ShopKick App Review

The Shopkick App is so much fun to use. Basically the App pays you in “kicks” to click on stores in your area. It also gives you kicks for visiting stores, and scanning items in the stores that you visit. You can turn in your kicks for gift cards to some popular stores. If you do not get a kick out of getting kicks for rewards, you can also use the app to access coupons for savings at stores or restaurants that you may visit.

Downloading the ShopKick App

I have an iPhone 4s so I just go to the itunes App store and download the Shopkick App for free. It only takes a couple seconds and you can be earning kicks. Once you download that App it will walk you through setting up an account. The App will ask you for permission to get your location and I said “yes”. I did not see the point of having an app that is going to give me local deals if it did not know where I was. I was able to set up Shopkick and was using it in the first few minutes. I did have a friend who referred me so she she helped me with a few of my basic questions and told me a few things to help me start getting points right away.

Getting Started Using Shopkick

Your Account When you open the App, there are three tabs at the bottom. One has your name on it, and this includes your level and a board with special badges etc. From this page you can adjust things in your account by clicking a little button on the top right. On the left is another button and if you press that you can adjust more things in your account and the app, and also there is a link to email customer service if you have any issues.

Your Favorites The next tab over on the bottom is for storing your favorites. This will store your favorite stores and you can quickly look there to see if the stores you like have any deals. There is a + sign up on the top right that allows you to add favorites.

Nearby Frankly this is the most important tab and is the third from the left. If you click on this tab you will see a listing of stores near you. Before you have clicked on any stores they will all appear white. Once you have looked for that day, the store will be slightly gray. Some of the stores will have a Green ball to the right. These are stores that have deals for you to scan or kicks for just walking in. Some of the green balls will have a star in them. Clicking on these will produce another page with instant kicks that you can get from home without visiting a store or anything. Going through the list a few times a day and every time you drive to a new location will quickly build up kicks and help you to level up more quickly. Your points are listed at the top and to refresh the screen pull down on it.

Rewards
The last tab on the bottom right is the reward tab. There you will find all the possible rewards that you can get. Some rewards that are offered are: Donations to Charity, facebook credits. Gift cards to, Best Busy, Restaurants.com, Macys, Target, American Eagle, Old Navy, Sports Authority, Ardens, Wet Seal, Toys r Us, Movie Tickets, Gas Card, and Itunes. There are also prizes that you can get for a large number of kicks, like sun glasses, hand bags, an Xbox or flat screen TV. To get your reward you just click on one when you have the right amount of points.

To give you an idea of how much kicks are worth. At Best Buy 500 kicks are worth $2, 1250 kicks are worth $5 and 2500 kicks are worth $10. Other stores are similar.

UPDATE: DEC 13th: A few days I redeemed my first reward which was a $25 gift card to Target. The redeem process was flawless and it put the digital reward in “my stuff” When I went to Target I called up the reward and there was a scan code that the checker scanned and I got the $25 off my purchase. It appeared that you could use it for less than $25 and retain the difference on the virtual card as there was a link to check the balance. I used the whole thing and felt it was easy to do and I did not have to wait to get my reward sent to me by email or anything like that.

Coupons and Extra Kicks for Purchases

We have used a coupon at a Friday’s restaurant for a free entree when we purchased one, which saved us about $15. All we had to do was show the coupon in the ShopKick App to our server. There are other coupons that have great value too. I saw a coupon for Bath and Body works in the App that was $10 off a $30 purchase. Whenever you are shopping, you can open up the app and look for stores in the area which it will pull up with the assistance of your phones GPS. When you see the store you want to shop at, click on it and see if there are any deals or coupons you want to use. Some stores will offer extra kicks for purchases. Best Buy seems to have the most of these that I have seen thus far.

Building up Kicks

It seems that the more that you do on the App the more kicks become available to you. When my husband and I are driving somewhere I always refresh every mile or so and always get new kicks. I may just be easily amused but I get a real kick out of watching for the little stars and getting the free kicks. When you first start out you will get kicks one at a time but as I said it does seem that the more you do the more opportunities for kicks you will get.

Instant Surprises

When you open the app, and look for nearby stores you will see a green bubble with a star next to some of the stores. Click on these to open up and then click on the instant surprises. Some Stores will have more than one so make sure to pay attention to how many instant surprises there are, so you don’t miss any. Some instant surprises will give you 1-3 free kicks and others will give you a game piece. Game pieces are saved and when you get a set of 3 game pieces you will usually get 5-10 kicks although some sets are worth 25.

If you drive to a new area, open up the app again and there will be a whole new set of instant surprises. When my husband and I are out and about and I use the shop kick while we are driving around doing errands, it seems like every mile or so we drive there is a whole new set of 8-10 instant surprises.

Walk in Kicks

Some stores offer instant kicks for walking in the door. I have had issues with these not working. About half the time they work for me and I am not sure if it is my slow Sprint service or the app. You can email customer service to get the points but frankly customer service has yet to get back to me on any of the issues I have had in the last week so I have yet to see if it is even worth it for me to contact them. Walk in Kicks can be different amounts on different days. Sometimes you can get as many as 300 kicks when the app is working.

To get your kicks open the app and then click on the store where you are looking for walk in kicks. It will say right by the store if there are walk in kicks or not. Click where it says walk in kicks and then stop after you walk in and if it’s working you will get your kicks. You will know it worked because a big green bubble with the amount of kicks you won will appear on your screen and the kicks will be added to your total.

Scanning items for Kicks

Some stores will give you extra kicks for viewing products. To get your kicks scan the bar code of the item. This for the most part will work as long as you can find the item to scan. I would say that the the scanning works about 95% of the time.

Leveling Up

Each time you click on a store you will get one level up point. So even if there is no green bubble, click on each store you see to get a level up point. In the beginning you will level up quickly. As you level up you will get more instant surprises and offers for kicks. I can not say exactly how much it is but it does seem to be well worth leveling up. To get your level up point all you have to do is click on the store and you will see in blue for a brief second at the top near your kick total a +1. Once you have clicked the store it will be grey instead of white so it is easy to quickly go down your list and make sure you have looked at all the stores. Don’t forget to redo this each day or when you drive to a new area.

Customer Service

Response from customer service has been horrible. I have emailed them about 7 times. The first time was about not getting some of the instant surprises. I did hear back from them about that and they said they gave me 15 kicks but I have no clue if they were added because I never got a message about it when I signed on to the app. It might be nice if the app had a place where you could see a ledger of the added kicks but that is not possible so unless I wrote down my total or remembered it, I would have no way of knowing if I got the kicks or not.

I did get an email to confirm that I had sent the email to ShopKick but I never got anything from them saying they resolved my issue. When I went back to look at the email I noticed a link where you can click to see all the things you have emailed them about. You have to set up a new account for customer service issues which just amounts to setting another password with your email address. When I sign in there I can see all my emails and they all just say that they were waiting to be assigned to a rep. Some have been sitting there for a week without being assigned. I am not at all impressed with the customer service lack of responses, and slow response time.

My Over All Impression and Rating

Although the App has a few issues with me not getting my points, I can not say for sure that it is my phone service or the app. Since I get no response from customer service I have to deduct a point for this. The app has still saved me money with coupons and I really enjoy building up the kicks and getting gift cards for doing so. I am giving this app 4 stars despite a few technical glitches and poor customer service because it really is a very good value for me.


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