How to Never Pay Full Price for Anything (Almost): BigCrumbs (Updated)

Updated 12/11/2016: I no longer recommend BigCrumbs, and have switched over to TopCashback instead.  I’m leaving this post up for references purposes, but click on over to my new post that replaces this one.

In our last post, we shared a simple but brilliant way to score a discount at just about every major US retail store by using discounted gift cards. However, with more and more commerce moving online, how do we score discounts on our online shopping since not all offer gift cards?

That’s the topic of our post today, and I’d like to introduce you to a special service called BigCrumbs. (Yes, I’m not making this up, that’s really what they’re called!)

Saving the Crumbs with BigCrumbs

Surely, with such an amazing name like BigCrumbs, we can’t go wrong, right?

So what is BigCrumbs? BigCrumbs is essentially an online rebate company. All you do after creating a free account is click through the links on their webpage to a respective retailer’s website, and everything you purchase will result in a percentage cash back that is deposited into your PayPal account monthly. That’s it! Literally all it takes is a few extra mouse clicks and you get cash rebate back for your online purchases.

Here are a couple more quick bites about BigCrumbs:

• It is completely FREE to join.
• [UPDATED: 9/3/2014] The only fee that they charge is a 2% or $1 processing fee (whichever is less) that they pass on from PayPal to transfer the money to you.
• They have access to a dizzying number of retailers, more than I can recognize.
• They even give you cash back for eBay winning bids and purchases.
• They consolidate many coupon codes for retailers right where you click through for even greater potential savings.
• I’ve seen cash back rebates of up to 39%!
• For every dollar you earn in cash back, you also get credited what they call a CrumbShare. These CrumbShares can actually be cashed in for real money in the event that BigCrumbs gets acquired by another company. Whoa!
• They have a referral program so if you recommend others to join BigCrumbs, you’ll get a percentage bonus.  The links on this page are referral links, so thanks in advance if you click through our links on this page to sign up.
• It’s not just for the US.  BigCrumbs works for Canada too!

Multiplying the Crumbs with BigCrumbs

Now that we own a home, we frequent Home Depot a fair bit so here’s how we trim the fat off of each purchase there:

1. Purchased $100 Home Depot gift card from Cardpool at a 12.5% discount. $12.50 discount.
2. We paid for the gift card with our credit card with 1.5% cash back reward. $1.31 cash back.
3. Instead of going to the store to pick the items off the shelves, we buy them from the Home Depot website for free in-store pickup. By clicking through BigCrumbs we get an additional 1.8% cash back (and we save time from having to run around the big warehouse). $1.80 cash back.

So the total savings for $100 spent at Home Depot would be $15.61. Or a 15.61% discount on anything we buy there.

If you look through the retailers available on BigCrumbs, you’ll even find the big social coupon sites like Groupon and Living Social included. Getting cash back on those already-super deals sound like having your cake and eating it too!

BigCrumbs for Big Ticket Items

One of the best uses that we have found for BigCrumbs has been to get cash back on major travel expenses. Usually plane tickets, car rentals, hotel rooms, cruises, etc. can cost thousands of dollars, so getting even a few percentage points back can be a decent chunk of change.

A couple of months ago, I booked a hotel room for a friend for $330 on Expedia after clicking through BigCrumbs. About a month later, I got $15.84 automatically deposited into my PayPal account. That was a 4.8% rebate for just a few mouse clicks.

Start Saving BIG Crumbs!

Seeing that you’re reading this on a blog called Saving the Crumbs, what do you suppose I’m going to tell you to do?

That’s right, mosey on over to BigCrumbs, open your account, and start saving on all your online purchases. (Don’t forget to use Cardpool discounted gift cards as well to further compound the savings!)

You may have noticed that neither Cardpool nor BigCrumbs offer discounted gift cards/rebates for Amazon. That’s a glaring omission since Amazon is pretty much the biggest retailer out there these days. But never fear! We will be sharing one way we’ve been saving big on Amazon in our next post.

The Rest of the Series

Here are the other articles in this series on how to save on nearly every purchase:

1. How to Never Pay Full Price for Anything (Almost): Cardpool – We share a technique to save on most retailers by purchasing discounted gift cards from a service called Cardpool.

2. How to Never Pay Full Price for Anything (Almost): TopCashback – We share an online rebate service that helps you get back a percentage of your purchase from thousands of online retailers.

3.  How to Never Pay Full Price for Anything (Almost): Swagbucks – We share how to earn virtual currency online by completing free activities that can be redeemed for Amazon gift cards.  We’ve earned over $1460 with it.