Thoughts on Fetch Rewards (& other similar services)

[mynameGeoff]

Hey friendos,

 

Just wanted to get a temperature check on a brand that reached out for sponsorship called Fetch Rewards:

https://fetchrewards.com/

 

Basic premise for the service is that you would take a picture of your receipt and would gain points to redeem rewards like gift cards or products. Fetch then would sell that data back to the brands on the receipt to better gauge consumer spending:

https://partners.fetchrewards.com/

 

We haven't worked with these types of brand due to their use of people's data but on the flip side, people are being actively rewarded for providing their receipts and particating vs. their data being mined without their consent.

 

Let us know if you or anyone you know has had experiences with Fetch or any similar brand! Would love to get your input, even if you haven't used the service

[Marhfg]

1 hour ago, GeoffLMG said:

Hey friendos,

 

Just wanted to get a temperature check on a brand that reached out for sponsorship called Fetch Rewards:

https://fetchrewards.com/

 

Basic premise for the service is that you would take a picture of your receipt and would gain points to redeem rewards like gift cards or products. Fetch then would sell that data back to the brands on the receipt to better gauge consumer spending:

https://partners.fetchrewards.com/

 

We haven't worked with these types of brand due to their use of people's data but on the flip side, people are being actively rewarded for providing their receipts and particating vs. their data being mined without their consent.

 

Let us know if you or anyone you know has had experiences with Fetch or any similar brand! Would love to get your input, even if you haven't used the service

I wouldn't. I have used the app with family recommendation. However it's excruciating bad to get anything once past the registration. They reward you only about 25-200 points per receipt and that's if you don't buy main brands like a normal consumer does. Anything main brand and you're going out spending way more money than necessary. The rewards they give back are miniscule for the amount of money you spend. There's other apps that are a little better that rewards more, but I would expect them to mine your data.  I've added phone screenshots of my account summary, some things I bought with the amount listed on the receipt, and how much their rewards are.

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Edited: Putting images behind Spoiler to not clog up.
 

Edited September 2, 2022 by Marhfg
Formatting.

[kirashi]

4 hours ago, Marhfg said:

I wouldn't. I have used the app with family recommendation. However it's excruciating bad to get anything once past the registration. They reward you only about 25-200 points per receipt and that's if you don't buy main brands like a normal consumer does. Anything main brand and you're going out spending way more money than necessary. The rewards they give back are miniscule for the amount of money you spend. There's other apps that are a little better that rewards more, but I would expect them to mine your data.  I've added phone screenshots of my account summary, some things I bought with the amount listed on the receipt, and how much their rewards are.

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Edited: Putting images behind Spoiler to not clog up.
 

10,000 points for a $10 Amazon card? Based on what appears to be an average of 1 point for every dollar spent (your 4x receipts average 100 points per $100 spent), you'd need to spend $10,000 to get $10 back, which works out to a whopping 0.1% return. Please correct me if my math is off - it's been a long day.

 

LMG would be better off recommending viewers throw $10,000 into an investment account at the bank, even with today's inflation rates, rather than pitching a data mining service that provides such low return rates for the time required to send them receipt copies.

[djenson]

I see Fetch rewards similar to google rewards. I don't mind there services, as long as it is clearly disclosed how they are using this data. 

 

It's not really comparable to a savings account - of which you need to put away a decent sum of money to earn a decent amount via interest. You are buying things you normally buy and getting a little bit of cashback - a bit like a Loyalty card but universal. 

 

Of Course it won't be for everyone (especially the privacy concerned), but I'd rather get a little bit of money back for selling my data VS it being taken anyway. 

 

Final IMHO - I don't mind as long as the sponsor message isn't inferring that they are just giving you free money for nothing. 

[Murasaki]

These services always offer "rewards" at the rate of the smallest denominator. This isn't a sponsor that fits your channel brand.

[Quackers101]

yeah this seems like it would be more of a benefit for consumers to actually take the rights or money gained from ads than being involved with this. feeding the scraps from what this is going to be used for? maybe a neat-ish idea, until you are getting screwed.

[SansVarnic]

Yeah that's a hard no from me.

[PeachyUwUSenpai]

Personally i think its fine yes privacy is a right but part of that right is being able to sell it now do i think fetch actually pays enough for that right in my opinion no and i would never use it unless they paid a lot more. as long as the advertising spot cleary explains your selling your data and it will be sold to third party's i think it's fine. 

[Spotty]

Haven't looked too much in to this, as I doubt it's available in Australia, but it doesn't seem any more intrusive than store loyalty cards or credit cards which are used to track shoppers purchasing habits. (Edit: They're much more intrusive as the app constantly tracks you. See below) Credit Cards that offer points for your purchases (and probably all credit cards) are doing the exact same thing selling your purchasing data. With this you have to scan your receipts so it's entirely opt in, and if you buy something you don't want them to know about simply don't scan the receipt.

 

The main problem with it that I see is the rates for it seem to make it completely worthless. At least with a lot of loyalty card programs you can get discounts on items when you shop. I'm not sure how common those loyalty cards are in USA but here in Australia just about every franchise and large store is begging you to sign up and stores will often have some "Members Special" for the week which can be heavily discounted making it worth it. Failing loyalty cards you could just use a credit card that offers points for your purchases, and both of these seem more practical than taking a photo of your receipt every time you buy something, and there's a lot of small transactions where you might not get a receipt (who gets their receipt when buying coffee?).

