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Ebates offers 13 percent cash back from over 100 stores

Here's your chance to save an extra chunk of change on smartphone and tablet accessories, multimedia software, a Netflix subscription, and more.

Rick Broida Senior Editor
Rick Broida is the author of numerous books and thousands of reviews, features and blog posts. He writes CNET's popular Cheapskate blog and co-hosts Protocol 1: A Travelers Podcast (about the TV show Travelers). He lives in Michigan, where he previously owned two escape rooms (chronicled in the ebook "I Was a Middle-Aged Zombie").
Rick Broida
2 min read
Ebates

I'm increasingly fond of cash-back Web sites like BeFrugal, Ebates, and FatWallet, which refund you a percentage of your purchase just for shopping via their portals. It's easy money (back).

Granted, those percentages tend to be fairly small: 2 percent here, 4 percent there, maybe the occasional 7 or 8 percent.

Here's your chance to get a much bigger refund. To celebrate its 13th birthday, Ebates is offering 13 percent cash back from 132 stores.

For example, you can get 13 percent back on anything you buy from Accessory Geeks or Cell Phone Shop, which offer inexpensive cases, screen protectors, mobile chargers, and the like for phones and tablets.

Other tech-oriented vendors included in this promotion: Case-Mate, makers of custom cases for smartphones and tablets; Netflix, offering $13 (that's dollars!) cash back after you complete a one-month free trial; and Roxio, makers of popular multimedia programs like Roxio Creator and Toast Titanium 11. (Admittedly, you can usually find Roxio software online for less than the-direct-price-minus-13-percent.)

And, hey, for those who like non-tech shopping, there are plenty of big-name stores participating as well: Gap, Godiva, Nordstrom, Old Navy, and so on.

If you're not familiar with Ebates, it works like this: You start at the Ebates site, click the store you want to shop, then just browse and buy like you normally would. Cash-back payments come every 90 days in the form of a check or PayPal deposit. It's ridiculously easy to use, to the point where I no longer shop online without it.

It's free to sign up for Ebates; you're welcome to use my referral link, or just go the regular route.

You might also want to check out the Ebates Toolbar, which integrates with your browser to make Ebate-powered shopping easier.

Of course, you don't have to limit your cash-back shopping to Ebates. Sites like the aforementioned BeFrugal and FatWallet sometimes have higher cash-back percentages.

In fact, if you want to know which site is offering the biggest payout for a particular store, head to CashReporter.com. It aggregates the rebate info for dozens of cash-backers.