Swagbucks, Walmart Savings Catcher, Ibotta, Ebates, etc.

[Just Kate]

Do you use any of these savings tools (or others)? Do they work?

I use Ebates and love it. I seem to do the best around Christmas time with it. I used to use the Walmart Savings Catcher, but I have forgotten about it recently. I shop at Walmart regularly, so I should probably give it a try again. 

What are your experiences like? Is the savings worth the time that goes in to using these services?

[Pawz4me]

I use Walmart savings catcher. Since I started in April 2016 I've saved $370.19. It takes about thirty seconds total to pay and submit a receipt. It's all done through their app.

[City Mouse]

I use several.

i use Walmart savings catcher because it is easy. Where I live there is not a lot of competition within the distance Walmart uses for the lower price thing, so I don't get very much back.

I also use Ibotta and checkout 51. I have gotten a lot more on either of those than Walmart. Ibotta deals can be  specific to each store. Thee are usually a lot more offers for Walmart than the other stores I shop at, but since we are so rural, I do grocery shop anytime I am traveling, so I can check for deals at store where I am going.

Checkout 51 has less offers that I want, and several times an offer I did plan to use is no longer available when I go to put in my receipt. Just like coupons, the offers go in cycles. To get the best deals, you have to be willing to stock up on an item while the offer is good. 

Both are annoying in that they want you to pester your friends to get more people to join, and the offer incentives if you get someone to join. 

Ibtta has deals on online shopping and travel sites. Once when traveling, I went through Ibotta to get a hotel on some website- I got a huge bonus (over 50% back).

Checkout 51 will mail a check when you want to get money out. Ibotta does gift certificates for a bunch of different stores. I usually get my money in Walmart or starbucks, but there are a lot of choices.

I tried Fetch which give points. The the points are redeemed for gift cards. I don't like it. The website is slow when uploading receipts. It made a lot of errors early on but that has gotten somewhat better. I don't buy enough of the name brand stuff to get very many points. I have deleted it, but I have pretty much stopped using it.

 

[Ann.without.an.e]

Ibotta is fantastic.  I can't speak for the others.

[Selkie]

I love Ebates and use it all the time because I do as much of my shopping online as possible.

Most of our grocery shopping is done at Walmart, since it's the best option here in our rural area. I've been using Walmart Savings Catcher since January 2015 and have gotten $1121.61 back. However, we don't really get much back anymore since we changed our way of eating and are mostly buying produce and whole food items. The savings are much greater when you are buying things like pop, frozen pizza, and chips, in my experience.

[Bambam]

I use the WalMart Savings Catcher app. I usually don't shop at Walmart at great deal, so I've only saved $38.43 over the year I've used it. I do not believe they price match Aldi's (in our area anyway), nor do they seem to price match produce like they used to. 

 

[happi duck]

I use Target Cartwheel.  It's easy and Super Target is my nearest grocery.  I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to use it though.

I didn't find much I needed on ibotta but haven't looked in a long time.

[Serenade]

I do Swagbucks but I don't necessarily recommend it.  ? 

I've been a member for about 6 years, and in that time I've earned about $2000 in gift cards to Amazon, Walmart and Home Depot (mostly to Amazon). As somebody mentioned upthread, a little here and there adds up, but Swagbucks can be very frustrating.  Some people get good offers, others don't.  I had been in a very dry period with Amazon for well over a year, and now once again I'm getting easy earning opportunities.  Swagbucks gives and Swagbucks tacketh away.  The trick is to make money when you can, and to try to walk away unfrustrated when you can't.  It's easier said than done.  I generally don't do surveys because the time investment is too great for the risk involved (people are frequently booted out at the end with nothing to show for their time, or they say the survey will take 10 minutes and it really takes a half hour.) I mostly only do the auto-run videos when they are available, since then I can earn when I'm not at the computer.

For anybody who has a real job, swagbucks is probably not worth it.  On my best days I only earn $2 or $3 dollars... Still, it does add up over time and I've been able to save up for more expensive things like a Kindle paperwhite and one of the expensive Prismacolor sets that I never would have bought otherwise.  Right now I'm working on earning enough Swagbucks for my DH to buy a ceiling fan for his office from Home Depot.  I generally use the money for extra things that I would not buy otherwise.

ETA:  I'm earning Swagbucks right now as I type this post -- my autorun videos are running in the background.  Sometimes you can't run stuff with another window open, but sometimes you can.  With Swagbucks, everything changes, and not infrequently. 

Edited August 19, 2018 by Serenade

[historically accurate]

I use Swagbucks. I'm pretty minimalist on it though. If I'm on my game (and SB is cooperating), we're talking $1 a day, but that earns me a $25 gift card to amazon monthly or bi-monthly, which I'll take for (usually) fairly little effort.

I always enter receipts in Savings Catcher. I do most of my grocery shopping at Aldi, but always "finish up" at WM. I just shoot a pic on the app, and it gives me $ back, so no stress. Our WM doesn't price-match anymore so I use the Savings Catcher now. 

I just downloaded Ibotta, but I think?? you have to know what you're buying or bought and I don't have time to scroll through looking for each item on my list or receipt, so I'm a little confused why everyone thinks it's great. 

 

[dirty ethel rackham]

We do ebates and it has saved me a ton.  I tried many of the others, but they usually weren't for items that we would buy or at stores we don't shop at.  I did have the Target cartwheel app, but it didn't save me enough to warrant space on my phone.  I don't shop much at Walmart so their app wouldn't be of much use.  I've used the Whole Foods app and saved with my Prime membership.  But we don't shop there all that often.