Capital One Shopping

[Dave Lehnert]

Anyone use Capital One Shopping?
Whats the catch if any?

[Jim Becker]

I use Rakuten...formerly EBates. Kind of a similar thing to what Capital One is offering.

[George Bokros]

I have used it several times. I see no issues at this time. Recently made purchase the website was offering 40% off on the item I was purchasing and Capital One shopping got me 50% off.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

I just received an invite to join Capital One Shopping too. I have not joined or read up on it yet. I suspect one catch will be getting advertising emails and perhaps phone calls?

[Jim Koepke]

Surely Capital One will get a percentage of each sale, not only through merchant fees but from interest payments from those who do not pay their card down each month.

jtk

[Jim Becker]

If the service (Capital One or similar) makes folks buy more of things that they don't need and rack up big balances on their cards that they cannot pay off quickly, yes, it's not a great thing, but it is their decision.

For me, I leverage the discounts for purchases I would have made anyway, sometimes altering the timing to take advantage of increased discounts. The discounts generally apply on top of other discounts already in the deal, too. I get a couple hundred bucks back from Rakuten each year and that's on top of credit card points/benefits. We do a lot of buying for certain things from Costco for the same reason...the annual rebate is much more than our membership fee and the extra points on the Citi/Costco card add another $600+ per year. We do not carry balances, by the way. The cards are only payment methods.

[Michael Weber]

Jim, of course. As you use it it’s a good deal. I hope no one thought I was saying otherwise. Think I’ll delete that comment if I still can.

[Derek Meyer]

I signed up for Capital One Shopping about 6 months ago. To date, I've gotten a handful of emails asking me to enable the extension on Safari on my phone. I have it installed on my desktop computer and enabled.

It seems to monitor your shopping and pops up when it can offer discounts on items you're looking at. You can link your email so that it will send you messages, like if an item you purchased dropped in price, so you can apply for a credit from the seller. I have not linked my email so I get no notifications of this type.

I don't know that it's saved me any money yet, as I do most of my online shopping on the Amazon app on my phone or at work, where I don't have it installed. It costs nothing, though, so if it does save me money at some point it will be bonus.

[Clifford McGuire]

I don't get it. What's the benefits of Capital One Shopping?

[Maurice Mcmurry]

I don't get it. What's the benefits of Capital One Shopping?

Automatic discount searching + discounts from participating vendors. You know, buy more stuff, spend more money...

Capital One replaced my check book 20 years ago and has been a big help at tax time. We had our first fee of any kind just recently by going paperless and missing our payment.

[Frank Pratt]

In the year? or so I've had it, it hasn't saved me a penny.

[Ronald Blue]

There are free services that search and graph price trends that don't tie you to their credit card. I have 2 cards and pay off monthly. One is Discover and one is Sam's. Sam's earns a nice credit (5% I think) for club purchases. Also started using a new app called "Upside" that gives you discounts at gas stations. Yesterday it knocked 19 cents per gallon off my gas purchase. I builds up in the account and you can get the funds in one of several ways.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

I get a 1% cash reward from Capital One. I try to use my rewards money for something fun like my 2.2 HP outboard and my Milwaukee vertical panel saw.

[Jim Becker]

These programs like Capital One Shopping and the Rakuten that I mentioned provide additional discounts beyond the rewards that the card used provides. They seek out "coupon codes" and similar discounts, some negotiated higher than normal. With Rakuten, I've occasionally had additional rebates as much as 15%, but 1-5% is more typical, that they negotiate with the particular vendor. This is more or less the electronic version of "coupon clipping" that many of us have done over the years for food shopping. :)

[George Yetka]

no catch, I was using capital one since it was wikibuys. They work out the deals with people you buy things from ahead of time. ebay for example has a .5% payout. So they must have a deal that everything steared to ebay with capital one pays capital one 1%, and capital one splits it with you. I have cashed out $300 or so but saved a couple thousand overall.