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Rakuten’s Black Friday offers are now live and as I said a few days ago, the portal is offering 15% cash back or 15 Amex Membership Rewards Points per dollar spent at over 600 stores. At some popular stores (like Saks 5th Avenue) the returns are even higher. With the stores included in this promotion also offering their own Black Friday deals, this is a great time to stack savings and to snap up some bargains.
If your favorite retailer isn’t currently offering a deal as good as 15% back don’t worry as there’s a good chance the return that it’s offering will improve over the Black Friday weekend or on Cyber Monday. If, on the other hand, your favorite retailer is offering the 15% rebate today, it may be a good idea to do your shopping sooner rather than later as it may drop out of this deal over the next few days.
Today, among the participating retailers offering 15% cash back (or more) are the following*:
- Bass Pro Shops
- BooHoo
- Champion USA
- Club Monaco
- Columbia
- Dockers
- Entertainment.com (20%)
- Finish Line
- Forever 21
- Guess
- Levis
- Neiman Marcus (up to 16%)
- The North Face
- Saks Fifth Avenue (16%)
- Shoe.com
- Ted Baker
- The North Face
- True Religion (up to 15%)
- Tumi
*The list of participating retailers is subject to change
Related Reading: How to elect to earn Membership Rewards Points through Rakuten
There no trick to getting the cash back or Membership Rewards points that are on offer (you simply have to click through to the retailers using the links on Rakuten) but before you start shopping there are two things you should keep in mind:
Firstly, before making any purchases, make sure you check what Amex offers are available in your American Express account – a number of retailers participating in the Rakuten promotion also frequently appear among the Amex offers I’ve been seeing this year. Load your Amex card with any relevant offers and then use that card to pay when you’ve clicked through to the retailer(s) and finished your shopping.
Secondly, if you don’t have any relevant Amex offers to use, make sure you use a credit card that will reward you well. Most miles and points credit cards will only offer 1 point or mile per dollar at a lot of the participating retailers so this would be a good opportunity to use a good cash back card like the refreshed Chase Freedom Unlimited Card (1.5% cash back on all spending) or the Blue Cash EveryDay Card (2% cash back at select department stores)…
…or to use a card on which you’re currently working towards a strong welcome offer (e.g. if you recently signed up for the offer on the Amex Platinum Card).
Most importantly, don’t forget that if you’re new to Rakuten, you can sign up using this referral link and earn a bonus of $40 cash back or 4,000 Membership Rewards Points (on top of any other cash back/points you may earn).
