To most users, Ibotta is known as the app that gives you cash back for your grocery purchases. But to at least one online influencer, Ibotta is known as the company that steals cash she claims rightfully belongs to her.
Ibotta has become the latest online coupon code finder to get caught up in a wave of lawsuits, which claim that sales commissions are illegally being diverted from the plaintiffs’ pockets, to the defendants’.
Jesika Brodiski of Washington state, who describes herself as an online content creator, has filed a federal lawsuit against the cash-back provider. Ibotta launched as a receipt-scanning cash-back app back in 2012. But in 2020, it diversified into giving you cash back for your online purchases, via a browser extension. “After download, the extension window will pop up every time you visit a supported website,” Ibotta explains. “Just click on the extension window to activate your offer.”
But that’s not all that happens, Brodiski claims. “Like other affiliate intermediaries, Ibotta earns a percentage of each sale completed after its referral identifier is applied” when users click on its extension pop-up, her lawsuit states. By doing so, “it silently and invisibly removes affiliate cookies and tracking tags that would otherwise credit the rightful salesperson” – online influencers like herself.
Brodiski says she “promotes products via her social media channels” and earns commissions when her followers click her affiliate links and make a purchase. But she says Ibotta’s extension “cheats content creators out of the commissions to which they are entitled during the checkout process,” by substituting its own affiliate identifier when a user clicks on its pop-up.
They’re similar arguments that Brodiski made in two other lawsuits she had previously filed against the owners of two other online coupon browser extensions, Capital One Shopping and Microsoft Shopping. Dozens of other online influencers have joined her in suing those companies, as well as PayPal, RetailMeNot, Rakuten and Klarna, all of which offer coupon-seeking browser extensions of their own.
What makes her Ibotta lawsuit unique, is her accusation that Ibotta claims a commission regardless of whether it offers users anything of value for their click. If other browser extensions like Paypal’s Honey or Capital One Shopping can’t find a coupon code, they’ll offer something else – points or coins or some form of rewards for making a purchase. Ibotta, Brodiski says, often offers nothing at all – but gets paid anyway.
If Ibotta “has not identified a cash-back opportunity associated with the purchase, Ibotta still produces a pop-up to entice the user to click,” the lawsuit states. “But this time Ibotta simply alerts the user that there are no coupons to apply,” which “entices the user to click on the ‘Ok’ button or ‘Continue to Checkout’ button… in order to clear the screen and complete their purchase.” If a user clicks on one of the buttons, that action “will create a simulated referral click that removes the influencer’s affiliate cookies and invisibly credits Ibotta with the referral and ultimate commission on the sale.”
An Ibotta spokesperson declined to comment on the allegations. But others who defend similar practices say that’s simply the way the online affiliate sales process works – the last referrer a shopper engages with, gets credit for any sale.
This all started late last year, when an online video purported to expose Honey as “one of the most aggressive, shameless marketing scams of the century.” Online influencers who claimed they were losing commissions to Honey soon lined up at the courthouse to sue. And then they went after many of Honey’s competitors.
As all of these cases work their way through the court system, some have taken matters into their own hands to try to improve the system that the plaintiffs claim is broken. The People’s Internet Experiment coupon code finder proposed an industry-wide change to the standard practice of granting sales commissions to the very last recommender to earn a user’s click, instead proposing that commissions be granted only to the original recommender. And Google introduced a new policy for coupon browser extensions, saying they can only claim a commission if a user actively clicks on their coupon code finder, and if they actually find a working coupon or provide some other reward.
But the lawsuits keep coming. And now Ibotta has become the latest browser extension provider to have to defend its offering in court. “Get the best price every time!” Ibotta promises its extension users. It will be up to the courts to decide the merits of a case that claims Ibotta should have to pay a price for that promise.
Image source: Ibotta
