Capital One Shopping guide

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Here’s our review of Capital One Shopping. It searches stores all over the internet to compare prices – so you don’t have to.

I’ve used Capital One Shopping for two years now (it used to be called Wikibuy, but Capital One recently changed its name), and it’s saved me literally hundreds of dollars. I don’t even have to do anything. I just follow its advice!

You don’t need a specific rewards credit card to use Capital One Shopping – you don’t even have to be a Capital One customer. Give it a go, and you’ll see just how intuitive it is. It’s my favorite trick to save money on purchases I make every week.

Capital One Shopping compensates us when you get the browser extension using the links we provided.

What is the new Capital One Shopping portal?

Don’t think of Capital One Shopping as a shopping portal. It’s designed to sniff out the entire internet for available coupons on any random item in a matter of seconds and point you in the direction of savings.

If you’re like me, you’ve got about seventy tabs open when you’re researching a product. Capital One Shopping will do all that for you, and it’ll do it about 10,000x faster.

How does the Capital One Shopping Portal work?

Step 1. Get started with Capital One Shopping

You’ll need first to make a Capital One Shopping account (if you’ve previously had Capital One Shopping, you already have an account).

Navigate to the Capital One Shopping website, and you’ll straight away see a popup prompting you to open a Capital One Shopping account. You can use your credentials from Capital One, Google, or Facebook.

Step 2. Enter personal information

You can help Capital One Shopping help you find better deals for you; it wants to know your shipping information and if you are an Amazon Prime member. That way, it doesn’t lead you astray by directing you to a seemingly lower price.

Step 3. Add the Chrome extension

Capital One Shopping has created an add-on that is free to use with your Chrome browser.

This is the best part of the service, as it looks for deals in the background whenever you’re shopping online. It’ll automatically let you know if there’s a better deal somewhere else. I love it.

Step 4. Start shopping!

Capital One Shopping doesn’t monitor every single retailer online, but they cover a lot – including the most important one, in my opinion: Amazon.

With each merchant, Capital One Shopping will let you know if it finds a better deal on another site. There are a couple of ways to save money with the feature.

First, you can navigate to Capital One Shopping and simply enter the item you’re looking for.

You can also just click the Capital One Shopping extension in the top right corner of your browser and enter your search query there.

Certain purchases you make through Capital One Shopping will even earn you Capital One Shopping credits that can be redeemed for gift cards (we’ll get to that later). If you’re into quick cashback savings, you’d probably like our newsletter. If we find easy savings on common everyday purchases, we’ll let you know.

The Capital One Shopping extension does a fantastic job warning you before you waste money. For example, when shopping on Amazon, the add-on inserts a recommendation under your item’s listed price. If there is a better deal available, it pops up and taps you on the shoulder.

The below Dyson vacuum costs $372 after taxes. But Capital One Shopping has alerted me to a merchant selling the exact same product for $337 – plus $9 in Capital One Shopping credits. – that’s a $43 savings for no extra effort on my part.

Step 5. Choose your merchant

The sites Capital One Shopping recommends as cheaper are Walmart and Dyson.com. These are good suggestions – sometimes it’ll recommend eBay, of which I’m not the biggest fan.

The site even lists other retailers with lower prices, if there are any.

Step 6. Don’t ignore the watchlist feature

If Capital One Shopping is unable to locate a lower price on the internet, it’ll reassure you that you’re getting the better deal. You’ll see a green “S+” symbol. That’s the watchlist feature.

Clicking “View watchlist“ will put your item on a separate list and monitor its price.

Step 8. Click “view watchlist”

Capital One Shopping shows you the prices of all your watchlist items from when you originally added it to your list, and it even updates the current price, making it easy to see at a glance if now is a better time to buy.

It will even alert you when something on the watchlist goes on sale.

What are the main benefits of using Capital One Shopping?

The biggest benefit of Capital One Shopping is its ease of use. You won’t even know it’s there until it slaps your hand away from the mouse when you’re about to spend too much money.

My favorite part about the tool is that it collects data from millions of other users to automatically insert a useful promo code once you reach the checkout page. If a promo code worked for a shopper before you, Capital One Shopping will add that promo code to your order.

