A friend recently introduced me to the Ibotta app and I gave it a try. Here’s what you need to know:
It’s easy to download the free app, unlock coupons and then verify them by scanning your receipt and your product upc from the packaging after you get home from shopping. Do it right away before you lose anything or eat the food and recycle the packages.
The products are mostly name brands that are trying to increase their reach or to announce a new product release…like Post Cinnamon Rice Pebbles cereal. But there are some unbranded coupons available, like “any bread” “any milk” “eggs” or “bananas.” There is a large amount of coupons for alcohol–which doesn’t feel very classy, but it was easy enough to scroll past them for the real food.
The same coupons work at multiple stores, but are usually limited to 1 or 2 of the same item at any 1 location. If you use a coupon at Wal-mart, it will disappear from your options for that store for the week, but you might be able to unlock the same coupon for another store.
Not all the coupons are for food. Jo-Ann crafts and a handful of clothing stores are participating too. When I first started there was only 1 coupon at JoAnn, but there are a more available now.
Once you earn $20 or more in rebates, you can request the cash sent to you via paypal or though gift cards. In a little over 3 weeks, I earned about $38. Since I have a business paypal account with fees taken out of it, I opted for an Amazon gift card.
You can earn additional money by sharing a link with friends who don’t already us the app. They’ll give you $5 credit when a new friend joins through your link and redeems their first coupon.
Most of the foods are rare treat type foods and not our every day staples, but I’ve still found several things that I could use each week.
What about you? Have you ever used Ibotta before? Do you use any other coupon/rebate apps?
I’ve started using it. It’s fun and easy to use for the most part and doesn’t take too much time. I haven’t been able to earn enough to transfer to my paypal, but it’s definitely something I’ll keep using.
I agree, Aimee, it’s fun and not too time consuming. I opted for an Amazon gift card this time to save the fees which only come in fixed denominations of $20, $25 and $50…so I had to save some of my earnings for later. But it let me buy my daughter the hydraulic lift system for a coffee table/desk she wants to build for a final cost of $2!
I really like it. Usually it is stuff I’m going to buy anyway, so getting 25 or 50cents extra is nice. And when it matches with stores’ weekly sales or other rebate apps and I can “double dip” that is great too! And since these are rebates and not considered manufacturer’s coupons, you can use those too.
Just a heads up, if you go under Settings / Preferences, you can remove the option of them showing Beer, Wine, and Spirits rebates.
Ooh, good tip! Thank you!
Yes definitely worth it, though I have to be careful not to buy things I normally wouldn’t and don’t need. On the flip side there’s things on there we need and I can afford them because of rebates. Though I had friends trying to support me and use my referral code so we get bonuses that has not worked yet. They have just updated the app so maybe it will work.
One thing I will never forget is before Easter I was getting free Trident from Target stacking discounts and other rebate items. I had to submit my receipts by the deadline that night, when i did it triggered 3 bonuses I wasn’t really paying attention to and what was in my account was multiplied by almost 5 times and I “cashed out” into paypal to have more grocery money, a big blessing! But I am going to make sure we are not getting fees for this service in our paypal account, thanks for mentioning that! Thank you Angela for your many great tips!
Gayle, You will only get paypal fees if you have a business account with paypal. Most people have a free account.
Do you need ti block out your debit digits or credit card digits on the reciept?
I don’t, because I just scan the barcode at the bottom of the receipt and don’t take a picture of the whole receipt. The receipt doesn’t print the full debit card number anyway, but I always use cash so there’s not even a snippet on mine.