Earny Review: Legit App to Get Automatic Refunds When Prices Drop?

Make sure that you sign up with the email that you send your shopping receipts to so Earny can scan your digital receipts in your email inbox to analyze your purchases and get you cash refunds automatically when prices drop on products you already bought. You can sign up with as many email accounts as you’d like.

There’s also an app available.

Here’s where you can get the Earny app:

• Download Earny for iOS devices here.
• Download Earny for Android devices here.

Now, it’s important to note that you can sign up for a free Earny account, but it has limited features. If you want access to all of the features Earny has to offer, then you’ll need to pay for a membership.

I’ll cover the payment plans in more detail below.

How Does Earny Work?

Now that you’ve signed up with Earny, you can start saving money.

Here’s what Earny has to offer.

1. Earn up to 20% cashback when you shop online

Just install the Chrome extension, which you can find here, and you can get up to 20% cashback at more than 5,000 retailers, including:

• Walgreens
• Fandango
• ESPN
• Nordstrom
• Hulu
• Walmart
• Target
• Best Buy
• Boxed
• Disney
• Nieman Marcus

You can also shop at your favorite retailers through the app and earn money back on your purchases.

Here’s how it works:

• Just tap the “Shop” tab to browse categories and choose the retailers you want.
• Select “Shop” to start shopping as you normally would and purchase the products you’re interested in.
• Then you can see your money appear in the “Earnings” section of the Profile tab.

When you buy something, you’ll receive a notification and you’ll see the cashback amount appear in the “Pending” balance of the “Earnings” section in the app.

The cashback will transfer into your “Current” balance within 30 to 90 days, depending on the retailer. Then you’ll get a notification.

2. Track price history and get real-time price alerts

Aside from cashback, Earny also allows you to track price history and get real-time price alerts, with its Watchlist feature.

Just add an item to your Watchlist, and you’ll be able to:

• View a product’s price history
• Know when it’s time to buy
• Be alerted when the price drops

Here’s how you can add items to your Watchlist:

• Browse the Shop tab
• Tap through to a retailer’s site
• Visit a product page.
• Click add to Watchlist.

Now, it’s important to note that the Watchlist feature isn’t available for all retailers.

Currently, these retailers have the Watchlist feature enabled:

• Target
• Home Depot
• Best Buy
• Macy’s
• Kohl’s
• Overstock
• Old Navy
• Banana Republic
• Gap
• Bloomingdale’s

According to Earny, Amazon and Walmart are coming soon, so you may be able to get price drop alerts for those retailers in the future.

It can take up to an hour for an item to appear on your Watchlist in the rare event that Earny is not already tracking the item.

3. Get price drop refunds with price protection

Earny also offers price protection, so you can get a refund when the price of an item drops.

Here’s how it works:

• Earny looks at the prices you paid for stuff, based on receipts from your inbox.
• Then it searches for price drops on your purchases.
• If it finds better prices on items you’ve bought, Earny claims back the difference on your behalf.
• Earny will notify you on every refund you get.

There are a few different price protection features available.

Retailer Price Protection

One of the types of price protection available from Earny is retailer price protection.

Price protection is a policy provided by most major retailers who state that if an item drops in price after you’ve bought it, they will refund you for the difference.

Basically, it works with more than 15 retailers to offer up to 90 days of price protection.

You can get price protection with these retailers by making sure your emails are sent to the email address that’s linked to your Earny account.

What retailers does Earny work with?

These are the retailers that are covered under retailer price protection:

• Best Buy
• Bloomingdale’s
• Costco
• The Gap Group (Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Athleta),
• Crew
• Kohl’s
• Macy’s
• Nike
• Nordstrom
• Target
• Zappos
• Home Depot.

Claiming your refund

Claiming means that Earny has found a price drop and has submitted a claim on your behalf to the retailer you purchased from. This claim is not always approved, as it is the final decision of the retailer to approve or refuse a claim, based on their policy. The process can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, depending on the retailer.

Earny will send you a notification and/or email to let you know when a refund has been approved. And, your Earny feed will also update to reflect your refund.

To see the status of each item, just go to your Earny feed.

When you get a refund, it takes 7 to 10 business days to be issued back to the card you used to purchase the item or for your check to arrive in the mail.

If you get a price adjustment and the price falls more, you can not get another refund on the item. Retailers only refund you once for any given item.

Amazon Late Shipping Protection

Another way that Earny offers price protection is with Amazon’s late shipping protection.

