Cashrewards should be renamed Norewards

[QF WP]

Okay, so I weakened and bought some more wine in late August and late September through both Cracka and Cellarmasters, on all 3 occasions receiving the tracking email "Cashrewards your sale tracked from..."

But no CR response to my earlier email. So I threw another grenade on 5th Oct:

From: QF WP
Sent: Thursday, 5 October 2017 6:00 PM
To: 'Andrew Clarke' <[email protected]>
Cc: '[name] at Cashrewards' <[email protected]>
Subject: FW: Cashrewards drops the ball

Yep, although I gave you more time than stated, still nothing has been done and no response from anybody as Cashrewards. Looks like it’s time for my social media campaign…

{sent copy of MyReward screen showing transactions}

You had your chance….

 

[alieninperth]

Any response to that email. Interestingly none of my transactions at Dan Murphy tracked in Sept or Oct. A few claims, using their forms, and they have all been credited now. Maybe there is a growing issue with them crediting.

 

[QF WP]

Of course not, so I commenced a targeted SM campaign. I posted on their Twitter account and Facebook. To their credit, their FB team answered same day, however it was the canned response:

We are sorry to hear that you have experienced difficulties regarding the approval of your cashback.
Here at Cashrewards we are dedicated to ensuring that you receive cashback on all eligible purchases.
Please do not hesitate to send us a message with your Cashrewards email address and a member of our team will further assist you.
Thanks,
The Cashrewards Team

 

[QF WP]

I had better things to do for a couple of weeks, so then when I tried to relieve my account of the small amount due to me ($60.63) and their computer system failed, they got both barrels:

"I've tried that twice and even copied in Andrew Clarke, but nothing seems to work. Now you can't even keep your server up and running - got a 504 Gateway Time-out error. Nothing like your backend server not responding when I am trying to access what little $ you have processed correctly."

They did come back on my FB post within 20 mins, posting:

"We would really love to resolve this issue for you! If you could private message us with the email address linked to your Cashrewards account we will investigate immediately.

We apologise for the site wide error, our tech team is currently working to get the site running as soon as possible. Please be assured this is not a regular occurrence.

We look forward to hearing from you soon and resolving this ASAP

The Cashrewards Team"

They also had another client posting on FB about the same issue (their SSL certificate on the website wasn't working), so I joined his thread and gave it to them there as well:

"Something that should have been done before it lapsed...but I've come to expect that from Cashrewards."

 

[QF WP]

So the fun began. I wasn't letting them off lightly. They quickly responded:

"we do understand this can be frustrating! The issue should be resolved within the next hour.
Please accept our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience"

You're damn right about that, Cashrewards. You have my money and won't give it to me! When, as I expected, they didn't fix it in their timeframe (they forgot to underpromise and overdeliver, they did it in reverse), I was onto them again:

"Not fixed for me..."

Straight away, they replied:

"Please be assured the site will be up and running as soon as possible! It will not affect your account or rewards in any way

The Cashrewards Team"

and the OP also wasn't happy, so we tag teamed them:

"SSL certificate seems to be good but unable to login

might hold off until I do further shipping"

They tried to placate us:

"Please be assured we are working on this issue. We understand it can be frustrating, however it will be resolved very soon

Thank you for your patience"

Well, my patience was running out ... fast. I'd purchased things in good faith, using their software and they weren't tracking them correctly, or had failed to follow up after the expiration of their own timeframes, or (even worse) weren't paying me my dues...so I left that day with a parting shot across their bows:

"Easy for us to resolve - go and use another service...."

 

[QF WP]

It took until the next afternoon to resolve their website issues and they finally posted:

"Just letting you know our site is back up and running with all issues now resolved

you are now able to log back in and continue shopping

We apologise for the inconvenience. Thanks for shopping online with Cashrewards."

and

"We would really love to resolve this issue for you! If you could private message us with the email address linked to your Cashrewards account we will investigate immediately."

so I did...

Well, lo and behold, look what happens in my account next - blue ticks appeared everywhere:



and now their systems were working, I went back in and completed the transaction to take out what I could.

 

[QF WP]

I will never trust them again and I will agitate for every transaction, every time...because they lost my trust and loyalty by failing to respond in the beginning. I'm actively looking at the other options in this space...and I'll be using whichever gives me back the most, as loyalty is a 2 way street....

 

[Legoman]

I've had all my purchases credited eventually with Cashrewards in spite of many not being tracked automatically. I probably only get a 50% success rate on autotracking by cookie. To make Cashrewards work for you unfortunately requires a lot of work on your part gathering evidence to submit for the eventual claim. For this reason I dont recommend it to anyone I know because I know they haven't got the time and incentive to be able to track things and follow them up for the time period required.

