Earn cash back from your regular shopping! Sort of. You can spend it on Amazon, so that’s basically the same, if not better, than cash.

Have you seen this, have you heard about this? Fetch Rewards. It’s sort of like iBotta, I think. Idk, iBotta got left by the wayside for me, even though the $5 start incentive is pretty nice for this kind of …platform? Product, service? Wtf is it? We’re here to find out.

So you download the app to your phone. You give it permission to everything on your phone. Or maybe just the camera. Doesn’t really matter, by now all your personal info is already on blast. You do have to enter some basic personal information, as one does. Then take pictures of your shopping receipts.

Any receipt. Grocery, gas, mechanic, haircut, doesn’t matter. If it’s a receipt of sale, you scan that bad boy. 25 points for every receipt, regardless. On top of that, there’s lots of bonuses based on various factors. I assume some are static, while others are definitely rotating or otherwise non-recurring. Typically you get the +25/50/100 bonuses, but just yesterday I hit +1000.

1000 points just for something I would have bought regardless. “But Rocky!”, you interject, “Just exactly how much is 1 point worth?””. That’s easy. $0.001. Though I don’t think you can actually convert points directly into cash. You can convert them into gift cards and special offers, etc. There seems to be 2 sweepstakes a month, in which you can purchase entries for 1000 points.

By now, you probably have more specific questions. Let’s first address the sweepstakes. Oh, 1000pts = $1 .

The sweepstakes has a grand prize of a $500 pre-paid VISA. Then 5 runner-up prizes of $100. Now, if you’re doing math, you realize that this isn’t a bad gamble. Granted, the odds are variable, but what else are you going to do with stupid points from a free app? I mean, seriously, the prizes kind of suck.

Why are you telling me about some points? This sucks, you suck.

Well goddamn. Points can be converted to dollars, $3 at a time. Well, there’s other stuff. You can do $5 of Starbucks at a time…is there a Target card, too? Maybe. What you really want is the Amazon $3 gift cards. What can you buy with Amazon gift cards? Literally fu’king anything. It’s Amazon ffs.

So you either spend your points on gambling, or save them to buy stuff on Amazon.

Look, that’s not all you can do with points, but I don’t see why you’d do anything different. Gambling is great, especially when it’s free. Right? Even if you only one once, ever, you got free money for buying stuff. Of course, it’s still going to be an electronic balance, but the VISA pre-paids will, obviously, work anywhere.

On the other hand, if you’re like me, you want some kind of guaranteed tangible payoff for the work involved in snapping receipts.

Pictures of receipts sounds really easy. How is it work?

You probably never thought about the sheer number of receipts you get. You also likely never noticed how many merchants don’t automatically print you a receipt. Meijer gas station does this. (Or…doesn’t? I’m confused).

Granted, you could take a picture of your receipts in the store right away, but I have never noticed anyone doing it. Probably because you’d look like such a giant tool it’d give you an instant aneurysm. For real, I’ve heard people talk about Fetch on a handful of occasions. Never, however, have I seen anyone taking pics of their receipts.

I am in checkout lanes significantly more often than I am paying attention to whatever dumb thing a person is saying.

How’s the Rockydennis routine go?

I save all my receipts in a pile in a specific spot where they won’t be disturbed, for roughly 1-2 weeks. I try not to go any longer, because if I forget on a Tuesday, I still have time to make it up. (It doesn’t have to be Tuesdays, that’s just…) “But Rocky!”, you interrupt, “I asked for your routine, not your thought process.”.

Fair enough. So I take stack of receipts, then take pictures of them one by one. Sometimes I have to manually enter the name of a business (usually mom and pops). Points are delayed because it needs a human to review it.

And that’s it. I save receipts, not always my own, and I snap pictures of them.

As you might imagine, the self check-out lanes can be flush with people’s receipts. The people that watch at Meijer, though, are insane. You won’t find leftover receipts. Or anything that doesn’t belong. Not even smudges on the screen. They’ll literally force their way in front of you to clean the screen while you’re trying to scan shit. Like, not all the time, but it does happen.

What are you waiting for? Download Fetch Rewards on your phone today! And use my referral code.
CP9Q9

You get 2000 free points for using a valid referral code, so, yeah.