Back on this… they now give 4% back on gift card purchases for the few retailers and this stacks up with the 1% from Chase. So that makes it 5% back, better than any savings account.
False equivalence surely? Unless you mean people should just buy giftcards rather than save up…
They have done for ages.
This is how I do my shop and complete the challenges.
I buy the equivalent of what my anticipated shopping bill will be in Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s, then simply pay with gift cards at the checkout. It’s not difficult to do and the sum builds up.
Gift Cards rewards clear in about 15 days.
Compare that to shops which are over a month, Greggs, for example
Went for a Pizza Hut buffet, £9.99
Gift card a tenner.
Lose 1p, earn 40p, net gain 39p
They all add up.
Note the terms though.
Tesco not covered.
Morrisons in store spend only.
Asda gift cards can be used online or in-store.
Recently made a purchase from George at Asda.
My order was £16, access via Top Cashback for 2.75%, gift card reward 64p, Chase cashback 16p.
[Update: For info, just realised that TCB is nil as payment by gift card is excluded from offer]
Quickly earn enough to cover my mobile bill, with minimal effort really.
My bug bear is the minimum redemption of £10, when my tariff is currently £1.99 , moving up to £6.99 in five months. But the credit will sit in my account anyway so next redemption covers my 5x £1.99 bills comfortably.
Oh, and if on Twitter, click the bell for Airtime Rewards and you may be lucky enough to see, and enter, a bonus promo code for another few pence off.
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I applaud the attention to detail - you deserve the rewards you get. Trouble is, the workflow started to swim before my eyes.
I know there’s a cohort of fellows here who totally subscribe to the model. Me? I’d be all over it for a week(-ish).
I only went back on last month as now with a provider where I can use the rewards on me, not gift them to others.
I can thank Plusnet for starting to close down their mobile business.
Despite their communications about closing the mobile side, their app now says this:
Go figure 
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includes filling stations (as long as the kiosk is open)
Excludes filling stations, but nothing to stop you exchanging them for another branded gift card in store (self checkouts are your friend here).
Most of these rates can be equalled or beaten by employee benefit schemes like Perks at Work, Sodexo, Huddlebuy etc; which have the benefit of giving you a straight forward % discount or rewards which can be redeemed as cash.
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Yes, a lot of cashback offers tend to be similar across the board, through schemes or bank accounts.
The 4% gift card is the only one of interest to me at Airtime Rewards as I don’t really shop at the other retailers in the app. A bit like my mainly useless American Express offers
Employment schemes also only tend to be available to the employed, not the early retired 
Aye, although both the ones I have access at the time of writing relate to former employers of mine. Perks at Work just surprisingly said ‘yes’ when I asked if I could keep access (just lost the branding I previously had) and I never got booted out of Sodexo’s one (left that employer 18 months ago).
I think Santander Boosts is an implementation of one of these, although I’ve stopped looking at it now as the offers were always rubbish.
Same.
Odd free comp entry, that’s about it, for me.
So, I finally move to a provider in the list, taking advantage of a MSE deal.
I top up my Lebara account with £10 from Airtime Rewards and sit back, thinking that’s the next five months covered 
Alas not 
Apparently, Lebara cannot use the credit for the MSE promotion tariff.
Nor can they refund me that £10 as it was created with a voucher code, for which their system is apparently unable to refund, as no cash transaction to reverse.
Only way I can use that credit is leave the promotion tariff, and go on to a full price tariff (with less benefits). Not gonna happen.
Waste of time and effort
I’ve removed all my cards from AR app now and uninstalled it.
No point in “creating” money, if I am unable to spend it. Not impressed at all.
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Lebara are a bit weird like that. Topping up isn’t the same as buying a plan. In fact topping up is pretty much useless unless you’re making premium rate calls or something else that’s not included in the plan.
And their customer service is incompetent.
Five times I have asked them to point me to the term or condition which states that my promotion tariff must be paid by bank card and cannot be paid from any account balance.
Five times they have been incapable of doing so.
In fact, in one email, they sent me links to about twenty different terms and conditions, not one was the MSE promotion tariff I was on.
Total clowns.
They do not know how to deal with a complaint and, tbh, I cba to carry on banging my head against a brick wall over a tenner.
I have simply stopped using Airtime Rewards, and will pay by bank card, while the tariff suits me.
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How about just leaving your credit to accumulate, it is passively earned anyway.
Because there is no point accumulating something which you cannot spend.
Mine wasn’t passively earned as the general offers were useless. Mine was earned by manipulating the 4% gift card rewards, so planning how much likely to spend at the supermarket, buying equivalent in gift cards, then using gift cards at checkout.
Cba with all the faff for absolutely zero return.
I clowned around with Lebara and Lyca for 9 months or so while they were both throwing out SIMs for <£1/month - 6 months of that was spending a grand total of 2p/month for one of each with Vodafone and O2 coverage.
Service from Lebara was alright I thought, it was Lyca who were torturous to deal with.
Either way I knew I’d eventually end up back on a non-MVNO tariff so it wasn’t a problem to build up a larger credit with Airtime Rewards. I was never inclined to even try a Lebara cashout since the minimum payout of £10 would absolutely dwarf the total amount I intended to spend with them.
No point cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Very happy with my current combo of a Vodafone 100GB SIM for ~£7.50/month and an RWG SIM to give me EE coverage too, prepaid for 2 years.
That sounds a decent tariff tbf
Airtime Rewards sent my credit to my PayPal when I had issues
Tried that before and they declined.
Seems to be pot luck there.
Sent it to my card once iirc
Pick a mainstream provider in the app, say Vodafone. Then message support and say you’re on a business tariff. They’ll either do a manual PayPal or enable PayPal for you altogether.