Last week, I wrote about a new mobile app called Drop which promised to work similar to a cashback portal where you earn points by making purchases at certain stores.
(READ MORE: New app giving rebates for purchases at Amazon, Walmart, Target and more!)
The difference is that similar to programs like Visa Savings Edge you log in with your credit card information, Drop tracks your purchases and gives points at specific merchants
If you’d like to sign up, you can use my referral code icgjk to sign up. You’ll earn 1000 points (~$1 in GCs) if you sign up and so will I.
The beginning of the end
Even when I wrote about it, I didn’t feel like this was a sustainable situation. While some of the stores seemed to indicate there could be some potential for racking up a ton of points buying gift cards and other such things, reports are that Drop is starting to crack down on that.
Miles to Memories, Angelina Travels and Doctor of Credit have all reported that people with large transactions of the same amount at the same merchants are getting their accounts flagged. And due to this, all gift card redemptions are being manually reviewed (i.e. taking longer)
What really irritates me
What really irritates me is the fact that Drop changed their terms and conditions AFTER people had already spent money with them. This quote from the Drop team to Shawn from Miles to Memories is especially galling
We didn’t anticipate for “churning”/manufacturing spending to happen, and as a result, there’s been a backlog of gift card orders. Right now our support team is working hard to ensure that points for redemptions are not coming from manufactured spending and manually sending out gift cards.
WHAT?!?! HOW DID THEY NOT THINK OF THIS?!!?
I guess chalk that up to another company giving away free money and then acting surprised when everyone wants some.
What now?
Free-quent Flyer has a good post on this as well, and recommends unlinking your accounts before uninstalling the app. My plan is to redeem out my points for a gift card (Amazon I guess) and then unlinking my accounts and forgetting I ever heard of Drop
Anyone else get their account shut down at Drop?
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“What really irritates me is the fact that Drop changed their terms and conditions AFTER people had already spent money with them. ”
1. You did not spend any money with “Drop”.
2. You would have made those purchases anyway. Drop was just the icing on the cake.
3. Pretty sure they would have language that allows them to do this, and it’s not the first time we are seeing something like this happen.
1. You’re right I didn’t spend any money with Drop specifically, but I did sign up under specific terms and I don’t appreciate when they are changed on me retroactively.
2. While I personally did not buy any gift cards with the specific intention of getting the rebate to Drop, I know many people that did. In many if not all of those situations, the people would NOT have made those purchases if they’d known that Drop would not credit their purchases as agreed. The statement by Drop that they “did not know” that people would do this is either idiotic, a lie, or both and in either case does not give me warm fuzzies about the future of their company
3. Whether it’s legally allowed or not, it still does not make it right IMO