Voucher cashout - How do you do it?

antispam246

I'm curious as to how peeps here cashout their vouchers from the likes of surveys sites. Many survey sites etc. pay out with voucher only options, usually with a wide range of options, shopandscan being a good example.

I tend to treat any points accumulated for vouchers as savings and have gone various routers for exchanging the vouchers for cash, converting it into actual savings. Most of these ventures end up resulting in a profit, some break even and a few make a slight loss. I'm at the point now where my ideas are limited, nothing fresh is coming to me and so it's been like this for awhile, to the point where, across various sites I've accumulated points for vouchers I have over £1500 worth of points waiting to be claimed.

My immediate worry is of course that although right now I have that amount available to claim, that could at any given moment change. So I've been sifting through the payout options (all various voucher types, paper and e-codes), trying to guess what would be the best way to temporarily store the points (to vouchers) so that I had them at hand to physically use when an opportunity arose.

I'm curious as to how others work with this. If you were sitting on a large sum of points equivalent to £1500 would you cash them out even though there was nothing in particular you wanted to use them on or opportunities?

Easy way to break even and would be the easiest option right now is to use them on say the xmas shopping, cash them out for vouchers for something you would genuinely be buying as a gift for someone from somewhere, then take the cash from myself and add to savings, basically the vouchers replcae the cash I would have been spending anyway so the cash goes to savings. This is what I'm really thinking of doing right now BUT entirely, as in the whole lot. Problem is I don't intend to spend that much on xmas gifts, so I need to cash out in a way that I can potentialyl in the future use those vouchers for say birthdays, holidays etc.. so I was thinking of spreading the points spend on a multitude of different types of vouchers.

Example I would exchange alot for Amazon and HMV becuase I know I will always spend a fair bit there for other people and myself at some point, both are popular and have many decent offers every know and then. But would you cash out say from these 2 stores alone 50/50 for the entire accumulated points or hold out?

To sum up, for those of us who really look to make the most of sites where you accumulate points in the view of making extra savings, how do you deal with cashing out? As you go? when an opportunity arises? When its times for gifts? When you fear the worst? Asap to minimize all potential issues (i.e. going bust?) even then, what would you then do with the vouchers?

silaren

I usually cash out ASAP as soon as I reach the threshold.

But in terms of which cashout option, then I'd try to get most bang for my buck in terms of monetary value. I'd take into account convenience and whether I'd normally shop there.

It's also worth bearing in mind that Amazon vouchers have an expiry date, so if you don't think you are going to spend it all by the date, then you might want to consider another option.

If you can get the money into PayPal then you could at least transfer it to a bank account where you could earn some interest and you'd have more options in terms of how you use the money. Otherwise, I tend to choose Amazon or Love2Shop because they have the widest range of options after cash.

antispam246

Whenever there's a paypal option I always go for that, unfortunately there are many schemes which don't offer this, which is where the dilemma kicks in. What are the Amazon e-codes expiries generally like? a Year? less?

silaren

Last time I looked, it's about a year. That may have changed now though.

I could definitely see myself spending £50 to £100 of Amazon vouchers in a year and at a push £150-£200. But I don't think I'd hit £1500 unless I bought a 'big ticket' item like a laptop.

Why not take the Paypal option where it's offered and then get the rest in Amazon/Love2Shop (they cover HMV) vouchers?

antispam246

Cashed out half in the end, some leisure vouchers, some amazon and paypal where it was available.

mrsyardbroom

If I have to have vouchers I choose Tesco or Asda and use them to pay for part of the weekly shop. The money I've saved on the shopping can go into a savings account.

purplevamp

I too try and get paypal or cash, if that's not possible I get Amazon vouchers. They have come in really handy this month as they've bought most of my online presents. I think they have an expiry date of 1-2 years. I had one that said expiry date was some time in 2013. I guess it all depends on the individual site.

I also try to cash out as soon as it gets to the threshold as some survey sites have been known to go bust and you end up losing your accumulated points/cash.