Fetch Rewards - Is It Worth It?

Recently I downloaded Fetch Rewards because I’m a sucker and it popped up on one of my social media feeds. It promises to save users money by giving cashback on your receipts so that you can save money on everyday purchases. I like money - you won’t find me passing on sales or savings, so naturally I decided to give the app a try.

Here’s How It Works

App users can receive points for uploading their receipts. Fetch Rewards accepts images of physical receipts, but it also offers the option to scan your inbox for e-receipts when you link an email account to the app. Most users will likely use both and that's what I did. All receipts uploaded to the app translate to points that a user can redeem for gift cards to popular retailers.

After downloading the app, Fetch Reward users can receive a 3,000-point throught a referral bonus code and an additional 1,009 a bonus for your initial receipt upload. You then receive an additional 600, 400, 250, 150, 100 points for the subsequent receipt uploads – after the initial promotion you can except to receive 25 points per receipt. Once you receive at least 10,000 points ($10.00) to the most shopped retailers you can cash out to receive gift cards from other common retailers like Amazon, Target, Walmart, Whole Foods, and Ebay. For some less shopped or higher end retailers like Williams-Sonoma or Under Armour you will need at least 25,000 points or $25.00 to receive a gift card.

The Breakdown

The app’s interface is pretty user friendly. It has icons for your Rewards account, the “Special Offers” and Rewards sections, as well as an social feed feature that I didn’t use. Clicking on the photo icon gives you the option to upload a photo or scan your inbox for e-receipts. Once you have taken the photo, Fetch Rewards will scan the receipt for the store, total, and date of purchases, and the photo is submitted, the points are deposited into your Fetch account.

In addition to points earned from general receipts, you have additional opportunities to earn if an item on the receipt is in the “Special Offers” section.

All-in-all Fetch is a straightforward and easy to use.

Is It Worth It?

Given that their point to currency conversion is $.001 per point which means that each receipt is earning $.025 of a cent, you will need four receipts to earn a single cent. I would likely earn about a $1.00 a week - these are pretty slim savings in my opinion.

The e-receipt analyzer function is a cool feature, but it’s also worth noting that the Fetch app will really only recognize e-receipts from common online retailers, like Amazon, so you may end up taking a photo of it anyway, but the overall the app is providing savings that you wouldn’t otherwise have.

Final Thoughts

While a completely legitimate rewards app, Fetch Rewards may only be useful if you are really struggling to make ends meet.

I would be willing to continue to use the app if the e-receipt scanning function was more sophisticated, but at this point I think the savings doesn’t justify the amount of time required to upload the receipts. That extra points can be earned on frequently purchased items may make the apps useful if you are someone who frequently purchases item offered, but after seeing the offers, this wouldn’t be a benefit me.

I’m planning on finishing my experiment to $10,000 points since I have almost reached that goal, but likely won’t be continuing to use Fetch Rewards as a practical savings app.