Although Amazon guarantees 2-day free shipping, millions of Amazon packages are shipped late every year.

Earny will track your Amazon shipment dates, and if the package arrives outside of the promised timeframe, you can get compensation from Amazon, through its late shipping policy.

Earny automatically provides you with all the information you need to reach out to Amazon for compensation if your order is expected to be delivered late.

Just make sure that you link your Amazon account and send your Amazon emails to the email address associated with your Earny account.

Hotel Price Protection

Earny Hotels is another feature on offer. It finds you better room rates on your existing hotel reservations. The price of a hotel room may change dozes of times before your check-in.

So Earny gets information about upcoming reservations from your inbox. And then it continuously monitors and compares the prices. When Earny finds a better deal for you, you’ll get an email with all the details you need to book a better rate and save money on your hotel reservations.

Earny Hotels currently protects all refundable reservations you make with the following places:

• Expedia
• Orbitz
• Travelocity
• Priceline
• Booking
• And directly at hotel chains like the Marriot and Hilton.

To get a refund on the original reservation that you cancelled, you’ll need to review the refund policy from your original booking to see how you’ll receive your refund when you cancel your booking.

4. Earn when you refer friends

When you refer friends, Earny will give you $5 for each friend who makes an eligible cashback purchase.

This $5 bonus will appear in your “Pending” balance (more on that below) for 45 to 60 days after your friend makes the purchase until the order is validated. And then it will go into your “Current” balance.

Any returns or cancellations will make the $5 bonus invalid, so do keep that in mind.

You can view the amount you’ve earned in the “Earnings” section of the app or in the profile section of the Earny Chrome extension.

5. Cash out your earnings

Once your total earnings reach $15, you’ll be able to withdraw your money. You get paid to your PayPal account, which is always handy.

You can cash out your earnings in the Chrome extension or app by:

• Going to the “Profile” tab
• Choosing “Earnings”
• Tapping “Cash Out”

This will send a payment request. You can receive your money to your PayPal account within 3 to 5 business days.

Is Earny Legitimate?

So, now you know what Earny has to offer, you probably want to know whether or not Earny is legit.

Well, it is a legit company that’s pretty well-reviewed online. So it’s not one of those scam sites.

Here’s how Earny is rated online:

• Google Play store rating: It has more than 5,000 reviews and 3.5 stars.
• App Store rating: It has more than 15,000 reviews and 4.5 stars.
• BBB rating: It has an A+ rating with the BBB. But it only has a 1-star rating from customers. There are only 9 reviews on there though, which isn’t a wide demographic.
• Chrome web store rating: It has 16 ratings and 4.3 stars.

There were also a lot of first hand accounts and reviews of Earny on Reddit. Overall, users seem to like it.

So as you can see, it’s not one of those sites that’s poorly reviewed.

Let’s take a more in-depth look at what the site’s users have to say.

Positive reviews

I’ll begin with the positive reviews, of which there are many.

Here’s what the positive reviews have to say on the Chrome web store:

• “Love this, super easy to use and gets me a percentage of what I paid back. Also really in love with the “watch-list” feature where you can see the price history of an item you’re interested in and add it to the list so you can be notified when the price dropped! Awesome product.”
• “Been using Earny for the last 3 years or so and am extremely excited that they just launched a chrome extension. I love it and refer it to everyone.  I would not shop without checking in with Earny first.  Non-intrusive at all.  You shop.  They send you money.  End of story.  It’s that easy!”

The Earny app also has lots of positive reviews from users on the Google Play Store and the App Store. One user on the app store says:

• “Awesome app! I have only been using Earny for a few weeks and have received more than $15 in refunds. The process is seamless – you will receive a notification on your device and an email that a refund has been requested. No action on by the user once the credit card has been registered….update After three months the refunds keep coming in with about $100 in aggregate. Earny’s fees are reasonable. I will continue using the app….keeps generating refunds”

Negative reviews

While there are lots of positive reviews of Earny, there are some negative ones. I noticed a couple of common complaints popping up.

One common complaint I saw was that people weren’t getting refunds, despite paying for a membership, like this user on the Google Play store, who said:

• “This app charged me yearly fees, it’s been already a month. No penny refunded so far. The only way you get some cash is by referring your friend. I am not sure if this app even works.”

A few people on the Chrome store and Google Play store also complained that they struggled to link their Amazon account.

Earny FAQ

I’ve covered the features of the app above, but in case you have a few more questions about Earny, I’ve added an FAQ section to help you out.

