Ibotta - the in's and out's

I have to start out by saying that Ibotta is by far my favorite rebate app. They are probably the most well known, and are partnered with the most companies and stores. They offer the largest selection of rebates, and therefore also have the most rebate bonuses. Bonuses are where you get an extra $1 or $2 or sometimes even $10 for redeeming certain rebates. Since I started in May, I have made almost $100 using Ibotta. Most of this comes from using their "any brand" rebates. They have a variety of rebates for any brand and any size of something, usually generic foods that everyone buys.

How it works

Ibotta offers hundreds of rebates, but you can only get paid for the ones you "unlock" before uploading a receipt. To unlock the rebate, you have to do simple tasks, like look at a recipe, answer a 1-2 question survey, or watch a short advertisement. Usually it's just verifying that you know how to use a certain part of the Ibotta app. Once the rebate is "unlocked" you go to the store and purchase the item. When you get home from shopping, you have 7 days from the date of purchase to upload your receipt to the app. Receipts that are older than 7 days will not be accepted.  You can upload the receipt to the app by taking a picture of it, or in the case of Walmart purchases, you scan the code at the bottom of the receipt. You also have to mark which rebates you are redeeming with that specific receipt by scanning the bar code on the item (except in the case of Walmart purchases, no bar code scanning is required). Take note that if you haven't unlocked a rebate yet, it won't show up as an option to redeem when you are trying to upload your receipt. Once Ibotta verifies that you purchased the item that matches the rebate, they deposit the amount of the rebate into your "Ibotta Account", and once you reach at least $20.00, you can request a transfer to your PayPal (or Venmo) account. It's that easy!

Ibotta is always adding new rebates, so I suggest checking back often (like, maybe every other day) to see what new rebates are available.  Also, be aware that when you first sign up, you will have a lot more any brand offers available to you than someone who has been doing it for a while. This is to give you the incentive to use the app more. Enjoy it while it lasts! There is also a bonus available to new comers where you can earn $10.00 for redeeming at least 10 rebates that are brand specific within the first 30 days you are a member.  Depending on which rebates are available and whether or not you can also use a coupon and/or a sale with the item, this could be a really good deal, especially if you're building a stockpile (food storage) anyway.  

Any Brand Rebates

I have seen any brand rebates for items such as: Milk, bread, cheese, orange juice, bacon, eggs, cereal, diapers, cat food, candy bars, coffee, and pretty much any fresh produce you can think of (everything from bananas to pineapples to bell peppers). Any brand rebates usually pay anywhere from $0.20 to $0.50, although when you first sign up, your Milk rebate is $1.00 for the first few times you use it. 

Using the same rebate multiple times

All rebates on Ibotta will disappear once you redeem the rebate, and then regenerate a few days later.  To use the rebate again, you need to unlock it again. It will continue to reappear until the rebate expires. All rebates have an expiration date, so please be aware of those when you plan your shopping. After expiring, the rebate will reappear a few months later, or, depending on who is sponsoring it, it won't reappear for several months, or not until that season comes again next year; pretty much the same way coupons cycle through. Please understand that I'm not saying you can buy 1 gallon of milk, redeem the rebate, and then once the rebate reloads in a few days use it again for the same gallon of milk. Unless the rebate specifies that you can redeem it for multiple like items on the same receipt, you can only redeem one rebate per like-item on a receipt. I'll give you an example:

I buy 2 gallons of milk and a box of cereal at Walmart. In Ibotta terms, I only purchased two items, milk and cereal. The number of gallons of milk I purchased is irrelevant; they are only concerned with whether or not I purchased milk.. When I get home I upload my receipt and redeem 1 any brand of milk rebate, and one any brand of boxed cereal rebate. I have redeemed everything I can off of this receipt now. If I try to redeem the milk rebate again when the any brand of milk offer regenerates in a few days, and I'm trying to redeem it off of the same receipt I used previously, the system will reject it because in Ibotta, the receipt was already processed.

There are rebates that can be redeemed for multiple like purchases, but they will say how many times items on the same receipt can receive the rebate. After that you have to wait for the rebate to regenerate and start again. However, as in the example I gave above, you can usually only redeem one like item per receipt.

There are two ways to get around this: Only buy one gallon of milk, and then go back and buy another one once the rebate regenerates in your app (I find this a waste of time), or purchase both gallons of milk, but put them on separate receipts. It does take a little extra time at the checkout (depending on how much you're purchasing), but it can potentially earn you a lot of money. Most of the time the cashiers don't bat an eye when you separate your purchases with the dividers. You can also avoid feeling awkward if you go through the self-checkout.

There are two rebating reasons why I usually buy multiple items, but put them on different receipts:

Reason #1: The rebate I want to use will expire soon, or a coupon that I want to combine it with will expire soon, so if I don't buy multiples of it now, I won't get the chance later.. That's pretty simple; I need more than one, but I'm worried that by the time I get to the store for the second item, the rebate or coupon will have expired, so I just buy them both at the same time.
Reason #2: Store sales generally only last 7 days. Let's pretend I need diapers, and that Target has them on sale for $0.15/diaper this week.  That's a pretty decent price. Then let's say Ibotta has a rebate for the same diapers that would make them only $0.10/diaper. I'm stocking up on diapers because I'm having a baby next month, so I want to buy more than one package, but I don't want to get the first package for $0.10/diaper, and the next package for $0.15 - not if I can manage to get both for the same price. I also don't have time to go to Target twice in the same week to buy the diapers, and I can only get them for that price THAT week. So I buy two packages on separate receipts, but only upload one of them when I get home. I save the other one in my wallet. In a few days when the rebate shows up again, I take the second receipt out and upload it. I just got the rebate on both packages, without an unnecessary trip to the store.

