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Cashback schemes
Hello,
Does anyone use these effectively at all (without spending more than you normally would, ofc!)?
I'm going to be looking at a new TV towards the grand mark soon-ish and thought i've never actually tapped in to cash back beyond a £50 receipt effort on the HP Microservices years ago, maybe on my Pentax K30 as well, so would be nice to get a couple of quid back here and there with the banks slashing their offerings and rates too.
Any how, what are the best schemes/apps/companies, are they easy enough to setup and manage/reclaim?
Are there any major pot holes I need to avoid?
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Re: Cashback schemes
I use Honey on the browser, that gives you codes for stuff, which then gives you "Honey Gold" which can then be converted to vouchers and so on for various things.
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Re: Cashback schemes
I've used Quidco for quite a few years. I don't spend just to get the cashback, but make sure I always check my options. I've been able to get a fairly significant about (multiple times the £50 you mentioned) with a bit patience and graft from checking. Things that you'd renew and switch each year like insurance and utilities can be really helpful if you time it right, as well as booking hotels and such. You can get some cashback on certain categories like Amazon etc.
I've also not used cashback if a voucher for an alternative product is available but doesn't have cashback. You can double dip on cashback with the card you use that gives you cashback or points whilst you use Quidco (or similar).
The key, as you correctly mentioned, isn't to spend to get cashback specifically because you're automatically out of pocket and on the losing side of it. Simply remembering to search will help you start to rake up cashback. Hope that helps! To be clear, I'm very sure I'm no where near as good at doing this than those who manage to earn much more than I do.
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Re: Cashback schemes
Generally cashback falls into one of three buckets.
1) Manufacturer rebates - pretty uncommon in the UK, HP Microserver is the one that I recall as well. You do sometimes see these on broadband contracts, e.g. Plusnet sending cheques and BT sending Rewards cards.
2) Tracked affiliate cashback e.g. TopCashback and Quidco. I've used these extensively, and netted over £2k now in totality. That's misleading though, because in all cases some spending was needed to get that cashback (and in some cases spending I wouldn't have otherwise made). It's not a scam, and they do work, but the tracking is very hit and miss. That can mean manual claims required, and do you really want to fill out a form to chase up 1.5% of a £21 spend? This can be well worth it for things like mobile phone contracts or broadband, because cashback can be in excess of £100. But you're never guaranteed the payment, so you shouldn't rely on it when you're buying things. TCB's paid option is worth it if you're a regular user, for Quidco I'm more sceptical - all depends on your personal usage.
3) Financial institutions e.g. American Express, Santander etc. These are a no-brainer to my mind. They're the simplest, because the provider is just looking to spot a transaction of the right value (e.g. transaction in Morrisons for >£50, therefore pay £5 cashback). American Express and Santander are the most generous that I've seen, but I know Lloyds Banking Group have a similar scheme.
In some cases you can stack all three, and I've never come across a case where a financial institution couldn't be stacked (because they're not looking at the receipt, just at the transaction). My favourite example of that was when I got an offer for £10 cashback on a £50 Argos spend, so I bought some Steam gift cards and my Amex paid out.
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Re: Cashback schemes
jim has pretty much covered everything, but on the cashback site side of things, for what it's worth as a TopCashback user for a number of years:
I'd recommend using a separate browser for doing the cashback and resulting puchase process, with no adblocker installed on it (and obviously not being routed through pi-hole or similar either), with permissive cookie settings, and clearing the cookies before each time to make sure that there aren't already cookies that make the cashback site's affiliate referral fail to be credited to them by the retailer/affiliate network (although obviously making sure to log in to the cashback site after the initial cookie clearing), that way it should hopefully increase the chance of things tracking successfully.
The way I do things is to just check TopCashback if I decide I specifically want to buy a specific item from a specific retailer, to see if the retailer (and possibly the particular section of that retailer's site it might be in) offers it, something to keep checking as wehther retailers are offering any cashback can change at any time. At the same time, I treat it as not being guaranteed, but just nice to have if it comes through.
There might be some times where going via a cashback site has slightly different deals available on a specific landing page as a result of going via them, rather than directly, such as I've observed with broadband providers on TopCashback (such as Plusnet) in the past. There may also be other restrictions, but it will usually say on the page for the retailer's page on the cashback site if there are any specific conditions needed to get the cashback.
I wouldn't specifically choose to buy something that I didn't intend on buying already due to cashback rates, with the possible exception of something in the 'snap & save' section (which allows cashback on some specific grocery items at times), although even then it would most likely only be if the resulting cashback would make the item free as a result, but the item itself would of course need to be something I would like to eat/drink.