Npower quidco cashback problem

pf4awg

Hi all

In November I switched my gas and electricity through quidco to npower for a £40 cashback offer.

This was never tracked and I thought this was down to the fact I was still with my old energy provider for a couple of months as everything got transferred over to npower. However once everything went through there was still nothing and when I got in touch with quidco they said it was too late to do anything as npower only look at things up to 7 weeks after clicking through to npower's site, it took about 9 or 10 weeks to transfer over to npower.

Is there anything else I can do to get the cashback as £40 is a lot for a student to miss out on.

Chris

glider3560

Switch again to another provider?

The key to cashback is that if it doesn't track early, then it is likely it never will without submitting a manual claim.

My rule of thumb with energy suppliers is this: if it hasn't tracked by the end of the cooling off period, then cancel the transfer and try switching again.

Premier_2

Not a lot I'm afraid.

As Martin says, cashback is not guaranteed until it hits your bank account.

For your information, quidco usually tracks within hours if not sooner. The quidco site suggests within 1 day for nPower.
This is different to actually being paid which quidco says is typically 4 months for nPower.

If quidco say you've now missed the boat to appeal, there's not a lot you can do.
Quidco advise you raise a query to them if an item is not tracked after 3 days, and yes after 7 weeks they say it's too late.

If your purchase still hasn't tracked three days after the purchase date, please raise a missing cashback query. You must raise this no later than 7 weeks after the purchase date. After this time we will be unable to accept it.

http://www.quidco.com/help/160

pf4awg

Ok thanks for the advice, I had better just watch out with future cashback amounts.

Muhasib

Npower also never tracked my transfer in September for a similar amount - funny that as I get 30-40 transactions a year through Quidco and none have failed to track before, Quidco said it was too late so just waiting for the minimum term to end and I'll be switching away.

pf4awg

It seems i'm not alone with this problem then. Npower should sort out their ability to track quidco customers as everyone else seems to have got it right. Will too be switching the moment the minimum term is up.

Premier_2

pf4awg wrote: »

It seems i'm not alone with this problem then. Npower should sort out their ability to track quidco customers as everyone else seems to have got it right. Will too be switching the moment the minimum term is up.

As I understand it, whether an item tracks or not is something between you and quido. It is nothing at that stage to do with the end merchent.

The first the merchant is agreeing is later when the tracked status moves to validated. (Note that with some merchants the validation status is not used - this is indicated by the status tracked* )

glider3560

Premier wrote: »

As I understand it, whether an item tracks or not is something between you and quido. It is nothing at that stage to do with the end merchent.

There are quite a few stages that happen.

1. You visit Quidco
2. Click through to merchant - this goes via an advertising network who put a cookie on your computer
3. You complete purchase then a JavaScript/small image on the final confirmation page will then detect the cookie and report the sale back to the advertising network
4. Advertising network return this information to both the merchant and Quidco

Problems can occur at any step - especially 3. This is because either the cookie is blocked, the image/JavaScript is blocked or even the page didn't load fully before the user navigated away (the tracking script is usually the very last thing to load).