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Comment by tedmiston | Hacker News Reader

I really hope Walmart doesn't scrap the Jet Anywhere cash back program [0].

It seems not well known and somewhat controversial, but offers generous rates higher than everywhere else. For example, 4.8% from Expedia, 5.6% from Orbitz. Unlike every other cash back program they do not cap the amount for flights.

JetCash is effectively real cash because many items are available cheaper than even from Walmart, Amazon, or Costco. Presumably Jet was taking a loss on those transactions in the short term. It really has been my favorite cash back program ever.

[0]: https://jet.com/anywhere

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If they were taking a loss on those items, isn't it practically a guarantee that they were doing that with VC money in order to grow their customer base either to build a sustainable business later or make them a more attractive acquisition target? Either way, I wouldn't expect it to continue. Not even after a normal acquisition, and certainly not from WalMart. WalMart (in)famously pinches every penny; they don't sustain money-losers.

It's hard to tell because their pricing strategy is so complicated with the dynamic discounts based on quantity, what else is in your cart, paying by debit card vs credit card, etc.

The items that were cheaper than Costco weren't way cheaper, maybe 5–10% less, so I considered that they may have some kind of higher level membership that I don't know about.

This looks like a great program.

The next logical thing to do with the Jet Anywhere program is to launch a credit card that creates customer stickiness to Jet.com. While some of the incentives are great, e.g., 20% cash back at Nike, the process is cumbersome (receipt -> photo -> email -> wait -> cash back!!).

A cashback credit card would significantly reduce friction, with minimum overhead for Jet. If Jet doesn't want to get into the credit business, it can piggyback on the system deployed by MasterCard for Sam's Club [1]. Sam's Club is part of the Walmart umbrella of companies.

1. http://www.samsclub.com/sams/pagedetails/content.jsp?pageNam...

edit: Deleted redundant reference to Jet in the 2nd paragraph.

For a more comprehensive listing of cashback programs, try using Cashbackholic [0]. You type in the store you're buying from and it lists almost every cashback program that offers additional cashback on that store.

[0]: http://www.cashbackholic.com/

Cashbackholic is not accurate from what I've seen, guess it's out of date. Cashback Monitor is accurate.

http://www.cashbackmonitor.com

Meanwhile their own affiliate program offers something like a whopping 2%. No thanks, we'll send our traffic elsewhere...

They cap the total you can get in a year at $1000.

Most (all?) programs have a global cap. Where this one is unique is lack of per transaction caps.

A $2k roundtrip ticket gets you flat $2.25 from Orbitz [0], or $112.00 from Jet.

To hit $1k per year off the 5.6% rate is ~$18k spent on flights & hotels. I think most people won't come close.

[0]: http://www.ebates.com/coupons/orbitz/index.htm

I've made more than $1000 on more than one program (discover deals, shopathome, possibly splendor or close, somewhere in the same range on topcashback). None of those have per transaction or total limits.

I don't spend on travel, though, so rules may be different there.

I resell, so I'm also explicitly excluded from jet's program.

I wouldn't expect the average consumer to be a reseller, but that's an interesting point to consider.

Travel is a heavily restricted category. I wasn't able to find complete terms and exceptions for all of the programs you mentioned quickly, but for example, TopCashback caps flights from Orbitz at $3 [0]. Discover Deals doesn't seem to support flights besides one weird deal with CheapOAir [1].

[0]: https://www.topcashback.com/orbitz/

[1]: https://www.discover.com/credit-cards/deals/all-deals.html?c...

Splendor has 2% no limit https://www.splender.com/#!/stores/75/orbitz

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