Bank of America AddItUp Program Review – Updated April 2012
The program is free to join — sign up here.
How to Earn: Receive cash back to your registered BOA credit or debit card of up to 20% for shopping online at over 250 merchants when you start your shopping session at the AddItUp Program’s website. There are four offline cashback offers; hopefully more will be added.
Who Can Join: Membership in this program is limited to people with a Bank of America credit or debit card who are enrolled in online banking. Residents of Washington and Idaho cannot participate, nor can Small Business credit card only customers. Some BOA cardholders are ineligible, including holders of other BOA-issued rewards cards like Upromise, TripRewards, etc.
When You’re Paid: Your AddItUp transactions will appear in your account within 20 days, and will be given a “pending” designation until the merchant pays BOA, within 30 to 90 days. Payments are then made to members on a monthly basis, around the 25th of the month. If your cashback earnings (meaning the purchases that went from Pending to Earned status) from the 21st of the prior month through the 20th of the current month are $5 or more, you’ll receive your cashback, as an ACH deposit to your debit card or a statement credit to your credit card account. Otherwise, your earnings will roll over to the next month.
Customer Service Contact: 1-866-934-6250
Notes:
1. AddItUp has a coupon/discounts section, providing coupon codes or links for many of their participating merchants.
2. Add It Up’s rates are outstanding to high-average compared to other cashback rewards programs. Some examples: Buy.com at 3% cashback (versus around 1.5% elsewhere), Avon at 8% (versus 6 to 7% elsewhere), Dell Home at 2% (3% elsewhere), Kmart at 3% (2% elsewhere), Macy’s at 4% (same as competitors), Office Depot at 4% (around 3% elsewhere), PETCO at 11% (8% elsewhere), and ProFlowers at 14% (12 to 15% elsewhere).
My Take: If you pay your credit card off in full each month, or if you have an eligible Bank of America debit card, this program is definitely worthwhile. Their shopping rates are very competitive. Remember, though: if you’re charging to your BOA credit card and paying interest on it, you’re not really “earning” all this cash back — they’re recouping a big chunk of it with the interest you pay. So, pay in full or use a debit card. Of course, that’s good advice for anyone using any online rewards program. 
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Discover has had a program like this for some time. Card holders just need to sign in, go to the “Shop Discover” section of the site, and browse a wide array of merchants. I recently got 10% cash back bonuses from Best Buy and Home Depot using this service. New merchants will sometimes have bonus offers for a limited time, often up to 20% cash back. Chase likewise has a similar program.
Yep, the type of program Bank of America’s Add It Up Program has set up is nothing new — Citibank’s ThankYou points is another example. I understand they’re catching quite a bit of heat over it, though, because BOA received government bailout money and there are those who feel it shouldn’t be spent promoting huge corporations, particularly those who import or outsource work overseas (all of their participating merchants are huge retailers). Staying out of the political debate over that one!
I don’t have a Discover card so I can’t do a thorough review of their shopping portal, though at a glance I didn’t see their rates as being tremendously better than what’s offered elsewhere. Interested to hear your good experience with Discover’s cashback site, though, and would love to hear comments from others about it good or bad.
Thanks so much for your comment!
I shopped through BofA’s website at OfficeMax and also just by going to OfficeMax.com. What did I notice? OfficeMax’s prices were HIGHER when I accessed the site through the Add it Up program. How much higher? Exactly 3% higher, the amount of rebate I was supposed to get. So…pay OfficeMax 3% more, and get 3% back. Deal or no deal?
I was really interested to read this and tried it out myself. Went through BOA’s link to OfficeMax in a Firefox window, and cleared cookies/cache in Internet Explorer and went directly to Office Max.
No difference in prices.
And BOA pays 4% for OfficeMax, not 3%. Are you sure it was OfficeMax? (I checked OfficeDepot, too, and didn’t see a difference in pricing for them, either.)
