In a press release today, Jackpot Rewards announced that a lady named Karen Fink had won its first weekly one million dollar sweeps. (Congrats, Karen!) She found the site via BzzAgent (it’s currently one of the Frogs in the BzzAgent Frogpond — BzzAgent’s fancy way of saying it’s a website they’re paid to promote).
She said she had joined Jackpot Rewards for the shopping rebates but thought the sweeps was a side benefit…of course now she thinks it’s the other way around! 
Last week there were only 465 people in the $1 million draw (that is, 463 besides me and Karen Fink!). To qualify for the one million sweeps, you have to have two matching numbers in the Monday, Wednesday, or Friday drawing. The press release says that 507 people qualified on Monday…and there will still be drawings on Wednesday and Friday where more will qualify, so clearly the word about the site is spreading.
If you’re a gambler, it might be worth it to you to sign up at least for the first month or two, JUST FOR THE SWEEPS. There aren’t many people in the guaranteed one million dollar draw, and at $3 a week, your odds of winning a million bucks are better here than anywhere else.
However, the sweepstakes is the only thing Jackpot Rewards has going for it, IMHO. As I showed here, the site is NOT worth the $156 annual membership fee for the cash back rebates, when too many other rebate sites do it as well or better and for free. It irks me that the current press release still states that Jackpot Rewards “provides consumers with the most cash back on online purchases.” I call bullsh*t on that. Prove it or drop it, Jackpot.
{ 6 comments }
This is a cut and paste from a post I put in response to someone else on this site who thought the Jackpot Rewards was garbage.
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I would love to see your numbers on how you came up with having to spend almost 20k to make back your yearly due’s. I have made 2 purchases with my account and already have $95 coming back to me. I am planning on ordering some baby things as well for my kids and that will net me more benefit than the $156 I will spend. Oh and by the way, I am not even at 10k yet, never mind your 20k numbers.
Do you understand the difference between gambling and sweepstakes? Gambling means you must pay to play while sweepstakes means you can play for free. You so nicely stated that you can play for free but still called it a gambling site.
The company has also committed to giving half its profits to charity but you forgot to mention that. Why? Do you have something against jackpot Rewards? Are you taking your lead from someone in the Lottery afraid of losing money? Just wondering because you were very bias in your writing and did not keep an open mind. I thought the true meaning of journalism was to have an open mind and report everything to the public?
Also, please look closely at the rules of some of those other “free” sites you listed. You might not be paying $3 a week there but you are paying in other ways. Let’s consider this statement from one of your free sites, “When your e-mail address is registered for any xxxxxxxxxx services/contests, you agree to be placed on our mailing list to receive e-mail newsletters regarding updates about special offers, promotional discount codes, new products, and new services. See our Privacy Policy for additional information.” Now let’s look at that privacy policy mentioned, without posting the entire policy I will just say they collect your private information and also record everything you do on their site. Now lets look at this statement from the privacy policy, “We may contract with other companies to provide certain services to AAT to create or maintain our Site. In some instances, these contractors may have access to personally identifiable information but they contractually obligated to maintain the confidentiality of the information and to use it only for purposes of carrying out xxx business.” Trust me that word business can mean anything from legal on the level work to selling your information for profit. So can we all say identity theft and spam me please?
So a very long story short … pay $3 or risk having your personal identity stolen and get tons of spam. Hmmmmm, that’s a no brainer for me.
Folk’s lets all admit that this site is trying to do a good thing with charity and giving money away to the average person while still making money too. How many rewards sites and sweepstakes sites do you know of that actually give a million away each week and give half its profits to charity?
Perhaps you should rethink your analysis and include all the facts. Not just what is readily apparent.
with respect to your review of Jackpotrewards I think you do not adequately account for the “deals of the day” which provide some unbelieveable discounts. For instance, an upcoming deal of the day is a Garmin Nuvi 250 GPS for one hundred and forty nine dollars (149.00).
These deals of the days are very very good and in my searches typically do beat the best prices you can find at other internet site. This has to be considered in evaluating the site and its benefits to ots members.
Hi, John! I really didn’t give any consideration at all to Jackpot’s “deals of the day,” because there are so many other FREE websites that offer something similar. Check out http://www.dodtracker.com/deals/ or go to http://www.jellyfish.com/smacktv/channel/1 – the latter offers one deal after another all day long where the price drops until the item is bought.
I understand that there are other free sites that have deals of the day but isn’t the question to be answered is whether Jackpot’s deal of the day offers prices that beat other “deal of the day” websites in terms of price and quality of the items offered. Its one thing to offer smaller items as a deal of the day and another to offer something very substantial where the purchase could go a long way to making the membership fee worth it. I guess bottom line is that just by stating that there are other “deals of the day” out there does not mean Jackpot does not offer something compelling in value.
For example, one “deal of the day” item from Jackpotrewards was a 37 inch Phillips HDTV for 699.00. The lowest price I could find anywhere else was 999.00 for the same model.
John – I agree with you. Becky has left out certain aspects of Jackpot Rewards that makes them better than the free sites. In my opinion she doesn’t care for Jackpot Rewards all that much and she is trying to sway others to her way of thinking.
I give Jackpot Rewards 2 thumbs up!
Hi, John! I still don’t see why I’d want to pay money for the right to buy a discounted deal of the day when I could get a great daily deal at any one of dozens of free websites. Now if it was something I especially wanted, I can see joining, spending the $3 for a one-week membership to Jackpot, and then quitting after buying the item. That would make sense. There’s nothing against that in Jackpot’s rules, is there? But joining a site and paying first, in the hopes that something I want might happen to crop up as a deal of the day later, isn’t the kind of financial decision that I would personally make…unless I was a bigtime Ebay reseller, I guess!
You should really check out Jellyfish.com’s reverse auction. They sell electronics all the time — a 37″ Olevia LCD HDTV sold for $529 (that’s including tax and shipping) in January. They sold two in December, one for $544 and another for $576.
I bought a baby swing there for $30.60 with shipping/tax (the auction started at $82), and a Waring specialty blender for $42.74 (it started at $129). They sell not just electronics but all sorts of items.
Anyway, to each his own! Thanks for taking the time to comment on my post, and I wish you the best!
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