Upside: Earn Cash Back on Gas Ratings and Reviews

Poor Customer Service

There were 2 offers at the same station. However, the LOWER offer (4 cents) was visible ONLY if I zoomed in on the map while the HIGHER offer (8 cents) was visible in a plain search. This is a deceptive practice. I only realized this because when I saw the payout it was much lower than the offer. So I went back to the app to make sure and the 8 cent offer was still there. However, there was also a hidden offer at the same station only visible if you zoomed in as far as possible on the map. If that’s not clear then imagine if I put up a large sign that says “8 cents back on every gallon!” Then you fill your tank only to realize the next day that you only received 4 cents back. You come back to check the sign and indeed it says 8 cents. However, when you closely inspect it you see a tiny little sign that says 4 cents back—two offers at the same station, one plainly visible and another hidden from view. This is EXACTLY what happened with the app and it’s deceptive. However, I wasn’t even paid 4 cents, it was 3 cents. This is extremely deceptive. When I contacted customer service about it they blew me off and told me that the payment (of 3 cents) was made and if I had additional questions go to the FAQ page. Nice.

Developer Response ,

Hi, Thank you for letting us know. We're sorry for the trouble here. We'd like to take a look into this one more time, can you send us another email with ATTN as the subject line, so we can take a look at this personally? Thanks for your patience! 💌

Save a lot at first, then….sometimes…

As someone who’s claimed a little over $250 in the past few years since this program’s inception and uses Upside every time for gas, it could and should have been more. Seems about 10% of my offers get the “issues found” remark or go “expired” and no cash back is given and no reason given that’s easily available for me to find. Please tell me what the issues are so that I might not make the same mistake over and over…if it’s in fact my fault or within my control…..and also give the opportunity to fix the issues to receive the offered offer. Sometimes you are required to upload a picture of the receipt immediately, and other times it just says “you’re done”. Please give the option to upload the receipt every time so that it’s not possible for upside to not be able to find the transaction and deny the offed offer. If you pick the wrong card from your wallet you won’t get it either as you must select which card you will use before you pump. Why not associate all of my cards so you can’t miss it? You’ve already got them all stored anyway. There is also fine print that reduces anything upside says they will give in cash back if you have a loyalty card with a business that provides any discount….sometimes to zero cash back from upside. I’ve been happy with it for a few years, but it’s beginning to slide into the “more trouble and disappointment than it’s worth” category…for me anyway!

Saves You Money, But Very Frustrating App

It does what it says it does. I’ve saved $40 on gas so far, and this app is free. So that’s very nice. But it’s a very frustrating app to use. The app works fine until it’s time to actually prove to it that you filled up at the gas station with the offer you “claimed”. The app instructs you to tap a button that doesn’t exist on the screen in order to “arrive” at the gas station. So I looked it up online and people say you have to log out and log back in. Then it prompts you with the option to “upload receipt” which is what I do. But now the scanning technology which scans your receipt on the app doesn’t work anymore! So I have to upload a pic instead.
Logging out and logging back in after you’ve claimed your offer is what makes it eventually work, but not every time. Sometimes I have to wait a few hours after I’ve completed the transaction before logging out and logging back in will prompt the option to “upload receipt”, which appears to be the only way I can prove to Upside I completed the transaction.
It always works eventually, and I’ve saved $40 so far so that really is nice, but the app is buggy and has these issues. I really hope they fix it, it would be a dream to have this app finally just be smooth throughout the whole experience. But as of now it is a chore, they do make you work a bit for the savings.

Potential problems using Apple ID

First of all, I really like the Upside app. I recommend it to others. I’ve maybe earned about $20 so far using it, but have also lost out on about $10 because I can’t get back into the app using my Apple ID to log in. It’s not really the apps fault, but only rated 4 stars because of this circumstance. Here is what happened…

I initially created a login with my email address and a strong password and everything was fine for 9 months maybe. Then I started to have to enter my password every time I accessed the app. Apple’s password manager wouldn’t work. I became frustrated finding where I had recorded the password and entering it manually every time I wanted to use the app so I logged out of the app and created. New account using my Apple ID to log in. After three uses and accumulating about $10 in rebates, I would get an error when trying to log in using the Apple ID. Upside support isn’t able to help because they don’t get passed the actual email address Apple uses and passes to the app (I know I’m probably not explaining it right). I tried deleting an reinstalling the app, changing my Apple ID password, but I still get the same error. As far as i know, the account using the Apple ID is gone for good and I no longer can use Apple ID to login to the app at all. Now I’m using Google to log in. Hopefully I don’t encounter something similar with that ID.

Great App

I love Upside! I get cash back on most of my gas purchases, and it does add up - not like they claim in the commercial but still. They also have cash back inside gas stations and other stores. It’s simple to use and doesn’t cost me anything.

I gave it 4 stars only because half the time (lately), the app doesn’t select a payment method, and I end up having to upload a receipt. I wouldn’t normally have a problem with that except one of the gas stations I go to is chronically out of paper and the receipts don’t print. I get gas on my way to work in the mornings and don’t have time to run in and wait for them to print a receipt. I expect if it’s gonna tell me it will print a receipt, that I should get a receipt. While that is not Upside’s fault, it could be avoided if the app selected a card each and every time so that I didn’t have to upload a receipt.

The other issue I’ve had is that when it does select a payment method, it usually selects my backup method. I go in and manually change it to my other card, but if I have to switch apps, it goes back to the former payment method it selected instead of the one that I selected. I have not been awarded cashback because of that. However, that didn’t only happen once because now I’m diligent in making sure that the correct payment method is showing before I complete the transaction.

