EagerLearner's Guide to Free Daily Cashback - Part Deux!

Numpty_Monkey

Over £350 per year

Looks like FC have finally closed thier forum:(

*madcat*

thanos23 wrote: »

I find that very hard to believe, if it's nothing to do with TCB then how come we can click through from two accounts with Quidco and it works fine? It's clearly a TCB problem...

I think so too, my first thought was that TCB were restricting the clicks to households either by name or home address and my suggestion to try another building such as a neighbours or friends was to rule out everything else.

Numpty_Monkey wrote: »

Looks like FC have finally closed thier forum:(

Why have they closed their forum?

It's not a site or forum that I use much but I always think of forums closing as a bad sign....

happy2011

*madcat* wrote: »

Why have they closed their forum?

It's not a site or forum that I use much but I always think of forums closing as a bad sign....

To be fair it has been the sites with forums that have either gone or may well go bust and none of them actually closed the forums before the sites disappeared.

Cashback Kings
R-Points
Cashback Chief
Cashback Cascade
Cashback Rewards
Cashinco
StudentMoneyback

Only an extremely tiny minority of Cashback Site members actually frequent any of the attached forums, My O/H says that Fatcheese announced a few weeks ago that it was closing its forum at the end of that month, reason that they gave was duplicate support in that some members were putting in support tickets, asking the same question on live support and posting the same question on FC forum, and so FC had to prioritise its resources for the benefit of the majority of its members. Adding new merchants, doing payments as quickly as possible, answering support/account related enquiries by support ticket/live support were its stated priorities.

My O/H says that due to postings by a handful of its membership of which probably totals 20000ish it agreed to keep its forum open on a trial basis as a members led forum with no input or support from FC admin for reasons FC had previously stated, My O/H says that some of the handful of members who asked for a member led forum didnt appear to understand the concept of member led/no admin support on the forum and were still asking questions aimed at FC on the forum all of which could have been asked direct to FC via its live support facility by the same method as posting on a forum namely keying.

I believe that it is fair to say that very few other Cashback Sites offer an opportunity to "all" of its members of asking any question directly to the sites owners/admin during office hours namely via Live Support a facility which clearly potentially benefits the majority of the membership rather than an apparent minority who prefer to communicate via forums. Live support facility has an apparent advantage over a forum in that members can ask account related questions that cannot be discussed on forums.


http://www.cashback-rewards.co.uk/ Gone without either a forum explanation or a goodbye


Fatcheese

martyn4764

Numpty_Monkey wrote: »

Looks like FC have finally closed thier forum:(

I didn't get what you meant until I checked the homepage; yes, it's been taken down, without any notice or any comment they intended to do so.

If there's anything there you need to check, you can still use a link like this to access the forum:
http://www.fatcheese.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?tid=319&action=newpost

(and strangely, going via that link still allows you to create new posts).

Communication was always one of FC's best points; IMO, that's changed considerably and rapidly.

I usually only withdraw from FC at £10 or more, but I've just withdrawn my available £8.

*madcat*

Thankyou happy2011 for that explanation, it all sounds very reasonable and I hope you are right about there being nothing to be concerned about.

I am quite sure there are some that did ask the same question via the forum, support ticket and also live support which must be very time consuming as well as annoying and I can see their point of view, but IMHO I think that of the three options they have dispensed with the wrong one because:

a) A forums gives potential new members the chance to assess how active/popular/efficient /etc. a site is before they join up.

b) Answering a question on forums reaches a wider audience and can therefore save time.

c) A forum lets members communicate with each other sharing tips and advice, and sometimes anwering questions which can save admin the job altogether.

d) With forums you can have competitions, draws, games & chat which builds loyalty to a site

e) Not having a forums gives a “closed” or abandoned look, and can make members feel isolated.

I think it may have been better to drop the “Live Support” instead because it is time consuming and inefficient and without this admin would have more time to answer problems on the forums, (which really can't function without some input from admin either direct or indirect.) Members would still have been able to contact admin direct through the “Support Ticket” option which is a more efficient way of dealing with account queries and one on one support. I also suspect that of the two options it is the more popular choice.

While it's true that only a minority post on forums, there are very many people who spend a lot of time lurking and reading forums, and I believe forums are a lot more important than some people seem to think, take this one for instance!

Personally, I wouldn't join a site which didn't have a forum as I take the view that sites without are more concerned about avoiding negative postings than creating a good impression or happy membership, but that's only my opinion and I don't want to offend anybody

*madcat*

Thanks martyn4764 for the link. I also claimed yesterday and received the payment today so full credit to Fat Cheese for that! :T

thriftymanc

£500 +

happy2011 wrote: »

TCB have always appeared to link household account and in some instances limit recurrences between the two accounts - was the same with A/C clicks 2 tended to track on my account with only 1 tracking on hubbys account and visa versa. Some no spends have only tracked on 1 account.

If they do link household accounts then change of IP/PC would not make any difference.

http://www.topcashback.co.uk/terms

"If your computer is used for more than one TopCashback account (i.e husband and wife) then allowed transaction recurrences may be determined across these multiple accounts as part of fraudulent usage prevention".

