Drop Manufactured Spending Shutdown
A couple of weeks ago a new app came to market called Drop. (You can find our full breakdown and directions on how to sign-up here.) Launched by a Canadian company, Drop aims to make your everyday purchases more rewarding. You simply choose which 5 stores you will earn points at, link your cards and they do the rest.
If only life were that easy. A couple of weeks ago after we wrote about Drop, I created an account and linked my cards to Drop. I do a fair amount of legitimate spending and started to rack up some points. Many of you signed up as well and I earned $1 worth of points per referral.
Eventually the points added up to enough where I could redeem for a Best Buy gift card. It was easy enough in the app to choose to redeem my points, but then nothing happened. In addition to my gift cards not being issued I also stopped earning points as well. Uh-oh.
Drop Responds
Instead of immediately calling foul, I decided to reach out to Drop. Here is what they had to say:
We’ve recently been hit with an influx of users who have been using manufactured spending to earn a large amount of points and then redeeming large quantities of gift cards. Our engineering team has flagged these users who we suspect have been using manufactured spending due to repeated purchases of the same amount at the same retailers. This may be why some users are not seeing their points show up and are receiving the “Error” message when trying to redeem.
We didn’t anticipate for “churning”/manufacturing spending to happen, and as a result, there’s been a backlog of gift card orders. Right now our support team is working hard to ensure that points for redemptions are not coming from manufactured spending and manually sending out gift cards.
As part of this email I was also informed that my account had been caught up in their sweep due to having a decent number of points. I was also told that it was released as well since I didn’t perform any manufactured spending.
Thoughts & Takeaways
I know many of you had similar issues to me and thus I felt this was worth sharing. Based on this correspondence here are my takeaways:
- Drop isn’t going to work for manufactured spending, but as long as they deliver the promised payouts for regular spending it can be a great program for many.
- If you have found that your points and redemptions aren’t going through and you haven’t manufactured spend, contact them through the app. They responded to my message within 24 hours.
- Be patient for now with gift card redemptions. They are being processed manually and can take a few days.
- We still need to be proactive and make sure that Drop is paying out on normal purchases as promised. It seems like they will, but I will continue to follow up and bring you any developments.
Conclusion
For the manufactured spending crowd Drop seemed too good to be true and it turned out to be. My guess is that a small number of users did such a huge volume that they saw it almost right away and shut it down. Hopefully they will continue to offer generous rewards for everyday purchases. Only time will tell.
Have you had issues with Drop? Share your experiences in the comments.
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Garden variety fraud? Like what your doing by MFing?
Please excuse the typo above. *my purchases
It appears my account has been suspended. No purchases has credited since July 11th. I suspect that Prime Day did it for me. I had made 20-someodd purchases from Amazon that day which showed pending, but on Thursday they all disappeared and none of mybpuryhss credited since. Not even my near-daily romp to McDonald’s is posting.
I emailed Drop’s support last Friday but have not received a response yet.
[…] A good reminder to make sure to withdraw their access to your accounts if you decide to get rid of Drop given the recent issues with them. […]
[…] Miles to Memories, Angelina Travels and Doctor of Credit have all reported that people with large transactions of the same amount at the same merchants are getting their accounts flagged. And due to this, all gift card redemptions are being manually reviewed (i.e. taking longer) […]
I used your link, and I guess I’m slow but I just now realized how they make their money. They now have access to EVERYTHING I buy — well level 2 data for gift cards. I mean, I guess I don’t really care too much but still. Would love to hear your take on this Shawn
Yup that is the trade off. Data is a commodity and that is how they plan to make money off of you. I’m okay with it if the rewards are high enough, but I know it’s not for everyone.
Are accounts that have been locked still able to unlink their credit card information?
Meh, scummy/illegal behavior and lame excuse. If they didn’t expect MSers, they’re clueless incompetents. Safeway/WF/WM? It’s a trifecta. Yes, they could change T&Cs at any time, but to not pay out on already-earned points is nothing less than garden variety fraud.
CFPB the scums
[…] Note: Not a good choice for manufactured spending, Drop will shut down your account. […]
as shawn said, for legit purchases, they should payout. however, for MSers, cmon guys. did you really think this was gonna be successful? i gave the warning awhile back that nobody should be adopting this program early. just sit and watch first. i dont the like cyber security risk and i dont like how they call out MSing and “Churning”. Meaning this game is way over exposed as is. Remember Alaska blaming travel hackers? Remember ShopKick = DropKick to the face? Well Drop is no different. Good luck everyone.
I agree with Carl–How can they say that they did not “anticipate MS”. IF the T&C’s did not exclude the purchase of gift cards, then they were clueless to not expect MS. I am out 60,000 points from Walgreens with 50,000 in suspense. Oh well…live and learn….
If they did not anticipate manufactured spending and they must be really clueless. I do not expect that company last more than a couple months.
This manufactured spend excuse doesn’t ring true for me, I suspect its just an excuse. I’m sitting this one out these guys don’t seem organized enough I don’t expect them to be around for more than a few months.
I definitely get it but if it is not in the terms and conditions that we agreed to when signing up I don’t think it’s right for them to not honor the rewards for those who ms’d. They clawed back 20k points from Safeway and about 50k haven’t been tracked. If this is going to be the policy, why not publicize it? Also, no one did this in Canada?
That was quick. Haha. I’ve noticed that some points from the retailers don’t come through like they should. I’ve had to contact them once so far.
Looks like we both posted similar articles at the same time, and I was confused about the “Best Buy” reference in my email, but now I see where it came from ;). I hope they make good!