Questions and Clarifications on 2020 $25 Cash Back Promotion

[j12860zark]

I have 2 questions about this promotion:

1. For the current $25 cash back promotion, I understand that you need to make three (3) qualifying purchases of $35 or more from a list of qualified merchants, including Wal-Mart, Old Navy, Gap, Ulta, Door Dash and Banana Republic. My question is this - do the three purchases have to be from different merchants, or can they all be from the same merchant? In other words, if I make two (2) purchases from Wal-Mart and one (1) from Old Navy, or if I make all 3 from Wal-Mart, do I still qualify to earn the cash back reward? Or, do I need to make one from Wal-Mart, one from Old Navy, and one from Gap, etc?
2. One of my qualifying purchases (at walmart.com) was for $359.13, but the merchant refunded me $0.01, or one cent, for reasons unknown. What's more, for some reason the entire purchase is now listed in my account activity as "refunded," which is wrong, since the merchandise is being delivered this week. I'm concerned that this $0.01 refund may disqualify that purchase from the program in PayPal's eyes. I think this purchase should still qualify as long as the merchandise is received.

Can someone please help me with these questions? Thank you.

[Niki43]

I too had a $.01 refund on one of my purchases for some unknown reason, hoping it wasn't intentionally done to stop me from receiving the offer.

[j12860zark]

Thanks for the response. I think it was simply an adjustment. I definitely got the 3 purchases done. Now it's a matter of whether or not I was one of the first 130k to meet the requirements. No way of knowing that, but I guess we'll see! It was a nice incentive.

[Airic]

Be sure to message PayPal (signed into your account > go to Help) your qualifying purchases, in relation to this promotion.  Took me half a dozen messages to them but today I received a call that they issued a manual $25 credit to my account (shows in my WALLET page).  They are strained for resources and overwhelmed with the volume of promotions and other matters they need to address.

[LisainFL]

Pay pal promo of $25 cash back after making 3 purchases is a scam.  I was just told by someone at Paypal I wouldn't receive my $25 because it was only for the first 130K.  However, after I made 3 purchases at Walmart.com, I checked several days later and Paypal was still advertising the promo offer.  It's a rip off.  They never intended on paying the cash back.  They were only trying to drive traffic to the online websites probably because they probably get money from the retail stores.  What a scam.  If the 130k customer limit had been met, why didn't they remove the promo offer so other people didn't try to earn the reward?  If they were a reputable company, they would have removed the offer after the 130K was met.  I will never use Paypal again.  I can't trust them.

[Airic]

LisainFL,  While I did have to put a lot of time in to receive a $25 credit for my 3 qualifying purchases, everything leading up to it emphasized how little PayPal was prepared or intended to honor their promotion.  In short I agree with you.  The promo advertisement should have noted how they'd inform customers of the maximum being reached, definitely before customers endeavored on making three purchases.  Even when I clicked on the button to select the promotion (at onset of seeing it), it did nothing to confirm I added it to my queue - in fact, there is no queue.  I definitely will be avoiding PayPal promotions if they at all look unsupported like this one did.

[j12860zark]

It may not have been run very effectively but I’d stop short of calling it an outright scam. I knew going in about the first 130k people, which is actually a small number. Based on that, I never had an expectation that I’d automatically qualify. Furthermore, I had to make these purchases anyway as they were holiday gifts, so using PayPal was simply an easy-to-use payment option. TBH I’d rather have my credit card listed on PayPal and accessible to multiple online retailers than have it listed individually on a larger number of websites that I rarely use, which I consider a security risk. There was another PayPal promotion, with CVS, that worked out great for me, so I’m hesitant to call them out on this for anything other than a lack of transparency, which in this case would have been the right thing for them to do. Perhaps I too will provide them with that feedback, and thanks for yours.