Cartera Launches Cashback Portal ‘Splender’

Splender Shopping Portal

The Cartera shopping network is the backdrop behind many mileage and points portals that we use, such as Southwest, United, American, Delta, Plenti and many more. They’ve now released their own cashback shopping portal called Splender which will deal directly with consumers.

Interestingly, the Splender portal has been around already since June as per their press release, but it’s only popped up recently on Cashbackmonitor and that’s when we noticed it. (Possibly, the added attention is due to the more recent addition of a referral bonus, details below.)

The portal has a nice, clean layout and a very professional feel, even more than the other portals they run in my opinion.

Payment Details

The portal offers payment in the form of check or Paypal when a minimum of $10 has been accrued. And they’ll cover the payment fee for Paypal payments which leaves the full cashback amount to be paid out.

Payout are made once per month on the last business day of the calendar month.

As with all shopping portals, the cashback isn’t available immediately. The purchase will first be initially  confirmed as Pending, usually within 3-5 business days, and the funds will be held until 45 days from the original transaction date.

Accounts can be dormant for up to 24-months with no adverse action. After that, they’ll deduct $2.50 per month until balance is depleted or member becomes active again.

Payout Rates

Since the time we started noticing Splender, they’ve been showing the highest cashback rates for various merchants at various times.

Since they are an established shopping portal and they seem serious about offering competitive rates, I’m guessing that they’ll be a serious player going forward, along with the other major portals like Ebates, Topcashback, Befrugal, etc.

Referral Program

More recently, Splender announced a referral program which offers a bonus to both the new member and the referring member.

  • New member gets $5 when signing up through a referral link and making a $50 purchase within ninety days after signing up. (This is in addition to the standard cashback which they will receive.)
  • Referring member gets $10 after new member makes a $50 purchase.

Here is my referral link. I appreciate if you sign up with it. You can find your own referral link here.

Note that there is an exclusion stated that you can’t refer a member of your household and get a bonus.

Final Thoughts

I’m really excited about this new portal since I generaly prefer cashback over miles; it isn’t often that a new major player enters the game. In this case, there’s a big advantage of knowing the ins and outs of the portal (e.g. whether it will or won’t work on gift cards) since we have data points from the other portals which run through Cartera.

As always, be sure to compare the rates of all shopping portals and make sure you’re getting the best rate by using a site like Cashbackmonitor or Cashbackwatch. Happy shopping!
    Chuck
  • On November 27, 2015, 11:19

View Comments (21)

  • @Thomas: we've addressed all the issues brought to our attention. FYI, the biggest culprit to lost tracking is people forgetting to turn off ad blockers or clicking links from other sources (i.e. various coupon sites) and overwriting cookies before finalizing their purchases. If you're careful and follow the proper click path you shouldn't have issues.

    If for some reason you've got questions/concerns you can contact our Customer Care team (https://www.splender.com/#!/contact) or reach the Marketing team via Twitter (https://twitter.com/shopsplender) and we'll do whatever we can to make sure you have a great experience.

    Thanks for giving us a shot!

  • I just used your referral link to purchase 3x Chevron gas gift cards on ebay for a total of $276. I was hoping to see a higher payout than ebates (only 1% on gift cards at both), but figured I would give Splender a shot due to the $5 sign up bonus.
    It appears from some of the comments above that payouts were not showing up in people's accounits after 45 days; did these issues ever get rectified?

  • I've had nothing but bad luck with Splender.
    Never rec'd the $5 for using Doc's link.
    Had to write them about numerous small purchases not tracking.
    Had my father sign up and not only didn't I see his signup on my account, his purchase was never credited.

    • Hmm, is it only Splender that you've had issues with? Maybe it's worth checking out other things, like if your cookies are set properly, etc. I haven't had any problems with them or with any other portal.

  • Has anyone got the $5 sign up bonus yet? I haven't gotten it and my most recent purchase was over $50

    • I think it takes a while. I keep getting email notifications about approved referrals ($10 per referral), but nothing actually came through yet. Hopefully, by the end of this month.

      • FYI, the bonuses should show in your My Account page about 45 days after the transaction event which originally qualified you for the bonus. The email notifications let you know that you're eligible for the bonus, and once the transaction clears (i.e. ~45 days later) the appropriate bonus amount should be reflected in your account.

        Thanks for using Splender!

        • @Garrett

          Per twitter, I cannot send direct messages to users that are not following me. Can you send me your email contact info to resolve this issue? Customer support email is also ignoring my last email sent 5 days ago.

        • @Garrett,

          Yes, I have contacted customer care and just got canned vague responses such as:

          "Sorry for the delay in responding. Taxes and shipping are not included. If you qualified, you would have received an email indicating as such. At this time, the bonus is not showing as a line item in the accounts as pending, but will post 45 days after the qualifying transaction and then pay out during the next redemption. Redemption happens at the end of every month, you will be paid out if there is $10 in your account at the time it is processed.
          Please see the terms and conditions for any other questions you might have. "

          your chat feature is also never available, not really thrilled with the customer service options available to the customer.

        • I can't stand Splender. I made a $50 purchase over two months ago and still haven't received the $5 referral bonus. The referral bonus is a sham as far as I'm concerned.

          • Calvin, sorry to hear that you've had some challenges. Did you contact Splender Customer Care so they can research this for you (https://www.splender.com/#!/contact)? I can assure you that our referral bonus is not a sham. If you've made eligible bonus purchases, we'll make sure you get the reward you're entitled to.

        • Thanks Garrett!

          When does the email notification usually get sent out for the person who made the $50 purchase?

          • @Calvin:
            Assuming you signed up via a referral link, the $5 bonus email confirm notification should be sent right around the time that a qualifying $50+ purchase is shown as pending in your account.

  • Always a good idea to review and add to Frequentmiler's Laboratory resource to keep building out the set of data points. It sounds like in this case we can use United, AAdvantage, etc. portals as proxies for the likelihood of cashback success with Splender, but can't hurt to add more Splender-specific experiments.

  • For Newegg it says gc are excluded. Do you know if that's enforced? Does the $5 referral bonus count toward the $10 cash out requirement?

    • @Eric: yes, the $5 bonus counts toward the $10 payment threshold...so, you'll be halfway there after your bonus. :)

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