BeFrugal Review: Scam or a Legit Cash Back Site Better than Rakuten?

It’s actually simpler than you might think. BeFrugal has a lot of contracts and connections with retailers. Companies view sites like BeFrugal as an easy way to advertise to a huge collection of people. BeFrugal earns revenue by agreeing to allow companies to promote deals to its users.

It’s a winning situation for everyone. Users earn cash back for their purchases, companies make more sales, and BeFrugal gets revenue for its platform.

How Do You Use BeFrugal?

Joining the site and getting started can be done in a few simple steps.

• Step 1: Go here and click “Join for Free and Get $10” (that’s right, you get money just for signing up!)
• Step 2: Finish filling out your account information and confirm your email address.
• Step 3: Browse the site and select one of the retailers you want to shop at.
• Step 4: Click on the coupon, deal, or shop now button. Purchase what you want.
• Step 5: After your purchase has been processed, your money will be added to your account.

From there it’s a matter of deciding how you want to get paid and requesting your payment (more on that latter).

Features of BeFrugal

I’ve already mentioned their high payment rates and the thousands of stores they work for. However, there’s actually a huge list of other features you might be interested in.

Coupons

All of their coupons are 100% guaranteed to work and are tested. They have coupons for over 50,000 stores, including online stores.

If a coupon doesn’t work for whatever reason, BeFrugal will pay you $5. You can read more about this from their Coupon Guarantee.

Customer service

They have both email and live chat customer service. Best of all, their customer service is all based out of US offices.

Mobile app

Their app is available on both the Apple App Store and Google Play. The app averages about 4 stars out of 5 on both platforms which is pretty good compared to some of the other top cashback apps. It features everything that the website does, however now you can shop on the go and check on your account even when you aren’t near your computer.

Browser add on

If you don’t feel like going to their website every time you want to shop, you can check out their browser add on. Just install it and then whenever you visit a compatible site, BeFrugal will alert you and let you activate their cashback deals.

Now, one thing I think people should be aware of is that sites like these do like to use browser add ons to collect data. They’ll usually collect things like what gender you are, how old you are, and so on. Then they’ll sell that data to companies to let them know what demographic was most interested in their brand.

If you prefer to keep as much of your data private as possible, you probably don’t want to download this.

Friend referral program

This program has just a few handy steps to help you earn extra money.

1. Refer your friends to the site with your special code. (You’ll get that once you sign up.)
2. After they sign up, they’ll get $10 extra as soon as they earn $10 worth of cash back rewards.
3. As soon as they earn that $10 cash back, you’ll also be rewarded $10!

Fly or drive calculator

Do you like to travel? If so, you might find this tool handy. They have a calculator that can tell if it would be cheaper to drive to your destination or to fly to your destination.

Electric car calculator

Are curious to know if an electric car would actually save you money? They have a tool for that. You just input information about your driving habits and they can calculate if the cost of gas outweighs the cost of an electric car.

How Do You Cash Out on BeFrugal?

Obviously all these claims sound great but are worthless if you don’t know how to get your money!

You can request that your money be:

• Deposited in your PayPal account
• Deposited into your Venmo
• Sent by check to your home
• Directly deposited into your bank account
• Paid through a gift card of your choice

Most payments are sent the next business day after the request. Keep in mind that during holiday seasons this might slow down.

They do require a minimum threshold, however, so be aware of that. The minimum threshold changes from time to time, but usually, the minimum withdrawal is set to $0.01 for both PayPal and Venmo.

For cash and check payments, the minimum withdrawal is $25.

For a direct deposit to bank accounts, the minimum is only $0.01.

Physical gift cards can be requested at the cost of a $3 fee. eGift Cards have no fees or requirements. A Visa prepaid card must be used within 4 months of the issue date, but other than that has no fees.

Is BeFrugal Legitimate?

When a site offers you money, even just cash back, you should always check to see if they are legit. After all, you don’t want some random company stealing your identity.

I wondered if BeFrugal is a scam so I did some digging into what others had to say.

According to the Better Business Bureau, they are an accredited business. This means that they actually work to resolve customer issues and let the BBB monitor their progress.

They also have an A rating thanks to how they respond to their customer complaints. In the nine years they’ve been on the BBB website, they’ve received 101 complaints. This number seems large, but keep in mind that this site has thousands of users.

At this moment, almost every single complaint has been resolved or, at the very least, answered.

If you want to read their BBB profile, click here.

I also found some customer reviews that I thought gave a good picture of what the site is like.

“I received around $300 in cashback from BeFrugal. They’re mostly legit, but will deny around 10-20% of your claims, without a good reason,” said a Reddit reviewer.

The reviewer also mentioned that they had trouble with BeFrugal accepting Amazon purchases.

BeFrugal Tips

If you’re interested in joining the site after reading all of this, here are some tips to help you maximize the money you get.

Sign-up bonus

Even if you don’t end up liking the site, do your best to get the sign-up bonus. It’s basically a free $10 in your pocket. You are literally getting paid to sign up! Since they don’t have high minimum payouts, you don’t have to worry about that either.

Referral group

This is a tip I think you could use for ANY site with a referral program. Make a group of friends and family members who, like you, use these kinds of sites. When you all work together, your sign-up bonuses, referral credits, and so on really add up.

Remember to check the site

This is a hard one to do at first. Before purchasing anything online, always remember to check if you can get cash back from BeFrugal. You never know when you’ll save money!

Use websites

Instead of going to a store to do your shopping, just buy what you wanted online if you have a cash back option for it. You’ll save more money that way and usually, you can ask for it to be delivered to the store if you don’t want to pay for shipping.

Email address

When signing up for an account, make a new email address that’s used only for sites like this. It’ll prevent spam from showing up in your personal account.

Pros & cons

Here’s a quick list of pros and cons to help you figure out what works about using the site.

Advantages of using BeFrugal

• Over 5,000 stores available
• Maximum cash back guarantee
• Available to users all over the world
• Tons of money-saving tools
• Coupon guarantee
• Low required minimums

Disadvantages of using BeFrugal

• No cash back for in-store purchases
• Spam emails
• Reported problems with amazon purchases

BeFrugal vs Rakuten

So is BeFrugal worth joining?

In my opinion, most cash back programs tend to be worth joining. It’s basically free money for something you were going to buy anyway.

Now, the real issue is figuring out which site has the highest cashback rate for what you are trying to buy. Each site has a different rate. For example, as mentioned in our Rakuten review, Rakuten (former eBates) offers some of the highest cashback rates for certain stores and online retailers, but not for all. Case in point, Rakuten may pay a higher cashback for shopping at Walmart, but BeFrugal may pay more for shopping at Target, or vice versa. That’s why I always recommend joining a few different rebate sites and then checking with each to see which one pays the most cashback for the particular store you like to shop from.

What makes this site better than most other sites is that the pay rate is really nice and their coupons actually work. To me, those two things seem well worth it.

Have you tried BeFrugal before? If you have, let us know what you thought of the program and how you review BeFrugal. Feel free to share tips with other readers to maximize payouts!