I'm usually a very pro-privacy/anti data-brokerage type of person, but Rakuten has a pretty competitive set of stores and cashback offers. I joined because Rakuten partnered with American Express to offer miles instead of a check/paypal transaction and American Express' shopping points are otherwise pretty ordinary. I've successfully gotten 15% cashback on some black friday sales.The extension is nice because it works better with Safari's build in ad blocking and with my third party adblocker. It still properly associates the sale with Rakuten account and gives me confirmation that the transaction completed. I like the cashback notes in Chrome results too. Once the Holiday season ends, I'll give Rakuten a deeper privacy audit as they can collect your web traffic with this extension and didn't make any attempts to demonstrate they take privacy of web traffic outside of shopping trips seriously. I wish there was an easier way to turn it on/off for my shopping sessions, but I wouldn't detract anything from their rating for this as my privacy concerns are more of an individual preference.

On numerous online-shopping ocasions I have seen the Rakuten extension pop up and claim that I can get a certain % cash back by clicking on the activate button. So I did. But I waited and waited past the due date and the cash back never came. It's very difficult to contact customer support other than robots who don't understand how conversations go. Some times the transaction will even completely disappear from my account history. I have started to take screen shots of the Rakuten x% cash back activated tab as proof that they promised me cash back and are not holding their end of the bargain. Their robots just assume it's my browser's fault but my browser is working just fine. In my experience, you'll have to literally fight like a lawyer for every online purchase you make using their extension. Claiming to customers that they will get 5% back by a certain due date and then not delivering on that claim, is a broken promise and a lie. It's either that or it's simply disorganized

I love Rakuten but why the extension on Safari is so user-unfriendly? Why it has to come with an app? Could you let it only be an extension on Safari rather than try to install an app on my Mac? Also, the Rakuten extension on Chrome can easily see your account information when you point to its button without clicking on it while the button on Safari looks so dumb. I installed this on my Safari because currently only Safari support Apple Pay. Hope the extension could improve soon and give the experience just like on the Chrome.

Anyone saying this is a scam is ridiculous. The company renamed themselves from E*Bates... all of that might be confusing but they send you a check for the x% deals you get on the web. Check out their site before making false accusations. I've gotten checks. They are legit. I'm writing this because I think it's ridiculous when people call things something when they have no idea what they are talking about. (this isn't adware and I have no affiliation with this company). I don't write reviews unless I have a high regard for the company and this is free money when you buy stuff online and you get a (usually rather small) discount. But it's still a discount! : )

I Do a lot of my Christmas shopping online because most of my family lives in other states. When I have logged into a random website and started to order Rakuten popped up to let me know I could get cash back. I have used Rakutan since before when it was Ebates. It runs much better now and I have not missed out on a single cash back award. I look into my account a few days after my purchases and there is the amount of my award I will get . I always got my award when it was ebates so I don't doubt I will get it now.

I am not sure what the negative reviews are about. I opened the app in order to download the cash back button extension on my computer and felt compelled to write after seeing them.I have been using ebates (now Rakuten) for 8 years. Admittedly, I have only used via the computer, not the app on my cell phone. I have never had any issues. My shopping trips show and my cash back gets credited in 1 or 2 days. For pending cash back that won't happen for a while say at hotels, I simply watch and make sure it is credited. Again, never had a problem.I shop online a lot and really like this option. Christmas season 2019 I received $630 cash back alone. I purchased some designer items from stroes that had 10% cash back! Free money. I love and recommend to everyone!My lifetime cash back is nearing $1300 at this point.

You definitely have to keep up on your cash back. Numerous times my shopping trips are checked and no money back. Have to contact their customer service, which is pretty good, and claim it so it gets into your account. Also, I’ve had where they don’t calculate the cash back correctly, esp on big dollar amounts. And one time I got cash back and then they took it away a month later, so watch out. I had to fight to get it back. It’s been such a pain lately, just going to opt out from now on as it’s not worth my time.

I've been using Ebates for several years now and I have gotten plenty of cash back, which I get sent direct to Paypal. That part works great. What doesn't work great is the Safari add on. Periodically the button disappears from my browset toolbar, and I have to go back to manually going to the site and clicking through to shop. I'm actually writing this review today because the button is gone from Safari and I can't seem to be able to put it back. To make this work, you definitely need a lot of persistence.

They put pending referalls into my account after I had several friends sign up and then I signed in two days later and they removed it with no response or email to let me know the reason why. I have a lot of cash back rewards from shopping that I have done throught the app and online and they neglect to recognize and reward their own deals they advertise. Ibotta and Wicki buy are better apps to use and those apps have more deals and coupons. They also take take a long time for you to see your rewards and to let you cash them out. Other apps like Ibotta let you cash out right away. It's a waste of time and they are not true to what they advertise.

Now I have to go to "their website", search for the store I want to use and click through that way. It was great...now, not so much. I'm not sure why they would change from ebates to rakuten (whatever that word means...hard to pronounce and doesn't clue me into it being a savings app. I'm also missing cash back and frankly it's not worth my time to go back and research which ones they paid me for and which they didn't. I shop online 7 days a week for "something". I haven't been in a brick and mortar store in years. I loved getting cash back for what I was going to do anyway...but now it's not worth bothering with. I will be looking for a new app to save online with.

Ebates/Rakuten is very hard to use with ebay. First, you have to make sure that you have clicked the button before you bid. Then you have to make sure the button is still active before you actually pay for the item. Also, the button will appear on the ebay site and then later disappear. Then even when you have done everything correctly, you will find that the amounts you should have received from Ebates/Rakuten is missing from your account. Then you have to contact customer support. All in all, it is a hassle to use on ebay which is a shame because i shop on ebay a lot and would like to have the cash back.

I'm running the latest version of Safari (14.0.1) on the latest version of Big Sur. The Rakuten Cash Back extension for Safari causes *huge* memory leaks. On a normal day (without the extention installed), my Safari will use around 1 gig of memory, with multiple tabs open. With Rakuten's extension installed, this would jump up repeatedly and dramtically throughout the day, causing the system to become lethargic and slow. We're talking 5 gigs, jumping to 15, jumping to 40 gigs of memory, etc, etc. This all culminates in frantic MacOS notification that there are critical memory shortages, with an urgent to close programs. Sometimes Safari will just crash outright, other times I'm allowed to close other apps on my MacBook. While I like and use Rakuten, I've been forced to search for availbility via their website, then reactivate the extension each time I want to use it, then disable when I'm done. I can't have a money-saving extension gobbling up my computer's resources like this.