I am really excited to share with you all a new cash back website called Giving Assistant. If you follow my deals, you’ll know that I am big on shopping online thru cash back portals. If you are already planning on purchasing something online, you might as well shop thru a portal and earn cash back for your purchases! Why leave that extra money on the table, right? The cash back you earn over one year could possibly even cover the cost of paying tax & shipping on the items you’ve purchased! My mantra, when it comes to saving and shopping online: Every Penny Counts!
Now it’s even quicker to get your cash back from shopping online with Giving Assistant. Recently, I had to have flowers delivered to a close friend for a special occasion. I decided to try out Giving Assistant since I had to purchase them online.
Here’s why:
Giving Assistant will pay out your cash back within 72 hours!
Wow! This is a bit different from other cash back portals, which require you to meet a minimum threshold and often pay out quarterly or several months later. It’s nice to know that you could possibly get the cash back in the same week that you made your purchase. This is great if you need to pay the same credit card you used. You could easily use this earning to pay for a portion of your balance.
Select a Charity & donate your cashback
In addition to quicker cash back pay, Giving Assistant allows you to pick a charity and donate 100% of your cash back to the charity of your choice! If you’re not shopping online through a portal, now would be a great time! Being a conscious shopper is now easier than ever with Giving Assistant! If you don’t care for earning cash back, you might care about giving to others. The cash back you earn can be automatically giving to the charity of your choice. This is what sets Giving Assistant a part from other cash back portals. The core of their values should be just enough for you to sign up right now!
Giving Assistant has over 1,000 cash back stores, many of which you probably already shop from anyway. They also have a neat section that allows for you to find coupons for many major retailers!
Here’s what I bought:
A beautiful bouquet of flowers, priced at $39.99. After tax and delivery, I paid about $49.23 out of pocket. I received $7.15 back in cashback! My total cost for this bouquet after cash back was $42.08.
I made the purchase on Saturday, with the delivery made on Monday, and I received the cash back on Tuesday. My cash back was confirmed as in my bank account on Wednesday. How awesome is that?
A few things you should know before signing up:
- Giving Assistant is extremely easy to sign up for and is 100% free to use. You just need an email address to get started! You can also choose to signup and login via Facebook. The sign up process is so easy. Click here to sign up for your free account.
- To get paid, Giving Assistant requires a Visa or Master Card Debit Card to be linked to your account. That means you have to link your Debit Card to get a direct deposit into your bank account.
- You can also opt to get a check sent to you via mail but that will take 90 days to process and the payout threshold is $10. Ultimately, the fastest way to receive your cash back is via Debit Card. If you’re not comfortable with this option (as some people may be skeptical to link their Debit Card) I would suggest applying for a free PayPal Mastercard Debit Card as an extra step of security and peace of mind.
- Instead of focusing mainly on just “stores” Giving Assistant organizes their website by product types. This is evident in the menu located in the footer where the products are organized by Accessories, Beauty, Clothing, Electronics, Flowers, etc. Clicking on any one of these links will bring you to a page with Coupons and current Promotions that all stores are running in that department. I’ll refer to this section as the Coupon Section.
Giving Assistant is a fairly new cash back portal. There are a few kinks which I will list here for you that I hope they will upgrade or fix:
- The Coupon Section does not have a cash back percentage (%) listed on the page – you have to go to the individual cash back store page to find this percentage. If you are shopping for a particular “product type” and not necessarily a specific “store” then it’s hard to “compare” the cash back percentages (when using a cash back portal, being able to compare which store gives the highest cash back is perhaps one of the best ways to shop and earn cash back).
- If you click on the link in the top right-hand corner where it says “1,056 Cash Back Stores” you’ll find a complete list of all the cash back stores and the percentage! This is a neat list but it’s also overwhelmingly long. I would love to see it organized by store categories or even a better way of displaying this information so that it’s easier to digest.
- While using FireFox to browse the site, I was unable to copy the coupon codes and something odd kept happening: Once I clicked to copy a coupon code, I was unable to copy or paste or type it in any of my open window tabs. There seems to be an issue with the AJAX (or whatever type of technology that is being used to built this functionality). Ultimately, I had to switch browsers to complete my cash back order.
- Once you find the store you want to earn cash back from and you click on the SHOP NOW button, the store website does not open in a new window. It would be nice to have it open in a new window so that you don’t leave the Giving Assistant site in case you want to “shop around” or stay on the site for other reasons.
- Lastly, there is no confirmation page in between “clicking” the SHOP NOW button and going to the actual store website. This is known as an “interstitial page.” Having an interstitial to further reinforce or confirm that you’re going to an outside website to earn cash back would be a great usability function that is currently missing.
Once you sign up and shop to earn cash back and if you find that your cash back did not track or if you don’t see your cash back in your account, you can contact Giving Assistant by clicking on the “Help” link located at the bottom of each page, in the footer. My personal advice –and as a general rule of thumb, always wait at least 24-48 hours to see if your cash back appears. If it doesn’t within this time frame, then you may be safe to contact them for further help. As with all cash back portals, patience is the key.
I hope you found my review helpful. Please let me know in the comments below if you do decide to sign up and what your experience is once you shop thru the portal. Ready for some quick cash back? Click here to signup with Giving Assistant!