The reason this exists

Search this category and you mostly find operator marketing with the pronouns changed and a referral link bolted on. The figures came from the brand, the payout claim came from a help page, and not one person in the chain has ever filed a redemption. We got tired of that and started funding accounts instead.

The routine

Register, buy in with our own money, run the promotional balance down, file for redemption, start a stopwatch. Three times per brand, spaced across three weeks. Then write down what actually happened, including the parts that make a brand look slow, and order the notes by outcome rather than by the size of the opening offer.

Who pays for it

Readers who register through a commercial link generate a commission, disclosed wherever one appears. The rate is settled before the walking starts and locked afterwards. A number of brands in these notes pay nothing at all and hold the positions their cashiers earned. An arrangement that required a position to move would be an arrangement we ended.

The limits of this desk

We are not an operator. No stake, no balance, no redemption passes through here, and we have no standing to intervene between you and a brand. We are not lawyers either, so treat nothing here as legal advice about your own state.

Tell us when we are wrong

A figure that has drifted or a claim that no longer holds is worth an email. It gets checked, corrected in place, and annotated with what changed. We would far rather be corrected than quoted inaccurately.