Fetch Rewards is one of the newer additions to the pantheon of grocery store rebate apps. If you’re looking to save money, earn gift cards, or get something more out of your grocery shopping, Fetch Rewards offers an easy-to-use grocery cashback scheme using only your mobile phone.
But should grocery shoppers using Ibotta, Fetch’s more popular grocery cashback predecessor, consider making a switch?
Or can they combine both for even more rewards and savings?
This Fetch Rewards review gives you the lowdown on this up and coming grocery shopping cashback app, along with pros, cons, and how to make the most of it!
Table of Contents
What is Fetch Rewards?
Fetch Rewards is a grocery cashback platform that earns grocery shoppers rewards just by taking photos of their receipt. The company is based in Madison, Wisconsin, with office locations in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.
To date, it has more than 2.5 million active monthly users and has awarded around $40 million in Fetch Points.
Fetch Rewards has numerous similarities with Ibotta, a more popular cashback app that allows you to save money on groceries, but Fetch has its own advantages. For starters, Fetch Rewards is considerably easier to use.
You can use Fetch Rewards in any grocery store, convenience store, drugstore or club store, unlike Ibotta that requires you to purchase only from specific grocery stores. Fetch Rewards only requires that you scan your receipt to win points.
How is Fetch Rewards Different?
Fetch Rewards features several advantages over other grocery cash back apps. For starters, you don't need to scan bar codes or activate deals beforehand. There are also no annoying surveys to take or video ads to watch.
To earn the most rewards, you can plan your shopping trips based on products that will earn you the most points. You can even search for recipes and select point-adding ingredients to include in your built-in shopping list.
In a nutshell, what makes Fetch Rewards different is that it’s incredibly easy to use compared to other grocery cashback apps. Most Fetch Rewards reviews praise the program’s user-friendly, no-fuss process. It’s just easier to earn with Fetch Rewards more than other cashback apps.
How Fetch Rewards Works
Fetch Rewards offers grocery shoppers rewards in the form of points for buying products or fulfilling offers. But what does Fetch Rewards get in return? The company uses your receipts to help businesses with their market research, using your data to improve their products and services.
Fetch Rewards guarantees that your data is kept safe and all information is kept anonymous.
Each time you upload a photo of your receipt on the Fetch Rewards app, you get rewarded with a specific number of points.
Your total number of points depends on how many required products, or offers, are in your receipt. If you have more than one offer on one receipt, you can earn cash back for all of them.
Browsing Offers
After registration, you can browse the offers you want to fulfill on the home screen. You may click on each offer to see home many times they can be claimed. Some offers have requirements before they are fulfilled, so make sure to read the offer description fully.
Taking Photos of Your Grocery Receipts
When taking photos of your receipt, always make sure that the store name, date of purchase, items purchased, store address, and total amount are visible. You don't need to remember all these – just ensure that you're taking a photo of the entire receipt from top to bottom.
Take a photo of the receipt on a flat surface with a dark background, and make sure to focus your camera so the image doesn't come out skewed or blurry.
Shoppers with long receipts may take multiple photos of their receipts section per section (do note that you're only allowed four photos per receipt).
Cashing Out
As mentioned, you will need a minimum of 3,000 points or $3 to convert your points into rewards. Fetch Rewards reviews often rave about the apps’ minimum required cashout; The threshold isn't that difficult to reach as you can make anywhere between 250 to 3,000 points for each offer.
You may also opt to exchange your points for gift cards or donate the cash equivalent to Red Cross. After claiming a reward, instructions on how to claim them will be sent to your email.
Referring Friends for Points
Users may refer their friends to earn even more points.
For each friend you refer, you and your friend both receive a $1.50 reward. The app will generate a promo code (located under the “Me” tab) that your friend needs to use upon signing up so you can both earn the reward.
Know, however, that you'll only be able to claim the rewards after your friend scans their first receipt.
How Much Can I Earn From Fetch Rewards?
Shoppers may earn as much as 250 to 2,000 points for every offer (1,000 points will earn you $1). Unlike other rebate apps that will reward you will real money, Fetch Rewards only allows you to convert your points into gift cards for retailers such as Target, CVS, or Amazon.
If you're feeling charitable, you may also donate your earnings to Red Cross (once you have a minimum of $3).
Here are a couple of rules and regulations when earning points:
- Receipts uploaded must not be more than 14 days old.
- You may only submit 14 receipts every 7 days.
- Expired receipts cannot be converted to points.
- Receipts may only be used once.
- Points will expire if your account is inactive for 90 days.
- It takes around 48 hours for Fetch Rewards to process your points. If you haven't been rewarded within 72 hours, you may follow up with Fetch Rewards' support team at [email protected].
How Can I Maximize My Earnings in Fetch Rewards?
There are three ways to earn in Fetch Rewards:
1. Scan all your grocery receipts.
Fetch Rewards will award you points just for scanning your grocery receipt – it's that easy. It doesn't matter how many items you purchase as long as you submit them (you can earn 25 points even if you just bought one item).