Because you have to upload receipts within 7 days from the time of purchase, I usually don't break up my purchase into more than two receipts on the same day. If I bought 3 packages of diapers (all on separate receipts), I could easily upload the first two, but I run the risk of the 3rd receipt passing the 7 day mark before the rebate reappeared again.

Maximizing the use of a rebate

Now, if I decided that I want to get as many of those diapers as I can (and at that price, who wouldn't?), I would actually go to the store twice that week and buy a total of 4 packages:
Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday: I go to the store and buy 2 packages on separate receipts - these are receipts #1 and #2. Upload receipt #1 as soon as I get home, save receipt #2 (it is eligible for 7 more days). As soon as the rebate is available again, upload receipt #2.
Saturday: I go to the store and buy another 2 packages on separate receipts - these are receipts #3 and #4. Depending on when I purchased and uploaded receipts #1 and #2, the rebate might be available already, and it might not. If it isn't, that's okay, I have 7 days to upload receipts #3 and #4. I just need to be make sure that I upload each receipt AS SOON as the rebate is available, so that it can regenerate before my last receipt expires. This is also the reason I wait and go to the store on the last day of the sale for my second purchase. If I were to go back and buy receipts #3 and #4 on Thursday, I only have until the next Wednesday to upload them. The rebate might not have time to regenerate before receipt #4 expired. I buy them on Saturday to give myself some wiggle room. I find it best to follow this rule of thumb: Only purchase 4 of an item in a week if I want the rebate on all 4 items.

Stacking Rebates

One of the reasons I love Ibotta is because it let's you stack rebates within the app. So for example, right now there is an any brand rebate on bacon for $0.50, but there are also 2 brand specific rebates for bacon provided by the manufacturers.

This means if you buy 1 package of the Wright Brand Bacon, you can redeem both the $1.00 off rebate AND the $0.50 off rebate for the same package.

Now imagine the package of bacon you purchased was also on sale, AND you had a coupon for it? 

That happened last month with Farmland Bacon. Ridley's had Farmland Bacon on sale for $2.50/12oz package. A few weeks earlier we had received a $0.75 off any Farmland Bacon coupon in the Sunday paper. Ibotta at the time also had a $1.00 off any package of Farmland Bacon rebate, plus the $0.50 off any brand of bacon rebate. When I used the coupon on top of the sale price, and then uploaded it to Ibotta for both the available rebates, I ended up paying $0.25 for 12oz of bacon, which is really great considering bacon usually costs anywhere from $2.50/lb to $4.50/lb.

Cashing Out

Ibotta requires a $20.00 minimum to cash out, and offers payment in the form of Paypal or Venmo transfer, which honestly isn't hard to acquire, especially if you make sure you are aware of what is in the app every time you shop. Ibotta requires that you purchase items from specific stores, but they offer a large variety. They even have Dollar Tree and Family Dollar as options to purchase from, but there are very few rebates offered for those stores. However, they don't have some local stores, like Paul's or the Grocery Outlet, so if I can, I'll price match at Walmart in order to get the rebate as well. It's the same principle as the cheese example from my Rebate App post found here.

Rewards cards and Ibotta

The only catch I want to warn you of is that there are a few stores that you are required to link your rewards card to in order to use the Ibotta rebates with that store.  For my area, they are RiteAid and Ridley's. I'll swipe my card there anyway because the sale prices only apply to those with a rewards card, and it's nice because it automatically syncs with Ibotta and tells the app what I purchased, so I don't even have to scan bar-codes or take pictures of my receipts when I get home. The down side is if you haven't marked that you wanted the item BEFORE you shopped. If the item isn't "unlocked" in the rebate before the rewards card sends the information to the app, you won't get the rebate for it. There is no option to upload a picture of the receipt if you purchased the item from a store that syncs with a rewards card. Occasionally I have had a problem where the information that synced was incorrect and I wasn't awarded the rebate for an item that I should have received.  In these cases the customer service team was very helpful and prompt in running the sync on that specific receipt again so that I receive credit for the rebate, but only because the first error wasn't my fault.  I doubt they would do it if I simply forgot to unlock a rebate before shopping.

Bonuses

Ibotta offers a lot of bonus options. To date I've made over $25.00 just in bonus money, which is offered for redeeming a certain amount of rebates, or for redeeming rebates of a certain brand. Usually bonuses are in the amount of $0.50-$3.00 if the bonus is rewarding the purchase of certain brands, and they can be anywhere from $2.00 to $10.00 if they are rewarding a certain number of rebates redeemed. Generally speaking, Any Brand rebates don't count towards bonuses, but you have to read the details of each bonus to know exactly what counts towards what.

 Ibotta also offers the highest incentive to share the app with friends. They just adjusted the referral amount to $5 and $10 - which means if you someone uses your referral code AND redeems their first rebate, you receive $5, and they receive $10 (to give them a boost towards their first cashout). Here is my referral code: ubhwyss Enjoy the $10 boost, and happy shopping with Ibotta!