www.three.co.uk and quidco

durain

how good or reliable is quidco with cashback? i am thinking of getting https://www.three.co.uk as quidco is giving £100 back for monthly plan. how long before i can get the money back?

the_tired_one

Click on the Quidco link - it will show you how reliable they are re: tracking etc.

Ive done it - and heres what it says:-

Tracking Speed

Fast (0 - 4 days,
0 day average)


Tracking Reliability

High (97% tracked,
3% enquiries of which
0% successful so far)


Payment Speed

Medium (2 month avg)

----
Pretty good is the vedict:)

Road_Hog

As long as you use the sim, they are good. The only time you come unstuck is where you buy a PAYG phone and throw away the sim and insert your own. As 3 only pay out once the sim has been activated and used.

the_tired_one

Road_Hog wrote: »

As long as you use the sim, they are good. The only time you come unstuck is where you buy a PAYG phone and throw away the sim and insert your own. As 3 only pay out once the sim has been activated and used.

Thats not the question being asked....nice answer though:)

alanclose

They didn't pay out for me and I have had a query in with quidco for about 4 months now.

InnesL

Watch this space - I am gently starting to fume :mad:

My Wife entered into a new Video Talk 500 contract through Quidco (ordered on 28 Feb).

This did not track and now (having had to wait 15 days to report the missing transaction) there is an additional note advising the Video Talk 500 is excluded.

As this was not the case at the time of the order I a damn well goint to fight it but "...3% enquiries of which 0% successful so far..." does not inspire confidence.

It is a good deal, but we would not have taken it without the incentive.

Reestit_Mutton

InnesL wrote: »

Watch this space - I am gently starting to fume :mad:

My Wife entered into a new Video Talk 500 contract through Quidco (ordered on 28 Feb).

This did not track and now (having had to wait 15 days to report the missing transaction) there is an additional note advising the Video Talk 500 is excluded.

As this was not the case at the time of the order I a damn well goint to fight it but "...3% enquiries of which 0% successful so far..." does not inspire confidence.

It is a good deal, but we would not have taken it without the incentive.

Alas, cashback sites don't generally do a lot beyond providing a directory of retailers and a means to receive some/all of the commission back on your purchase.

When tracking issues arise (as they inevitably do all the time for almost any retailer), the cashback site's response is to collect enquiries, compile them into a report for each retailer at the end of the month, and pass back any response they get to the customer.

To the best of my knowledge, no amount of complaining will get your case looked at in any special way - you are free to resubmit your enquiry but it will simply be dealt with the same way every time as it is not going to be flagged as warranting particular attention.

To be fair to them, they simply do not have the resources to look into individual cases and make a case on your behalf. It's a crying shame because I know that they hold a lot of influence with the retailers due to the volume of sales they generate.

I know better results can be achieved because I have achieved them for my customers when they feel they have been wrongly refused cashback on their contract (as we all know does occasionally happen). It takes some effort, I can tell you. However, the size of the average cashback site's customer base simply makes it impossible to provide anything more than an automated one-size-fits-all service in this area...and especially so when you're operating on wafer thin margins, as Quidco is.

As the quoted post shows...0% success rate on enquiry says it all.

That said, I do have to take my hat off to Quidco for what they are trying to do - despite the obvious threat that they pose to my contract mobile phone price comparison website, I have an immense amount of respect for the people behind the site.

It just has to be pointed out that when you use a cashback site to place your order you are largely on your own when it comes to problems, either with their tracking or, more seriously, with your cashback. It's the same with all businesses...low cost=no frills.

Reestit Mutton

AJP558

Whenever I am about to make a large transaction with a significant cashback at stake through Quidco I first use one of the 4p/10p links for something like a Kelkoo search. I the wait until that appears (eg within 5 to 30mins) before clicking through for my main transaction.

In the past I have had a problem with tracking transactions with Firefox while Internet Explorer worked ok perhaps because of some security or anti-spyware utilities I have used.

