOMETHING and when added to my other Ebates rewards, it would add up to a nice little sum—enough to buy a used book or an ice-cream cone or something.
Today, the harsh reality hit. One ticket = one round trip. So my Ebates reward for purchasing my $323 ticket through Travelocity was $1.50 total (which works out to about 0.0046 or 1/2% cash back).
I saved more than that buying a tank of gas for my car at the cheap gas station & I only had to spend $17—a much better ROI.
Is it $1.50 more than I would have had had I not used Ebates? Sure. Are there other ways I could've saved more given the effort? Absolutely.
So far, my payout for using Ebates has been $5.67. Again, this is a service that rewards you the more you shop online and I just don't do a lot of shopping (either online or off). Call me crazy, but it's one of the ways I save money—by not spending it in the first place.
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I will gladly accept the $5.67 (which will be deposited to my savings account that earns 1.05%), but it's not the $200/month that the original blogger (on whose affiliate link I clicked) told me I could save.
I'm sure, at the end of the year, when I add up all the little savings and rebates, I'll be happy that I at least gave it a shot. But I think this is another one of those things that people earn more via affiliate income than actually saving through the app.
If you want to try to save money by using Ebates, here's my affiliate link: https://www.ebates.com/r/NDEYTO2?eeid=28187
(Maybe you'll be better at it than I am.)
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