Deceiving (edited)

I chose to fill up my Jeep at a Casey’s on June 9th. The Walmart gas station was about $.40/gal cheaper, but Upside showed Casey’s having an offer of something around $.40/gal cash back (I can’t remember the exact amounts, but it was close to this). I put 17 gallons in my Jeep. Today, on June 15th, 6 days later, Upside finally processed the offer. Except it was processed at Casey’s current offer of $.06/gal cash back. The only reason I chose Casey’s over Walmart with that price difference was for the cash back because it made it worth it. What an absolute scam that was. When we use this app it makes us scan our receipt to include the time and date of the purchase. I would expect part of that to mean we are locked in at the offer that was valid at the time of our purchase. When I tried to find a way to contact Upside about this, all I found was the useless FAQ section that never actually answers the question. I even tried chatting with the bot that answers automatically and the bot didn’t have an answer either. This was only my second time using this app and it may be my last if this is how it deceives you. Especially with no customer service.

EDIT
I was finally able to reach customer service. After a few emails back and forth, they agreed to fix my issue and the proper amount was added to my account.

Developer Response ,

Hi, there! We're sorry for the trouble here. We'd like to take a closer look at this issue, please send us a message at support@upside.com.

Complicated

I claimed an offer for cash back at a gas station I don’t normally go to so I could save about $1/gallon, which sounded great! Several days after that, I got an email saying my cash back was delayed and could take another week. It’s supposed to take 3-5 days after the transaction. When I checked the app a few days after that, it said my cash back had expired. I reached out to the support team to get my money, and they ended up crediting me for about $0.25/gallon, which was way less than the offer I claimed. They said it was because they had to do it manually since there was a problem with my receipt upload, but they said I’d be able to use the $0.75/gallon bonus on my next purchase to get a total $1/gallon cash back. However, I don’t trust that the same thing won’t happen again because when I asked them how to avoid this issue in the future, they gave me a vague response that was basically just instructions on using the app. I’m debating whether to give them another chance the next time I need gas. Also, you’re required to have $10 of cash back before you can transfer the money to your bank or redeem a gift card, which is pretty dumb.

UPDATE: I tried again with the same $0.75/gallon bonus and…got nothing. My transaction shows as expired in the app after weeks of processing. I have reached out to support again in hopes of getting enough cash back to cash out and be done with this app.

Developer Response ,

Hello! I appreciate your feedback and sharing your experience with us. We're always working on making the app better each day, so stay tuned for more improvements. 

Please note that the offers you see in the app include the base offer + bonuses. These pending bonuses will continue to be added to the base offers until one of your offer gets processed for cash back. 
 
For further assistance, please create a ticket via this link: https://support.upside.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Worth it!

In 2 years and 3 months, I have gotten $519 cask back. We travel the country pulling a THOW with a diesel truck and Upside participating gas stations have been found at about 90% of our stops and along our routes. We’ve also used Upside at some restaurants and grocery stores with 98% success. Had one issue where a restaurant used online receipts and it didn’t have all of the info Upside requires to process the receipt properly. So make sure restaurant uses in-store receipts or your charge is automatically looked up by Upside in the restaurant’s system (blue pentagon symbol with a lightning bolt in it on the opportunity listing in the app). There are restrictions/limitations with each kind of cash back opportunity, but they are easily found in the app for each establishment for you to read and assess for yourself if the opportunity is worth it or not. It’s a free app so it’s not like you are losing money if the opportunity isn’t right for you.
Using the establishments where Upside automatically finds your charge makes this the most user friendly, free cash back app I have ever used and fortunately the number of establishments where that occurs has increased dramatically in the 2 years I have been using it. Totally worth the effort!

The app is so bad and glitchy

The cash back options for gas are nice, I definitely think they could give a higher ¢ amount back per gallon though. However truly the worst thing is how glitchy and crappy the app is. It is so user unfriendly and glitchy that it is honestly my least favorite app, however it’s the only gas cashback program I know of. If the app itself was better, I don’t think that using Upside would be so stressful, time-consuming and tedious. The app consistently has gas station locations wrong, and will drop me off a mile away from the actual gas station. The screen that reloads with the map of gas stations participating in Upside takes a very long time, and will constantly zoom away from your physical location to areas behind where you have traveled. The app does not stay on the same page, so when you click to get directions to a gas station and then click back to try to verify that it’s right or claim the cash back, the entire app refreshes and you have to find the station again. It’s also very frustrating that the app takes about 30 seconds to load, went off and you’re trying to find a gas station on the fly and by the time that you can see an actual station and claim some thing, you’ve already missed the exit. Overall, upside could really revamp this app and make it better, but right now it is just absolutely lacking and quite frustrating to use.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for sharing your app experience with us. We're always trying to make the app better so we appreciate your feedback. If there's anything we can do to assist, please email us at support@upside.com.

Almost perfect. Great value.

I’ve been using Upside for a few months now. I started using it for gas and that’s a really good deal. Then when I bought my electric car, I didn’t need the gas feature anymore. Now I use Upside for the great deals at restaurants. There’s some that pay really high percentage back. My only reservation with giving it five stars is that sometimes the deals are hard to find on the map. There should be a preference for whether you want to search for gas or restaurants. Most of the time Upside is suggesting gas stations when I don’t need that option anymore. When I tap on the map, I want to look for restaurants by default. Another glitch that sometimes happens is I see a deal on the map for cashback at a restaurant and then when I get to the restaurant sometimes it has disappeared. A pinch and zoom on the map to look for it and it’s nowhere to be found. Sometimes it comes back later after I’ve left the restaurant. That’s happened at least once. Sometimes restaurants will discontinue offering cash back through Upside. But there are some restaurants that offer it consistently every single week. So this app is almost perfect with a few fixes. I’ve earned at least $100 back already. Pretty amazing! More places should offer deals with Upside.