ShopBack: Taobao discount codes, cashback and more!

Shopback have invited me to share the potential cashback that you can get from using their site. I have made a post about this useful website some time back here.

If you are trying to shop online be it Aliexpress, Taobao, Ebay, Asos, Honestbee, Foodpanda, Expedia, Hotel.com etc, it will be a good habit to access through the ShopBack website. You can shop online and enjoy great offers at ShopBack. You do that to get additional rebate onsite on top of your 7% rebate from SCB Singpost. In general, you will get onsite cash back around 60days after the transaction because there is a validation process by their partners to make sure the orders are fully paid for. It is true, some of my friends who tried it have gotten 20% cashback from Groupon and lower cash back from other places listed on the site. There is a range of cash back percentage for the different sites you choose and the items within. It is all listed clearly before you buy. Here are a list of ShopBack sites that I will talk about:

For Taobao which is a place where you can get really cheap stuff online, you can still use ShopBack to shop there. They even provide simplified instructions on buying from Taobao and implement the cash back for the specific products you wish to purchase. I think its pretty smart as these cashback can offset the foreign transaction fee charged to your credit card.

You can even save on groceries with Honestbee. Currently it has an up to 4% cashback rate.  Seeing how competitive ntuc is now, I will have to compare the prices post rebate for Honestbee and ntuc to decide which is cheaper. Will be trying to order part of my groceries through Honestbee to see if its worth it. The good thing about online groceries shopping is that it remembers all your orders previously. Which means you can just rehash the same orders every week if there is no change to the list which makes it convenient.

If you usually book flights, hotels and packages using Expedia for your holiday, there are deals and offers you can find at ShopBack. Current cashback tiers are Hotel- 8%, Flight- 1% and packages(Hotel + Flight)- $25 cash back. On my previous post, I talked about the ShopBack business model. It is basically finding popular merchants to be listed, drive traffic to the site to bring in customers that in turn will buy stuff through those listed merchants via the ShopBack portal. The merchants will in turn give ShopBack commission for the referral which will then be partially transferred to the consumer. That was basically the business model that is prevalent in the States. That is why the discounts are sometimes quite substantial.

There is also a useful section for electronics here where you can get cashback and find the best electronics deals and promotions for the purchase of mobile phones, cameras, computers/tablets, home appliances, software and home entertainment. You will need to spend sometime to browse through, as there are quite alot of coupons from individual companies(Nikon, Canon, Courts, Challenger, HipVan, Dell etc) to choose from.

All in all, I think there is only gain for us consumers using this site, so it will be good to make it a habit to always shop through it whenever you are doing online shopping.

My Credit Card Spending and Rebate 2016

So far since the beginning of my 'credit card journey', I have saved thousands of dollars. From sign up cash rebates, online prepaid top ups rebates to credit cards cash rebates themselves, these helped me reduce my day to day expenses quite substantially.

First it was the Amex Imagine prepaid top up card. I have ten of those card(5 under my name and 5 under my wife's name. If you were to use an online rebate card to top up $72 in each card and spend them all to buy ntuc vouchers, you will get 14% rebate. 7% for spending $72 on the imagine amex card itself and another 7% from the online credit card top up. Not to mention, I have been using this card to take the train which gives me an effective rebate of 9%(online credit card rebate plus Imagine Amex ATU 2% rebate) Sadly, after using it for quite awhile now, the Amex imagine card will be discontinued from April 15th onward. Can click here to view the announcement.

Here are some of the crucial cards that are in my wallet now post Imagine Amex:

As I have mentioned previously, I have been crediting my salary to BOC Smartsaver, but I have not been using their cards(You don't need to use their credit cards to get the full 3.55%), because I have been using their Great Wall debit card to pay my other credit card bills. With the new and revised BOC Family Card which gives 7% rebate to dinning and 5% rebate to Nets FlashPay ATU, I will be using this card on April 17th onward and will most likely pay $20 for their new ATU version. Do note that a maximum of four ATUs will be awarded the 5% rebate and the spending from ATU is counted in the $500 min spending.

There is also the newly revised DBS live card. DBS has reduced the rebate to 5% and 3x DBS reward points with min spending of $700 online. Even though it is not as good as their previous promotion, paying using pay wave is counted to the 5% rebate and 3x DBS points this time. I could use this to buy $700 dollars of ntuc vouchers every month to get 5% rebate + 3x DBS points. Pay wave max one time spending is $100, so you can ask the staff to tap 7 times. If you use the 3x DBS point to exchange for ntuc vouchers you will effectively get close to 6% rebate(Similar to the M1 prepaid/fevo online credit card top up method). Full tnc here.

ANZ Optimium I will continue to choose the 5% rebate for grocery category and use it to pay the excess after using the ntuc vouchers. It is a good way to maximize the vouchers as this card do not have min spending.

I have also applied to be an ntuc member which has given me even more rebates. The membership fee is $117 p.a. I mainly just swipe the membership card for link points(1.33% rebate) and to get my 4% yearly rebate. Which means I still pay using either ANZ optimum or ntuc vouchers. That is almost close to 12%(excluding the membership fee). Previously with Imagine Amex prepaid cards, I have been getting almost 20% rebate!

The new BOC Shop and UOB One tnc have excluded prepaid top up for their rebate so I will not be using them much. I have CIMB infinite and World MasterCard to make sure my lowest rebate for all credit card spending will always be 1%. They are free for life so its good to have them in your wallet. They are good for big emergency spending.

SCB Singpost visa credit card will be my main online card as it gives 7% rebate with $600 min spending cap at $60. So far the highest rebate for online spending. Which means you can use this card to pay for your telecommunication bills directly online to get 7% rebate. I will go into more detail on how to get max rebates from paying utilities and other monthly miscellaneous payments in my future post.

The most important thing to remember is to always keep track of your spending and make sure its as efficient as possible. For me, majority of my expenses are on ntuc groceries, weekend dinning and telecommunication bills. Also make sure you pay all your credit cards on settlement date. If you have too many cards and cant remember, you can try to giro them.