Is Earny Free?

While it’s free to create an Earny account and download the app, the features you get access to with a free account are limited.

To get the full price tracking benefits that Earny offers, you will need to pay for a subscription.

You have the option to pay monthly or annually.  Earny is not particularly forthcoming with how much its memberships cost. Even after digging through the site, I could not find a figure for the cost of the subscription.

You have to sign up if you want to view the cost of the membership. That’s not ideal for me, anyway. I like to know the cost of a service before I enter any of my personal details, like my name and email address.

I found that this was the cost of an Earny subscription:

• $7.99 a month for a monthly subscription
• $47.99 for an annual subscription

If you don’t sign up for a monthly or annual plan, Earny collects 25% of the refunds you get.

An Earny subscription covers:

• Retailer price protection.
• Amazon late shipping protection.
• Hotel price protection.
• Automatic cashback. According to Earny, you can get double cashback rates with a paid plan.

How much can I save with Earny?

It’s tough to give a definitive number here because each of us spends a different amount each month on shopping.

You may spend just $50 a month shopping and another person may spend $100s. Also, the fact that the price of products doesn’t always drop means that you may have purchased items that won’t get you a refund. This again makes it difficult to give you an exact saving figure.

When it comes to cashback, since you can earn up to 20% back on your purchases, you could save yourself $20 for every $100 you spend!

According to Earny, users save an average of $75 per reservation with its hotel price protection feature.

Does Earny work with Amazon?

Earny can get you refunds when your Amazon package arrives late. So if you often order from Amazon, Earny could be a good tool for you.

Is Earny safe?

Yes. It’s a legit app. According to its privacy policy, it doesn’t sell your personal information. It does however collect certain information on you, and it sometimes shares it, which isn’t uncommon with these types of companies.

Earny states that you can contact the company if you don’t want to share your personal information with third party advertising partners.

You can learn more about your privacy with Earny here.

How do I get rid of Earny?

If you decide you want to remove your Earny account, here’s how you can do it:

• On the website or app, click on Profile.
• Scroll to the bottom and choose “Remove Account”
• Now, all of your information will be removed, and your account will be permanently deleted.

What are my “pending” earnings?

Your pending balance in the Earnings section is the amount of money that you’ve earned but cannot withdraw yet.

This money is still within the pending window and the amount of time it stays pending varies from retailer to retailer.

If you want to view the pending window, just go to the “Special Conditions” section on the retailer page in the Earny app.

If you cancel an order or return the item when it’s still in your “Pending” balance, the amount will be reversed.

When your money is transferred from “Pending” to your “Current” balance, Earny, will send you a notification.

Can you still get Credit Card Price Protection?

Earny used to offer credit card price protection. Sadly, it no longer offers it. Earny claims this is due to recent changes made by credit card issuers and credit card companies. But, it still offers protection at the retailers I mentioned above, and you can use any card you like because it’s covered through the retailer’s price protection policy.

Is Earny Worth It?

Okay, so now you know how Earny works, you’re probably wondering, is it worth it?

Here are my Earny pros and cons.

Pros

Let’s start with the pros:

• It covers more than 5,000 retailers.
• It gets you refunds automatically, so there’s no extra effort on your part.
• You can get late shipping refunds from Amazon.
• It regularly rolls out new features.
• The Chrome extension saves you money instantly.

Cons

Here are some of the downsides to Earny:

• It charges a membership fee that may not cover what you get back in refunds.
• Even if you don’t pay for a subscription plan, Earny takes a 25% cut of your refunds

Earny vs Paribus

Overall, I think that Earny is a good service. But the fact that you have to pay for a monthly or annual subscription in order to reap all of its benefits isn’t ideal.

If you pay $7.99 for a month and get no refunds, that’s not great. If you do a lot of shopping online though, it likely will get you refunds.

For example, I’ve had quite a few Amazon deliveries arrive late, so Earny would have been useful at getting money back for me.

Of course, you can go with the free membership, but as I said before, the features you have access too are limited, and Earny takes a 25% cut of the refunds it gets you, which I think is quite high.

That’s why I’d recommend Paribus if it’s just price drop refunds you’re looking for.

Paribus is free to use, and you get to keep 100% of your refunds.  So I’d recommend that if Earny’s fees put you off.

It is a good app though that can save you money. So I’d consider it if you shop online a lot.

Hopefully, this Earny app review helped you to decide whether you want to use the service or not. Have you ever used Earny? If so, let us know about it in the comments section below.