I made multiple purchases from staples from 5/03/09-5/16/09 via going through my Bank of America additup account and by clicking the retailer link on their website. I was 100% sure that I went through the additup site to take advantage of 4% staples cash back they offer. However several weeks after the transactions the cash back did not show up on the additup website. When I called they said all transactions are there and would eventually give me cash back in few days. When I called this week to know the status they said, I wonâ??t be getting cash back as I did not go through their website. This company is doing fraud found a silly reason to deny my cash back. As I mentioned, I am 100% certain that I went through the additup website to make all these transactions. This was confirmed during my first call with customer service person as she said she could see all the transactions. Now they found a simple way to reject my cash back by saying that I did not go through their website while making the purchase. This is not correct, but no way to prove it. There is no way that I missed additup sign up for all my 12 transactions starting from 5/3-5/16. If I miss one or two I would have agreed. I feel I have been cheated by this company as they are purposefully denied me the cash back. The whole reason of using a BOA card and additup was to get the cash back, otherwise I had better options to make this transaction rather than using BOA card. So lesson learned is the whole additup sucks. Don’t expect cash back while doing your purchase. If you get it you are lucky. I am just amazed how this company takes away money by saying they give cash back and at the end not honoring that saying nonsense reason to deny it. Buyers beware using BOA services, this company is fraud, and it is just there to loot your money …Pathetic cheats…
Some of my transactions appeared and most of them didn’t appear.
I didn’t expect Bank of America to cheat like this.
This program os good for debit card purchases as well, Discover and Citi Bank don’t offer this the way BoA does with the debit card purchases.
Will BA cancal my worldpoint reward program after I join? And is there any monthly free after a period of time or other hidden fee?
it will take forever to get the reward,I think this is a scam. I bought a printer at newegg.com and officemax.com two month ago, status of my rewards are pending, and i called BOA, they said it will take 90 days to process. is it a joke?
Does the add it up program work for any debit card purchase or online only?
this program is bs
i bought $500 stuff via this program…call them they tell me to wait 30days call back again wait another 30 days call today it was denied
so no cash back
no reason for why it denied
and i called sears.com and newegg.com customer services
guess what same old transfering method till your customer gave up…
Thank you Bank of America
you cheap cheat butt hole
I went through the BOA website to order a laptop from CompUSA using Firefox. After waiting for nearly a month when the transaction didn’t show up on the BOA site, I called customer service and after a few mins of conversation I was told that they couldn’t see the click to the CompUSA.
When I asked, is there no chance that your system might have missed this one transaction as an error. The response we have never seen it happen. Bing was a much better program than this and like other BOA depts this is nothing but another opportunity for BOA to cheat their customers.
I use the program more like a bonus program. Great surprise if you get the reward, no biggie if I don’t because I only shop for items I would purchase anyway. I shopped at Staples and Walmart back in August. Got a total of $10 back in my checking account in November and, as I said, it was a nice surprise.
I think that all of the people at BOA should be arrested. They are scam artists, and they aren’t even tricky about it. They seriously want to steal pennies at a time from their customers? It’s ludacris. I am changing banks, this is the last straw. first off, they aren’t that great of a bank anyway, their interest rates are among the lowest around, and THEN THEY TRY AND PULL THIS BULL****?!?!?! ARE. YOU. EFFING. SERIOUS?!?!?! they seriously deserve to be shot. you guys are horrible people.
This program works BUT … 3 months ago I made a purchase through AddItUp website on the macys.com website. I had to call to AddItUp service to get the explanation why my cashback was delayed. The cashback appeared only after I made that call (approximately in a month after a purchase). Though other websites like homedepot.com, lowes.com, acehardware.com which I also use report about my cashback at once or in a day or two.
2 month ago I made a second purchase from macys.com using the official link from AddItUp. It took 8 weeks to be denied in cashback under the shady explanation that I used other website link or code/coupon (which I DIDN’T!!!). AddItUp was absolutely indifferent to my dissatisfaction and their only goal was to explain “the universal truth of unfairness and randomness of the successful transactions in the e-shopping”- in other words it sounded like “Dear looser…” All my previous history of AddItUp purchases (since the beginning of 2011) was spotless and I considered myself very well instructed with the rules of the game. No complaints until now. But after this event I’m not going to trust the system any more and only because I was denied by AddItUp despite my previous more than perfect use of the program. And it’s true about inflated prices on SOME websites if you want to buy anything just without research and using only AddItUp. You can save more if you use special coupons/codes/promotions but in that case I personally don’t try to cheat the system because the rules state “You will loose” and no complaints from me. But my situation is different and my proof is my good customer history and the problems has started as soon as I used AddItUp link to macys.com.
Yes, I totally agree that whole AddItUp program is SCAM! I made several purchases at participating retailers, via BOA website, but received zero cash back. I called so-called AddItUp specialist, but he claimed that there was no clicks on retailer website from BOA website. How that might happen??? I’m more than 100% sure that I always did that! For all the purchases! It looks like that they want to keep the cash back. OK, fine, it was just pennies in my case. I was just wondering it the whole thing works, for my perspective big purchases. It looks like it is not, as most of the stuff in BOA, so I’m applying for credit card in Chase for guaranteed cash back!