Back in June last year, Raise launched a new gift card app called Slide. Unlike Raise which offers varying discounts for second-hand gift cards and varying cashback rates for first-hand cards, Slide offers a flat 4% cashback rate for all gift cards sold in the app, or 5% when you prefund your account and pay with that balance.
When it first launched, Slide didn’t excite me very much seeing as you can often get discounts on gift cards larger than 4% or 5% – even from Raise themselves. That equation changed a few months later when TopCashback started offering cashback on Slide purchases. Dollar Dig subsequently joined them, as did Lemoney most recently.
Cashback rates from TopCashback and Dollar Dig have changed over time; it seems like 4% for new users and 3% for existing users are fairly standard rates, but they’ve gone as high as 10% (albeit only for two days last year). That 10% rate was an excellent offer because the 10% stacked with the 4% or 5% you earned in the app; earning 14%-15% on brands like eBay and Apple isn’t a common opportunity.
Even earning a standard cashback rate of 3% has the potential to be worthwhile as that means you can earn up to 8% cashback on any gift card brand sold in the app any day of the week. Although you might be able to get a better discount through temporary deals, it’s nice to know that 8% cashback is always available as a fallback option.
EW’s Experience
Reader EW reached out to let me know about his experience with TopCashback when buying gift cards from Slide during that increased 10% promotion as it serves a cautionary tale. He made five different purchases during that two day period and only one transaction tracked. He therefore filed four missing cashback claims with TopCashback, but unfortunately all four claims were declined.
When there have been issues with TopCashback in the past from deals that Doctor of Credit and Frequent Miler have published, a TopCashback employee has replied in the comments and provided her contact details. EW emailed her directly but she advised there wasn’t anything they could do as they couldn’t obtain any information from Slide.
Despite that being the case, TopCashback has committed to giving EW half the expected cashback. That’s a disappointing outcome given the amount of cashback he expected to receive, but that’s more than I would’ve expected TopCashback to offer seeing as it’s coming out of their pocket.
Additional Caution For Resellers
Particularly interesting is the most recent reply he received from TopCashback. They’d suggested that several purchases made in quick succession might have affected tracking, but when EW replied that the purchases weren’t made one after another, here’s what they had to say (my bolding):
The timing may have no effect on anything but was just a guess on our part as to potentially a reason why the retailer denied the transaction as they might have assumed you were a reseller. The network did not provide any further information besides the word “other” so there could have been a number of other reasons that we aren’t looped in to and it could have nothing to do with the timing. While it’s frustrating on both ends, this is how the network operates (we have no dictation over it) and is the same level of detailed response that Rakuten and any other cashback website will receive as we all use the same network. Regardless, since we can’t retrieve a clear answer from the network because we haven’t been provided much detail on this particular one, we’ve paid out as much cash back as possible out of our pocket to help compensate for what the retailer cannot provide, as we would attempt to do with any of our members who encountered an issue like this. So far this seems to be a unique instance, but we will be continuing to monitor this merchant to ensure it’s not a widespread issue.
If Slide is monitoring transactions that take place after clicking through from a shopping portal, that’s not good news if you’re planning on buying cards for reselling. I don’t have any concern about them cancelling the value on the gift cards themselves, just that you might not end up receiving the cashback you expect.
Possible Reasons For Cashback Not Tracking
Seeing as Slide only answered ‘Other’ as to the reason why they weren’t going to pay out cashback for EW’s purchases, all we’re left with is speculation as to why this happened. There are a couple of reasons I can think of.
1) Reselling
The first is as TopCashback suggested – that Slide declined his claims as they deemed him to be a reseller. If that is indeed the case, that’s shady behavior by Slide as the terms listed on TopCashback (which they obtain from Slide) don’t place any such restrictions. If Slide wish to limit how much cashback they pay out per day per customer then that’s certainly their prerogative. They should do that via clear terms though, rather than simply not paying cashback and then declining claims due to ‘Other’.
2) Closing App
A second cause for the tracking issues is potentially that the app wasn’t fully closed between transactions. I’d seen a data point elsewhere in the last month or two that after clicking through to Slide from a cashback portal and buying a gift card, you have to actively close the Slide app before clicking back through from the shopping portal.
I asked EW if he’d done this and he wasn’t sure. That could explain the tracking issues he experienced, but not necessarily. His third purchase tracked successfully, so if he didn’t fully close the app after the other transactions, it’s unlikely that he’d have done that after the second transaction. It also wouldn’t explain why the very first purchase didn’t track either.
It could even be a combination of these issues. The transactions might have not tracked correctly initially due to the app not being closed, with Slide subsequently declining the claims after looking at the transactions due to their belief that the cards were being used for reselling.
How To (Possibly) Avoid These Issues
Again, this is all speculation as we don’t know for sure the reason for EW’s problems. As for the future, I’d recommend always ensuring the Slide app is completely closed on your phone before clicking through from a portal.
If taking advantage of increased cashback rates in the future, be aware that there’s a risk your cashback won’t be paid out. If you have other people in your household and you want to buy multiple gift cards while cashback rates are high, it could be worth spreading out purchases on more than just the one device (don’t forget that you can get rewarded when referring new Slide users).
I’d also recommend having separate accounts for TopCashback (or whichever portal you’re clicking through from) for each of your household members. If there are tracking issues, it might be better to have claims coming in from different (legitimate) accounts as it might help ensure Slide doesn’t decline the claims due to ‘Other’. If numerous different shopping portal users have the same issue with Slide purchases not tracking, that could also help give the shopping portal ammunition when addressing the issue with the affiliate network and/or Slide.
I made two purchases from slide during that two day window. Both tracked but the second was subsequently “declined.” I never bothered reaching out to TopCashback but this supports your theory that slide has some limitation that they are not communicating to consumers. I don’t plan to use slide again because it’s obvious to me that this is coming from their end.
I only made a few TCB slide transactions back in October and they paid out. Most of my transactions were with dollar dig, and those paid, out, though it took about 3 months. I had one card I resold on Raise that bounced back because of a bad code and when they figured out the source, they warned me that Raise was going to soon prevent reselling of Slide bought cards on Raise, to insert language in Slide’s terms and conditions. While this latter issue is not directly related to portals paying out, it shows Raise/Slide’s strategy with dealing with resellers. Cashback portals ultimately are a devious way for a retailer to offer discounts and they have total discretion whether they ultimately pay out or not. There is no independent body to really appeal to. No one is going to hire a lawyer for 5% cashback missing. If it was widespread enough, theoretically a class action lawsuit is possible.
The easiest thing is don’t use it.