Hopefully you will eventually get your cashback from Three. A broadband contract I setup for my Dad with AOL failed to track. However, after raising a query and a wait of about six months I eventually got the full £45 to give to him. I am still pursuing a £20 Quidco cashback for GreenFlag breakdown cover from September last year. After both of those transactions didn't track I re-installed Win XP and now run a Kelkoo test before making any big purchases.

Old_Gold

Reestit I enjoyed your post. I am wondering though of what the legalities would be of persuing the retailer on the basis that you would not have entered into the contract if it had not been for the promised cashback.

Reestit_Mutton

AJP558 wrote: »

Whenever I am about to make a large transaction with a significant cashback at stake through Quidco I first use one of the 4p/10p links for something like a Kelkoo search. I the wait until that appears (eg within 5 to 30mins) before clicking through for my main transaction.

In the past I have had a problem with tracking transactions with Firefox while Internet Explorer worked ok perhaps because of some security or anti-spyware utilities I have used.

Hopefully you will eventually get your cashback from Three. A broadband contract I setup for my Dad with AOL failed to track. However, after raising a query and a wait of about six months I eventually got the full £45 to give to him. I am still pursuing a £20 Quidco cashback for GreenFlag breakdown cover from September last year. After both of those transactions didn't track I re-installed Win XP and now run a Kelkoo test before making any big purchases.

Alas, a kelkoo test will by no means guarantee a trouble free tracking process with any other site. This is because tracking can fail for one of three reasons:

(1) Quidco's tracking system fails
(2) The affiliate network's tracking system fails
(3) The retailer's tracking system fails

Testing with a kelkoo transaction only safeguards against (1) and (2) - and only if you use a retailer on the same network as Kelkoo.

If your intended purchase is with a retailer who's registered their affiliate scheme via a different affiliate network then you have proven nothing about the current status of the relevant affiliate network's tracking by undertaking a Kelkoo test.

What's more, if there is any major outage of tracking capability either at the affiliate network or the retailer (which does happen from time to time), the best that they can (and will) generally do is to offer compensation to Quidco based on their usual sales throughput and the length of the outage.

This compensation is not linked to any specific purchases (how could it be if the purchases weren't tracked?). I would therefore have to question what Quidco does with such compensation payments.

Afterall, while customer clickthroughs are no doubt logged by Quidco there is no automatically available proof of purchase without the tracking information logged with each purchase (and Quidco is hardly geared up to deal with verifying the eligibility of thousands of manually submitted claims using receipts as proof of purchase).

So how would Quidco judge who is eligible for a payment out of the compensation received from the network/retailer and how do they judge the level of payment due to each customer. This quandary is made worse by the fact that the compensation may not be sufficient to meet all valid claims in full - thus, in order to know what percentage to pay each customer, Quidco must first know the full extent of the problem and receive full submissions from all customers concerned. Believe me...it doesn't just sound like a nightmare to administer fairly...it IS one.

No...methinks that Quidco has no choice but to say nothing and keep the compensation payment for itself as anything else is too complicated to administer...and, to be honest, they probably could do with a bit more income for their efforts anyway as cashback administration on a massive scale is a very labour intensive business.

This isn't intended to allude to any kind of malpractice - it's just an acknowledgement of the complexity of the situation and maybe a possible explanation as to why some people aren't always successful with their cashback enquiries.

However...how Quidco deals with compensation payments from the retailers/networks as and when they arise is nonethless a pertinent question to put to Quidco. I'm sure that Quidco will be more than happy to provide an honest and transparent answer to this question.

HtH
Reestit Mutton

chatty123

they are excellent in paying out....i ordered one in the middle of december, it tracked the day after and i got paid out at the end of january. will certainly be doing the same again july when i have another contract at an end.
it does say clearly that the offer from quidco is not available on the talk 500 deal. JUST always read the small print and clear all cookie/files