Thanks, I didn't find that when I looked at their T&Cs. Surely though, if they were going to block us for supposed 'fraud', they'd shut down one or both of the accounts completely rather than just refuse one click? That's what I'd have thought anyway! But I suppose it must be that - even though TCB told me it wasn't them causing the tracking issue, they also repeatedly told me to do things that I'd already told them that I did, so they might not be too bright and it's probably best not to trust what their email said...


EDIT: How on earth do they know we live in the same household when we haven't entered our address on either of our accounts?! We're not married so don't have the same surname (that wouldn't link us anyway as not everyone with the same surname is related!). Hmm.

happy2011

thriftymanc wrote: »

Thanks, I didn't find that when I looked at their T&Cs. Surely though, if they were going to block us for supposed 'fraud', they'd shut down one or both of the accounts completely rather than just refuse one click? That's what I'd have thought anyway! But I suppose it must be that - even though TCB told me it wasn't them causing the tracking issue, they also repeatedly told me to do things that I'd already told them that I did, so they might not be too bright and it's probably best not to trust what their email said...


EDIT: How on earth do they know we live in the same household when we haven't entered our address on either of our accounts?! We're not married so don't have the same surname (that wouldn't link us anyway as not everyone with the same surname is related!). Hmm.

"fraudulent usage prevention" : Might mean clicks/no spends not done for genuine purposes, basically TCB dont appear to allow all its no spend offers to be doubled up on two accounts that they have related together.

"How on earth do they know we live in the same household"

Only guessing here, by referral/PC/IP used at time of referral and subsequently by both members, even if IP is changed by router turn off/on it normally doesnt change the whole IP number, usually the later digits rather than the earlier digits so in most cases people under an illusion that they have changed their whole IP address by turning router on/off and it is the earliest IP digits which are more important than the latest digits.

I dont mean to be unkind as it applies to us all, let us remember that doing HSW for the 4p reward every day x2 and in some cases x 2 household accounts is not the genuine reason that the merchant intended for, HSW offer the reward to encourage people to do genuine shopping comparison searches via HSW as opposed to its shopping comparison site rivals and TCB retained HSW when other sites lost the merchant.:)

It is apparent that in "some cases", I am not saying that this applies to you, it is the same person behind the screen doing clicks,no spends and entering cashback site competitions via both household related accounts so TCB who also have a "fair play policy" have some kind of a restriction in place to stop some of its offers automatically being doubled up on by accounts that it believes to be household related in fairness to both its merchants and to the majority of its membership as lets remembers clicks are often not unlimited, if that restriction wasnt in place then maybe as an example the click would have to be restricted to either every 2 days for everyone or once a day for everyone, ultimately if the merchant believed that the majority of the leads were for the reward only then it could cease the offer.

http://www.topcashback.co.uk/FairPlay

happy2011

*madcat* wrote: »

I think it may have been better to drop the “Live Support” instead because it is time consuming and inefficient and without this admin would have more time to answer problems on the forums,

Surely the best judge of that are both the members who use that facility and the organisation concerned who will know how many members that it serves per day/month/year.

I agree it was a silly idea to keep the forum going without stated admin/owner presence because having agreed to it some members merely posted about lack of communication/deserting forum etc when their was not anything of apparent significance having been posted requiring priority owner/admin time/resources.


For those who dont frequent FC forum this is what they said in their own words :

07-02-2011, 07:39 PM

Post: #1

Fatcheese ( T )

Administrator

Posts: 369

Joined: Sep 2009

Reputation: 4

IMPORTANT: Future of the forum

Hi everyone

It is with regret I have to announce that we have decided to close the Fatcheese forum at the end of the month

There are various reasons as to why we've come to this decision but the main issue for us is the duplicate support work we're having to do where members are both submitting tickets and posting on the forum for the same query... many of whom will then jump onto live chat as well. This could mean the same query is being answered by three separate people which I'm hoping you can see isn't the most productive way of spending our time.

We will still be able to communicate issues to you via an alternate method we're creating and you will be able to provide us with feedback on those matters. The ticketing system is being improved with faster responses being given and the live chat support will be on for longer periods throughout the day.

The Bonus Ball Competition will start again on Thursday but this will be the final one we run.

Just to confirm, it is only the forum we are closing and not the site... that we hope will remain for many years to come.

I hope you understand our decision behind this and apologies if it wasn't what you wanted to hear We will make sure that any issues that have been previously raised on the forum will be dealt with if they haven't been done so already before the end of the month.

Kind regards,

T.

happy2011

09-02-2011, 03:47 PM

Post: #12

Fatcheese ( T )
Administrator

Posts: 369
Joined: Sep 2009
Reputation: 4

RE: IMPORTANT: Future of the forum

Thanks for the feeback guys.

Obviously our members make the site what it is and we take on-board all feedback we receive. We're happy to trial out what you have suggested ie. keep the forum live but have it run by yourselves with a note advising users we're unable to offer any support to members via the forum and they should instead use our ticketing system/live chat.

This isn't a way of us trying to hide away from issues as we don't believe we have any (obviously there will always be a handful of people who are experiencing one or two problems) but as I said in the original post we're trying to improve our productivity so our service to you improves.

So we're happy to give a member run forum a go where you'll be able to discuss issues amongst yourselves. Although we won't be offering support via the forum the forum rules will still apply so please bear this in mind when posting and if you do see anyone breaking a rule please could you flag this up for our attention.

I hope that's acceptable to you all?