Though this isn't the most lucrative way to make money from the app, it's the fastest and the easiest, and sooner than you know it you'll be earning points fast.
Just remember to bring your phone with you when stopping by your usual shops!
2. Purchase from Participating Brands
Another way to earn points is to buy products from Fetch Rewards' participating brands. You'll see a list of well-known brands on your Fetch Rewards dashboard under the “Discover” icon. Each item you purchase from these brands earns you a certain number of points based on the cost of the product.
There's no barcode scanning or coupon clipping involved, Fetch Rewards will go through your receipts to determine if you bought from these brands.
3. Purchase Special Offers
Purchasing special offer products will earn you the biggest amount of points, but it is also the most challenging to do. Here, you need to actually purchase specific products. Under the “Discover” tab, you'll see a section named “Special Offers made for you”.
Here, you'll see products you can purchase and their accompanying bonus points.
Special offers reward anywhere between 100 to 3,000 points per offer, and all of them expire in a certain amount of days to be replaced with new deals.
4. Combine Fetch Rewards with Ibotta
To double your rebates and savings, you can use Fetch Rewards with Ibotta, arguably the most popular platform in the receipt scanning app world. Ibotta has partnerships with hundreds of retailers and more than 1,000 offers to choose from.
As mentioned, Ibotta rewards with real cash (you need a minimum of $20 to cash out), so using the two will help you earn even more. After you're done shopping, just scan your receipt using both apps to get double the earnings!
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What Stores Work with Fetch Rewards
Fetch Rewards may be used in a plethora of grocery stores, convenience, stores, club stores, drugstores, dollar stores, big box stores, package stores, and liquor stores.
There are too many to mention, but the most popular ones include Walmart, Kroger, Target, CVSHealth, Dollar General, Walgreens, Publix, Meijer, Aldi, Sam's Club, Shop Rite, Costco, Safeway, H-E-B, Food Lion, Rite Aid, Stop & Shop, BJ's, Whole Foods, 7-Eleven, Shell, Speedway, BP, Winn-Dixie, and Hy-Vee.
How to Sign Up for Fetch Rewards
Fetch Rewards is available for download on both iOS and Android. Signing up is a pretty straightforward process. All you need to set up an account is an email, or you can even use your Facebook account.
On the sign-up page, you will need to enter your state and phone number. You will then receive a text with a code in order to confirm your registration.
Pros and Cons of Fetch Rewards
We scoured to the web for Fetch Rewards reviews in order to find out what users love and hate about the app. Here's what we found:
Pros of Fetch Rewards
- Sign up is completely free.
- User-friendly interface and incredibly easy receipt scanning process.
- You don't need to activate offers in order to claim them, as is common with other rewards apps.
- Earn gift cards or hard cash with something you're already doing: shopping.
- It's very easy to earn points. You'll get 25 points for every eligible receipt, no matter how many items you purchase.
Cons of Fetch Rewards
- Fetch Rewards has a point system and only rewards with gift cards as opposed to other rebate apps, like Ibotta for example, which rewards with hard cash.
- The point to dollar equivalent of Fetch Rewards is low: 1 point = $0.001.
- A lot of users report technical issues which include app freezing when scanning receipts.
Tips for Using Fetch Rewards
- As mentioned, be sure to use Fetch Rewards with other rebate apps like Dosh or Ibotta to stack your savings. You'll be able to earn rewards and money with several apps using one receipt.
- Fetch Rewards is only available in the U.S. as of the moment and unable to process receipts from other countries. You also have to be 18 years or older in order to be eligible for using Fetch Rewards.
- Rewards points may be used to redeem MasterCard and Visa gift cards, which makes them as good as cash.
- If you encounter any errors with the app or if your rewards haven’t been sent in 24-48 hours, you may contact the company's support team at [email protected]. Fetch Rewards has an active support team, so you’ll hardly run into problems with troubleshooting.
- You can use in-store coupons and still earn from Fetch Rewards.
Fetch Rewards Review: Is Fetch Rewards Legit?
Fetch Rewards is completely legit. With millions of subscribers and thousands of positive Fetch Rewards reviews, it's safe to say that this platform is not a scam. The company has seven major investors, all contributing a total of $50 million in capital, so it looks like the business will be running smoothly for years to come.
When it comes to ratings, Fetch Rewards has a 4.7 rating on Appgrooves, a leading app review website. The rating is based on more than 500,000 votes.
Negative complaints are mainly about the app’s technical issues, and the company seems to be working really hard in updating its platform to reduce bugs.
Here at Financial Wolves, we understand that using apps or platforms that claim to offer free rewards aren’t really offering them for free. Even if you aren’t spending money, you’re still spending something in exchange for the platform’s points or rewards: valuable time.
Since shopping is something all of us do, you have absolutely nothing to lose with using Fetch Rewards. It only takes a minute or two to upload your receipts and you can be on your merry way!