I can’t overstate how incredible this is. The other day I ordered pizza and magically received $7 off my order. Stuff like that happens all the time.

Another neat feature is that you can easily earn “Shopping Credit.” It’s not as useful as cash back, but it does equate to savings.

You’ll earn Shopping Credit from tons of online stores, and Capital One Shopping will tell you when you’re surfing an eligible site. You can even earn credit when you use a linked credit card for purchases at eligible local stores.

Shopping Credit can be used for only one thing — gift cards. You can cash them in for gift cards from popular stores such as:

• eBay
• Walmart
• Lowe’s
• Macy’s
• Nordstrom
• Hulu
• Staples

And many more. If you’re into gift cards, you’ll be loving this. I’m just not jazzed by them.

How to maximize Capital One Shopping

Capital One Shopping is a tool to help you find savings for your desired product. It doesn’t offer a big return like other shopping portals (though it’s not uncommon to receive 3% back in the form of Capital One Shopping credits).

However, you can use Capital One Shopping to find the store with a competitive price. Then, hop onto Cashback Monitor to see if that particular store offers a big return in any popular shopping portals.

By using this strategy, you’re getting a great price and earning tons of extra rewards.

How to save more with online shopping

Capital One Shopping is a great tool to use if you’re looking to save money and shop online with any regularity. But there are effortless ways to save even more.

With the right credit card, you could earn bonus points or cash back on top of Capital One Shopping’s discounts. You could easily get a 5% return from some of the best cashback credit cards.

For example, cards like the Chase Freedom Flex℠ offer bonus categories that rotate every three months and net you 5% back on various purchases (on up to $1,500 in spending each quarter you activate).

FAQ about Capital One Shopping

What’s the difference between Wikibuy and Capital One Shopping?

Apart from some color schemes and graphic tweaks, there’s no difference between Wikibuy and Capital One Shopping. If you loved Wikibuy (as I did – desperately), you’ll lose out nothing with Capital One Shopping.

The only thing I really noticed lacking from Capital One Shopping was suggested YouTube review videos that once populated below the item you were looking for when searching on the Wikibuy website. I do kind of miss those.

Oh, and the email correspondence with Capital One Shopping is now [email protected].

Who can use Capital One Shopping? 

Anyone can use Capital One Shopping! As long as you’re willing to give up your name and address, you’re in. You don’t even have to be a Capital One customer.

Is Capital One Shopping free? 

Yes! In fact, making purchases through Capital One Shopping will often earn you money (in the form of credit) in addition to the discounts. It’s like Capital One is paying you to use the portal.

How does Capital One Shopping compare to other shopping portals? 

The purpose of shopping portals is to give you a bonus return for your spending. Sometimes you’ll receive 20% back (or more) at certain retailers.

As stated above, Capital One Shopping is a bit different. It’s centered around helping you find better deals, as opposed to giving you a ton of bonus cash or points. It’s not uncommon, however, to get 2%-3% back in the form of Capital One Shopping credits.

Is Capital One Shopping worth it?

Because Capital One Shopping is free, you’ve got nothing to lose by giving it a try. Seriously, it’s one of my favorite things about shopping online. Pleasantly surprising discounts pop up all the time at checkout without any effort from me.

Bottom line

Capital One Shopping will do one of two things:

• If you research prices to death before purchasing something, Capital One Shopping will save you hours and hours. It will direct you to that low price you would have found anyway with your anal-retentive searching
• If you can’t be bothered to research prices, and you’d just prefer the convenience of buying from the first merchant that pops up on Amazon, Capital One Shopping will save you a whole lot of money.

Capital One Shopping doesn’t swear they will always find the lowest price for your item – there’s always a guy in an alley somewhere selling it out of a windowless van for slightly cheaper. But when you consider the effort to savings ratio, it’s one of the best tools of its kind.

Let us know if you’ve used a similar tool that’s comparable (or even better??) than Capital One Shopping. And subscribe to our newsletter for more easy money-savers like this delivered to your inbox once per day.