In my experience, you need to print every single piece of correspondence you get about each and everyone of your purchases to a contiguous PDF file. This means the e-mailed receipt from both the vendor+PayPal (if applicable), the order acknowledgement e-mail, the shipping advice e-mail, the payment received e-mail, the copy of the page of your credit card statement with all non-relevant entries redacted out and with the applicable exchange rate highlighted, the Cashrewards acknowledgement of tracked purchase e-mail and any other relevant correspondence that happens during the lifecycle of the order between ordering and receipt of goods. On top of that, you need to mark-up the resulting document with the Cashrewards cashback amount that was relevant when you ordered (1%, 2%, 3% etc.) because this changes frequently and you're not going to remember what it was 3 months down the track.

When you have this kind of a documented papertrail as evidence to submit for the missing purchase claim, the Cashrewards people cave immediately and just credit you the rewards you're claiming without discussion or argument and they approve them immediately without the 2-3 month waiting time. It's a lot of work which is why I don't expect anyone else to do it and why I don't act as free advertising for Cashrewards to my friends because I know they haven't go the time to chase it to this degree for 40c cashback, but it's what you need to do.

You need a rock solid reliable way of creating & editing the PDF document you'll need and the computer skills and wherewithall to file the evidence and ability/incentive to follow it up. If you can do it, then it works. If it sounds like too much trouble to be worth the effort, then yes, Cashrewards is more like Norewards.

They promote it as easy and automatic, but it's definitely not. You do need to put in a LOT of time and effort for the very minimal returns.

 

[QF WP]

Now that two of the 3 Cellarmasters purchases have been credited, I've withdrawn the money. They have missed plenty of opportunities to get more from me with airfares, accom ad the like lately, but I'm not about to give them a cent more than they deserve.

$26 left to credit then it'll go as well...

 

[blackcat20]

Having trouble with a Hilton booking. It tracked, but was not approved in the stated timeline so I contacted them. They pushed through approval but there is no value listed therefore it hasnt earned anything. Follow up emails have so far gone unanswered.

 

[Daver6]

Having trouble with a Hilton booking. It tracked, but was not approved in the stated timeline so I contacted them. They pushed through approval but there is no value listed therefore it hasnt earned anything. Follow up emails have so far gone unanswered.

I always seem to have issues with Hilton bookings. Got an open case for one where I completed my stay almost 9 months ago!

 

[blackcat20]

I always seem to have issues with Hilton bookings. Got an open case for one where I completed my stay almost 9 months ago!

Our stay was August. When I lodged a query because it hadnt confirmed, that was sorted overnight. Getting a value attributed to it seems to be much harder.

 

[QF WP]

I tend to find that they only respond to negative press put on their FB page...just like QF

 

[Legoman]

I tend to find that they only respond to negative press put on their FB page...just like QF

The modern plague. If it's not on FB, it doesn't exist. That's what you get from an IT department staffed entirely by employees in their early 20's.

 

[Dr Ralph]

I've usually had good experiences with cashrewards. Although there have been problems when transactions have failed to track. In all but one instance the money was eventually credited. I certainly acknowledge they are very slow to pay out.

I'd like to revise these statements.

Over the last 3 months cashrewards has gone downhill rapidly.

Less than 50% of my purchases now track without intervention. When I do contact them cashrewards seems to be doing everything possible to get out of paying the cash back.

Here's the response I received today from cashrewards about a purchase made at hotels.com:

'Hi,

Thanks for being so patient while we investigated your Hotels.com transaction.

We were super happy to have the opportunity to try and rectify your rewards, however we did not have success on this occasion. The store has notified us that your purchase with Hotels.com has not been attributed to Cashrewards and therefore we will not be paid for this sale.
There are quite a few reasons why transactions may be attributed to another channel other than Cashrewards. Here are a few the store has specifically told us about:

• Having opened other web pages (including search sites, social media, other store sites) or web browsers whilst visiting the store;
  
• Clicking though to another page from a banner or ad on the store's webpage whilst shopping;
  
• AdBlock/Antivirus/cleanup application tasks may remove tracking cookies (which are required to track transactions).
• Use of a coupon code not listed on Cashrewards.'

Apart from the grammatical errors, my concern is their first response is to blame me!

I've sent a stern reply. After that looks like I'll have to follow the approach of QF WP and hit them on social media.

 

[blackcat20]

Finally got my missing Hilton cashback sorted.

 

[Dr Ralph]

Finally got my missing Hilton cashback sorted.

Any tips?

They are denying my hotels.com transactions tracked even though they appear in the 'My Rewards' list.

 

[blackcat20]

Nope. It tracked fine, just didnt approve because there was no value against it.

 

[UP4014]

Seems as dogey as.

Spend the $30 for an ASIC search and get his home address. Send him a letter.

I've done that before and received instant results.

 

[QF WP]

Details for Andrew Clarke: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewclarkey/.

Email: Andrew Clarke - [email protected] (but I'll bet it goes to his PA)

Anybody who says this in their profile doesn't pass my filter: "Andrew is a serial entrepreneur"

His wife Lorica (and co-founder of CR): https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorica-clarke-25b11338/

COO of Cashrewards Iain Skelton: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iainmskelton/