Don't Believe the Claims!

I want to preface this article by saying, it’s entirely my own fault for shopping online!  I promote live-able neighbourhoods and shopping in your own neighbourhoods, but, I also don’t like to go out in the winter and therefore resort to online shopping. 

Screen Shot of Ebates.ca

I was thrilled to come across Ebates.ca (Canadian version of Ebates.com), which states there are no catches, just money back on all your online shopping through their site. Great!  I don’t like reading fine print and rarely do – it’s time consuming, onerous and if a site says there are no catches – that should be binding, period!  So, online shopping I went. 

I was pleased to see the account I opened sending me emails about the amount of money that was deposited to my online account.  So pleased, I decided I could refer friends to this site. 

Now, February is one of the months they pay out the amount you have amassed in your account over the past quarter.  Except, when I checked my online account, suddenly the figures were vastly different.  Emails to Ebates.ca were answered with a disclaimer that terms and conditions were stated on each shops’ site and certain items were not eligible for cash-back.  Hold up!  That’s not what your site says, nor the Shop.ca site that I had accessed through Ebates.ca to buy one of those items.  At checkout, Shop.ca said it couldn’t honour the discount price if the buyer was getting cash-back.  A quick calculation told me the cash-back was higher – go for the cash-back.  And true to form, a cash-back email came from Ebates.ca saying the cash-back was in my online account. 

Fast forward to February and suddenly, the cash-back from Shop.ca is ineligible due to the nature of the purchase.  A call to Shop.ca and they told me they don’t offer cash-back on the type of purchase I made and their terms and conditions are clear.  After talking with them a while and pointing out to them that, if they had no intention of honouring the cash-back, then they should have said so at checkout instead of giving the customer the choice of the discounted price with consumer code or cash-back.  Shop.ca either saw the flaw in that sort of promotion or just wanted to get me off the phone, either way, they refunded the discount they had denied.  Additionally, they stated that Ebates.ca should be sending out emails saying that the amount in the online account is pending as they work with Ebates.ca on every purchase to ensure they are eligible. 

Now, back to Ebates.ca.  To date they will not discuss this other than through email.  This should be a warning to all; if you can’t call a company, you should not be dealing with them.  But, I will let you decide – what sort of company this is and whether or not they have been duping the public with their no catches catch!
And finally, to all those I referred to this site - I apologize!