Ebates

You may have heard of this before, but if you haven't, I figured it would be nice to share!  Ebates is an online shopping rewards program; accounts are free, and different online retailers offer anywhere from 1% to 20% cash back on purchases done through Ebates (Drugstore.com has 20% off your first order plus 6% cash back, Nordstrom has 3% cash back, JCPenney has 5%, among many, many others).  There are often specials, where the normal cash back amount at a given store is doubled, as when I bought my perfume from Sephora (normally 4% cash back, but I got 8%, saving me $5.44).  Cash back checks are sent at least 4 times a year; I received my Sephora check last week with no trouble.  It can take a few days for the credit to show up in your account, so don't be worried if it's not there right away!

If you shop online with any kind of regularity, Ebates is a great program to join (though Amazon is sadly not one of the available stores), and can save you quite a bit of money over time.  Here's a link to join; that is a referral link, so if you sign up through it, I get $5 cash back, but I wouldn't recommend the site if I didn't like and use it myself!  It is well and truly risk- and cost-free, and while I really don't know how or why Ebates/retailers offer cash back, I'm quite thrilled they do, since saving money is always fun :-)

Do you use Ebates?  Are you a member of any other shopping rewards programs?  What do you think of them?