Awhile back, I posted on joining the Upromise program.

To update, I am still very happy with the program and would highly recommend it to anyone who is saving for college or trying to pay down student loans. It’s been about nine months since I joined. In that time, I’ve picked up $204 in rewards towards my Sallie Mae college loan, though I would tend to think that I buy more stuff online than most people because of my business.

The bulk of the rewards comes from two sources: eBay and eRewards. eBay offers 1 percent rewards for every purchase. We buy a lot of our business supplies through eBay venders rather than traditional suppliers. As example, we buy packing tape, static bags, some boxes, packing supplies, office supplies, general equipment, and more. Since I already bought these items on eBay, it fit right in without any disruption to my normal habits.

I was highly skeptical of eRewards when I signed up. I just didn’t buy into the whole “take surveys, earn money” line. But, I figured if they had partnered with Sallie Mae, I would give them a shot. I might spend an hour a month taking surveys, quite often taking them as I’m working on other tasks on my computer. I’ve managed to get $50 worth of credit to my Upromise account through eRewards during the nine months I’ve been signed up.

I’ve also picked up rewards from Newegg (the best place in the world for desktop computer parts), Office Max, our local grocery store and our favorite local BBQ joint, Biggs.

The best, and most consistent, way to use the program is still to install the browser toolbar. Otherwise, you have to go to the Upromise site, log in, find the store you want to shop at, then finally click on a link to the store to make sure you get your rewards. It’s a pain. Sadly, while a better option, the toolbar is still annoying. It briefly routes you through the Upromise site every time you visit a site that gives rewards. It delays loading the desired site by maybe a second. Sometimes, if you open a page on a rewards giving site in a new tab, the re-routing kicks in again and dumps you off at the stores main page. Annoying. But, still better than having to manually go through the Upromise site. I still suggest running two browsers, one for you daily use and one for shopping. I run dual instances of Firefox (which I finally learned how to do a few months ago).

At the pace I’ve been earning rewards, I figure I will have earned the equivalent of three extra payments by the end of the year. I can’t stress enough that I think I buy more online than the average person, but I still think the program can be good for anyone trying to pay down a Sallie Mae student loan. Even earning one extra payment a year for a few years could shave serious money off your student loans.

Many years ago, I pissed away a golden opportunity. The University of Kansas, private organizations and assorted government agencies heaped money on me to go to school (hint: NMS). Who knew, brains actually can pay off. But, being young, foolish and a little lost, I dropped out, giving up all that money. Twelve years later, I did finally finish, but they don’t give out that free money the second (or third) time around. So, like lots of other grads, I’ve got a pile of student loans now. As a friend in a very similar situation recently told me, “Every time I make a student loan payment, I have a good hearty laugh…”

In January, I signed up for Upromise, Sallie Mae’s reward program. Its free and through it, a percentage of purchases made at certain stores gets applied to your Sallie Mae student loans or a college savings plan. You can also give your rewards to a relative or friend and help them out with college (great for parents and grandparents who do a lot of shopping). Everyone has a rewards program nowadays it seems: credit cards, airlines, box stores, gas stations, gaming stores, blah, blah, blah. Normally I don’t pay any attention to them. I have one debit card that returns instant cash back, good enough. Upromise, though, got me to take a look because of one line:

Earn 1% rewards on eBay purchases.

Besides selling on eBay, I buy a lot of crap there too. Almost all of the business’s office supplies and equipment are bought through eBay. Upromise actually has hundreds of participating merchants, most of whom I will never shop at (which is always the way these rewards programs seem to work, they want me to spend my money at places I would never normally shop). Upromise sold itself with eBay, Newegg (awesome!), Dillon’s, and Barnes & Noble. No Amazon though, which sucks.

They’ve got some weird partners too, like CryoCell, “who collects and preserves your newborn’s umbilical cord blood stem cells.” Not exactly the first company that comes to mind when you think of a rewards program.

Most of your shopping has to be done online to get rewards, but that’s okay, I do most of my shopping online anyway. Here we get to the annoying part though. In order to make sure your purchases qualify, you have two options. One is to go to the Upromise site before every purchase and click through Upromise to the site you want to shop on. Hassle. Or, install their toolbar, which will make sure your qualifying purchases are counted and let you know when you are on a site with rewards. Sounds easy, unfortunately they built a shoddy toolbar. Every time you are on a partner site, the bar briefly routes you through the Upromise site first (takes maybe an extra second or two, but it’s annoying as sin when you spend as much time online as I do a day). I stripped it out of Firefox after about 30 minutes. I couldn’t take it. I usually run two browsers though. Most of the time, I’m in Firefox, but I leave IE7 open for a second gmail account. I installed the toolbar in IE7 and just move over to it when I want to buy something. It’s still a slight hassle, but better than having the bar installed in FireFox.

It takes 10-45 days for most credits to be applied to your Upromise account. So far, I’ve got almost $12 in it with about $30 more pending. Sure, it’s not a ton of money, but its only been a month or so and this is stuff I’m already buying. Once I had everything set up the way I like it, it hasn’t required any extra work. I figure by the end of the year, it will amount to an extra one to two payments to my student loans. At this point, every bit helps.

Final verdict: If you spend a lot of money online on eBay or one of the other partner sites (like several thousand dollars a year), Upromise is absolutely worth the time. Otherwise, meh, don’t worry about it.

Updated: I put up a new post detailing my experience with Upromise over the last several months.