Online shopping portals can be a great way to pick up additional miles & points for purchases you’d make anyway. Just for following a specific link, you can earn bonus points or cash back in addition to the rewards you’d earn for credit card spending.
Sometimes companies really want you to buy products from them, to the point that it can make sense to purchase something through an online shopping portal even if you don’t actually have a use for it. Along those lines, there’s such a promotion available right now, which I think is worth taking advantage of.
Earn 100%cash back or 100x points with Rakuten
Rakuten is my favorite online shopping portal, and at the moment, Rakuten is offering 100% cash back or 100x points on purchases with Incogni, a service that removes your personal data from hundreds of sites.
So that I don’t bury the lede, the idea is that you can spend $275.88 on the most expensive annual plan, and then earn either $275.88 back, or receive 27,588 Amex or Bilt points. I’d say that’s a pretty attractive deal!
Before we even get into that, let me mention that Rakuten has a great refer-a-friend program. If you’re new to Rakuten you can register using a refer-a-friend link, and then you’ll earn an additional $50 bonus after completing your first purchase of at least $50. While I ordinarily recommend unlocking this bonus with a simple gift card purchase, you can also stack it with this offer, to really get the best value.
Taking advantage of this is easy. Once you’re registered for Rakuten (if you’re not already), follow this link to go to the Icogni page, and make sure you see the 100% back offer (this likely won’t be around that much longer). Then click through to be redirected to Incogni’s website.
If you want to get as many points as possible, buy the family unlimited plan for $22.99 per month, but have it billed annually. Remove any coupon codes that may automatically attach, to drive up the price as much as possible.
The price should then be $275.88, so you can pay for that with whatever credit card you’d like. While 100% back on a service is great in the first place, what I love about Rakuten is the ability to earn points, to get even more value:
Within minutes of making your purchase, you should see the transaction show up as “pending” in your Rakuten account, initially with a $0 amount. However, within an hour or so, it should update to show the correct amount.
Again, you’ll want to act fast, and if you do make a purchase, be sure you see the correct return on spending listed at the time of purchase. Also make sure to mark your calendar to cancel the auto-renewal, or else you’ll be billed again on your account anniversary.
This is a great deal for buying points, I’m in!
I think it’s important to emphasize that this promotion isn’t a mistake, or anything. Clearly Incogni wants to acquire new customers, and the incremental cost of actually providing the service is very low. Incogni hopes that this big reward will get people to try the service, and then keep it in the long run. Or at a minimum, maybe the company hopes that people forget to cancel their auto-renewal.
Now, I suspect Incogni isn’t necessarily expecting the influx of people making purchases despite not necessarily wanting the service, but that’s a different story. 😉
I took advantage of this, because acquiring Amex or Bilt points at one cent each is quite a good deal. I’m choosing to earn Bilt points with Rakuten right now, so indirectly earning Alaska Atmos Rewards points or World of Hyatt points for one cent each is tough to beat, if you ask me.
Bottom line
At the moment, Rakuten is offering 100% cash back (or 100x points) on purchases with Incogni. The play here is to spend $275.88, to earn 27,588 points with either Amex or Bilt. If you value transferable points, I think most people would agree this is a good acquisition cost, so definitely act fast. The math is even better if you’re not yet a Rakuten member, as you can receive a further bonus of $50 (or potentially 5,000 points).
Are you taking advantage of this Rakuten 100% cash back offer?
