Update 12/11/21: A few new notable additions including Lowe’s, Old Navy and Children’s Place now earn 5% back in-store. I’m also seeing Macy’s and New Balance at 12% and a number of other increased offers.
The Offer
- Â Rakuten is offering an in-store offer to get 5% cashback when you use a linked card at numerous stores:
- Walmart
- Walgreens
- Best Buy
- Gamestop
- Office Depot/Max
- Petco
- PetSmart
- Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack
The Fine Print
- Â Offers expire 12/24 at 23:59 PST
- Not valid for gift card purchases
- Unlimited use
- A linked offer is good for 1 hour after initial redemption
- $5 limit for the Office Depot deal
- Valid only at participating stores
Our Verdict
There’s no limit to how many times you can use this offer, but you have to re-link it each time after use before using again. I’m not seeing any limit to these deals (other than Office Max which has a $5 limit) which makes this an awesome offer for in-store shoppers.
If you are new to Rakuten, you can get $30 when using a referral link (the $40 offer is not around at the moment, unfortunately).
Hat tip to jerseyguy195
Can you stack both Rakuten and Dosh?
OD/OM clawed back
Rakuten clawed back all my Wal-Mart pending points. Boo.
My Lowes “approved” credits are slowly but surely getting clawed back, but not in chronological order. I had a bunch of split payments so hopefully some sneak through.
How much in spend did you have?
Roughly $7k that actually tracked. Around 60% has been removed so far. Since it just disappears as opposed to still showing on my account but zeroed out, can’t determine if there is any pattern, but it’s not chronological at least, since some of the first transactions I did are still showing.
How much in spend did you have?
The terms seem to say there a lots of exclusions. Does it work on grocery purchases at Walmart?
DP. You can link those Happy physical gift cards to generate cash back for in-store purchases. It tracks. Not sure if it’s gonna stick. Fun stuff.
Back when Bed Bath and Beyond still had in-store Cashback I earned about $1000 in Cashback and it paid out, but that was about 2 years ago.
Wish the old style physical happy holidays cards were still around.
There are several physical happy gift cards featuring Bed Bath and Beyond, such as Bride and Student, both of which are on sale at Amazon from time to time.
Have a problem AmEx card I’m unable to add for in store offers – the error message is “Cards issued outside of the USA and Canada are not supported.” but it is a US issued card so I’m not sure what the actual issue could be.
Any idea why this would happen? No issues so far adding other cards inc AmEx.
Data point: Spent $59.40 at Wal-Mart today on a linked card, got email telling me I got $2.97 in cashback about 2 hours later. That’s 5%. Of my purchase, $50 was a VGC. It’s already showing in my Rakuten cash balance.
I suppose they could claw it back later, but unless they go out of their way to do so and manually review, seems like it should work OK. YMMV.
If only you could buy a VGC with a VGC… Link the old card for in store cash back on the new card. Gotta love Capitalism.
Gonna use for Walmart purchases on Chase freedom flex gonna add a gift card to purchase fingers crossed I get 10%.
How do they know if you’re purchasing a gift card? Does it code differently?
Any DPs on if gift cards are truly excluded?
If not, then I’ll take one for the team and try it today.
I don’t think it’s enforced. But if you abuse it, prepare for manual review and shutdown.
errr. gift card excluded…..