Cashkaro.com is an online portal that benefits the consumer through cashback and coupon services. How enthusiastic should you be about it?

What more would you want from online shopping than getting some of your money back when purchasing through a certain website? Yes, online cashback and coupon sites are meant to give you exactly that—coupons for making purchases online and a discount or a combo offer and cashback on every purchase you make through the site.

We, at Moneylife, review these websites and services in consumer interest because we want you to make sound decisions and buy intelligently. This time we picked cashkaro.com for review and analysis, it’s a cashback service.

Cashkaro.com is an online cashback and coupon portal that helps you save money when you visit the online retail websites through the links given on Cashkaro. The retailer marks that you have visited its website through cashkaro and returns a part of your upfront payment to your cashkaro’s account, as your discount, which gets transferred to your bank account once the amount crosses Rs250.

The cashback entry starts showing in your account 72 hours after your have made the purchase. To check, I purchased goods worth Rs180 from Snapdeal through Cashkaro, but neither Snapdeal nor Cashkaro intimated me for accepting my request for discount. I, as a user, expected that at least an SMS, a mail or a pop-up would intimate me that my cashback request has been accepted and is being processed, the results of which would be intimated to me overtime. I had to wait for 72 hours before I get my first intimation/entry through my cashback account. It would be better if the website at least shows the transaction in pending mode. The cashback, waiting retailer approval, also shows ‘nil’ amount. At least this field could be updated if not others, according to Cashkaro’s process.

In addition to this, websites which have their own timeline of paying to the retailer, it will take even longer of a Cashkaro user to get his cashback confirmation and even longer to get the actual cashback. For example, Snapdeal pays its retailers only after getting a ‘satisfied’ confirmation from the user. Snapdeal waits for seven days for customer nod before making the payment, after completion of which payment is automatically released to the customer. Add these seven days to the 72 hours that Cashkaro will take to indicate the transaction and imagine the time that it would take for cash to actually come into your account, not to forget the number of days that your bank will take to complete the transaction!

You won’t be able to use the cash directly from your cashkaro account to make further purchases. You will have to necessarily get it transferred to your bank account to re-use it. I have come across online systems, where the company retains the monies, but you can use the money directly from that account to make future purchases, paytm.com being one example.

The good thing about the portal is the range of opportunities it gives to you as a user. Other than caskback on purchase, it provides you a range of coupons to earn discounts from. Besides that, it also provides users with an opportunity to earn additional cashback on referring the portal to friends. You would get 10% of the cashback that your friend, who you referred cashkaro to, gets. On the whole, the offer seems to be promising enough for substantial savings. Since membership is free, you do not have anything to lose. However, you should not expect cash to ‘comeback’ to you anytime soon.