 

Being realistic, the people who spend enough money to earn enough points probably already shop with a credit card that gives points and probably don't care about a $10 amazon gift card. The people who would actually find a $10 amazon gift card useful enough to justify the effort photographing hundreds of receipts probably aren't spending enough to claim it within a year. I suspect a lot of people who try it will scan a couple receipts, realise they aren't getting many points for their shop to make it worthwhile or just not want to bother with the hassle of taking photos of their receipt, and then they'll just stop using it before they've ever earned enough points to cash out.

 

 

... After looking in to it a little more, another concern is that the app you install to use it is always tracking your location so that they can send advertisements to you. For example if you walk past a coffee shop they might send a notification to your phone advertising the coffee shop. If you walk past a shoe store they may ping you with ads for new shoes. Tim Horton's recently lost a lawsuit over using their loyalty app to always track people - This app wants to do the same thing.

The only way to opt out is to disable location services on your device, but even if you turn off location on the device they still constantly tracks your location even when you're not using the app. At least with a store loyalty card or credit card it only tracks when you swipe your card at the store, it's not 24/7 sending your GPS location to advertisers wherever you go.

Quote

We may utilize location services on your mobile device to collect and use location data, including the real-time geographic location of your device. We may obtain the physical location of your device by using satellite, cell phone tower, WiFi, or other technologies or signals. The physical location is used to provide you with a variety of services such as personalized content and/or advertising. We may communicate with you based on your location, and when we do so, we do that through our App's push notifications. We do not use your geo-location as a basis for sending you text or SMS messages. If you do not want to receive push notifications, you can disable that through your Fetch App Settings. We will collect precise real-time geolocation data only if you consent. You may opt out of using location services using your device's functionality to do so, but this may degrade the features and functionality that we can provide. Separate from precise geo-location options, our App [constantly or when the App is being utilized] approximates your device location solely for fraud detection purposes.

I suspect their game plan is to use the offer of gift cards to entice people to download the app and hand over personal information, but they really just want people to install the app so they can track their every movement and sell location based advertisements to the partnered brands. They're probably hoping that people install the app and forget about it so it can just sit quietly in the background sucking up as much data as they can. I suspect the money they earn from the data they gather from the receipts people upload is minimal and the bulk of their revenue comes from that location data and selling ads - which you don't earn points for.

 

 

Side note: Clicking on the Brands page on their website initially shows the results for the brands they partner with but after loading for a second it redirects and shows a 404 Page does not exist error message. I suspect they're blocking the page since I'm not from USA but why do such a bad job of it? I see the page when it's loading, the page exists. Don't tell me it doesn't exist! I can understand that there might be international brands they've partnered with but only with the US branch and they don't want to mislead people in to thinking brand X is a partner in their country, so I can understand why they might not want to display that page to people outside of USA, but simply say "We're currently not available in your region" or a disclosure on the page saying that those brands are only available in USA instead of giving a 404 error. It just makes it look like the website is broken, and a broken website is a sign of a shit company.

Edited September 5, 2022 by Spotty

[BuckGup]

I would be fine with it as no where do they state it has to be a real receipt so you can just go into photoshop and farm the rewards. This company exists because the original payment processor safe guards the data hardcore so this is a way to try and get it for very cheap. The only issue like I said is they aren't at the POS so there is no way to verify it

[Jtalk4456]

Depending on how you view data rewards companies like this, they're not better or worse than anyone else, no scams or anything. But like all the rest of these, you're selling your data and getting very little if anything back for it. I would steer clear of anything financial if it were me, but if you took them on, I wouldn't get upset about it personally

[Needfuldoer]

I'm always leery of these "free money, coupons, and rewards" things, even the big-name ones like Honey. I'm always asking myself "what's the catch?"

 

(Data harvesting. The catch is almost always data harvesting.)

[Erioch]

2 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

I'm always leery of these "free money, coupons, and rewards" things, even the big-name ones like Honey. I'm always asking myself "what's the catch?"

 

(Data harvesting. The catch is almost always data harvesting.)

You're the product.  That's it.  I do have Honey installed but I have, as of yet, to have saved a dime with it.

[silentdragon95]

On 9/5/2022 at 5:47 AM, Spotty said:

After looking in to it a little more, another concern is that the app you install to use it is always tracking your location so that they can send advertisements to you.

[...]

I suspect their game plan is to use the offer of gift cards to entice people to download the app and hand over personal information, but they really just want people to install the app so they can track their every movement and sell location based advertisements to the partnered brands.

If this is true (I can't download the App in Europe to test it) then that would be a hard no for me. Even if they don't require you to turn on location access when you're not using the app (not sure they can), that's a really scummy move because they sure don't advertise "hey by the way, we track where you go, too!".

[mynameGeoff]

Awesome, thanks all for the feedback!

 

Based on feedback, I think we'll pass on the opportunity for the time being but may explore a trial spot on one of our smaller channels for additional thoughts in the comment section.

 

We super appreciate the feedback you all leave us regarding sponsors, it helps us immensely :')

 

 

Locking thread. If anyone has additional thoughts, please send it to this thread: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1428939-lmg-sponsor-complaints/