Gather Little by Little

Rebate sites are something fairly new to me and I recently wrote up a review of Ebates which I’ve used a few times and have been very happy with. A reader added a comment to my Ebates article suggesting that I check out a competing site call Mr. Rebates. Always on the look out for great money saving ideas and strategies I signed up. I’m glad I did.

What is Mr. Rebates

Mr. Rebates helps you save money on every online purchase that is made through their website. They do this by offering cash-back rebates at more than 1000 popular stores like Best Buy, Dell, JCPenney, Overstock.com and more. Second, their staff adds daily money-saving coupons and special sales/price drops on various “hot” products. The combination of the cash-back rebates plus coupons/sales provides excellent opportunities to save big money each time you make an online purchase.

How do they do this?

If you’re like me, at this point your asking “Great, but what’s the catch? Nobody gives away money for free”. You’re right, but there is no catchl. Like Ebates, Mr. Rebates works by partnering with various online merchants. For each purchase you make, Mr. Rebates gets a commission which is shared with you in the form of cash back. The amount of cash back varies from merchant to merchant.

Signing up for Mr. Rebates

Signing up with Mr. Rebates is really easy. Navigate over to the main Mr. Rebates site and right in the middle of the screen is a place were you enter your email address and then click the join button. The next screen will ask you for a password, press Register and you’re signed up. It literally takes all of 15 seconds. Mr. Rebates will send you an email so you can authenticate your account, so make sure you watch for it. If you don’t see it arrive fairly soon after you register, you might want to look in your spam folder.

Using Mr. Rebates

Once you’re logged into Mr. Rebates, your screen will be divided up into 3 sections. Shopping categories on your left, Weekly Deals in the middle, and coupons on the right. I generally go straight to categories, as when I use a site like this I know what I want to buy. Surfing the deals can be a little dangerous as it’s easy to get caught up in a good deal and purchase something you might not have needed or budgeted for (aka impulse purchases).

Scrolling down, you’ll find even more coupons and a listing of new stores recently added. To get the best deals using Mr. Rebates, find various merchants offering the product you are looking for and then use the one that has the best combination of coupons and highest commision payment.

To make a purchase, just click on the retailers link. A small Mr. Rebates window will display indicating information about the retailer along with your browser being directed to the retailers site. The retailers site looks no different than had you navigated to it directly. At this point, you just make your purchases as you normally would.

Rebates are credited to your Mr. Rebates account generally within 3-5 days following your purchase. Sometimes it can be credited even earlier, but the time varies from retailer to retailer.

Like Ebates, Mr. Rebates allows you to mark online merchants as favorites. This is done by clicking on the star next to the merchants name. To navigate to your favorites, just click on the “My favorites” link at the top of the page. Also like Ebates, Mr. Rebates allows you to search by both retailer name and by product. Searching by product is great for determining who offers the best cash back deal. The problem with product searching though is that only certain products are indexed, so many times you won’t find any results unless you’re searching for a very popular term like iPod or Wii.

Ebates vs. Mr. Rebates

Overall, the two sites are incredibly similar in what they offer and how they offer it. They look very different, but are both easy to navigate. The main difference I saw is the various commision rates for the same merchants. In some cases Ebates offers a higher commision and in others Mr. Rebates does. This is the driving factor for me when determining which site I’ll use.

Another difference, also merchant related, is that the two sites offer differing merchants. Ebates has some that Mr. Rebates doesn’t and visa-versa. Personally, I’ve found Mr. Rebates to have a wider selection and more of the merchants I use.

Both site are easy, safe to use and received very high reviews and scores on the various internet ranking sites. Both also received very favorable reviews from other blogs. Sign-up, the worst that could happen is you might save some money!

Are you a Mr. Rebates user? How has your experience with them been? Have any tips you would like to share? Add a comment!