Cashback Claim Refusal

DAVID.BAIN

I bought a phone through this website,via onecompare.com then "mobileshop.com,greatdeal with 02...or so i thought!
got to month 5 to claim £82.50 cashback based on guidelines,then refused,have sent numerous emails still refused,this is not what i expected when i bought this phone.mobileshop say im late as i should have sent bill 5 in month 4,it isnt clear on the guidelines!!!
be aware,mobileshop.com do not honour cashback!!!

the_tired_one

They do.

You were supposed to send in the bill that confirms that you were connected for 4 months - so that would be bill no.5

I had my 1st ever CB rejected in 3 years:( today. My fault - 2 weeks late.

With phoneboxdirect.com

Pound

What date did your contract start? Which bill did you send in and which were you supposed to send in?

veloo

Absolutely the worst mobile phone scam company I have ever dealt with. I sent in my first claim a month early due to confusing wordings in their T&Cs and Cashback offer documents. They deducted £10, just for this. They say that they never received the 2nd claim docs, now. They say all my future claims are void now. And all this time, I am paying over the odds for calling this 0870 number, which just seems to keep on ringing after the initial welcome. If I can, I am going to tell all my friends and whoever else I can to avoid this company.

grayme-m

veloo wrote: »

Absolutely the worst mobile phone scam company I have ever dealt with. I sent in my first claim a month early due to confusing wordings in their T&Cs and Cashback offer documents. They deducted £10, just for this. They say that they never received the 2nd claim docs, now. They say all my future claims are void now. And all this time, I am paying over the odds for calling this 0870 number, which just seems to keep on ringing after the initial welcome. If I can, I am going to tell all my friends and whoever else I can to avoid this company.

Which company?!

The OP was about mobileshop.com, you're saying phoneboxdirect.com is the worst ever (which was mentioned by the second poster.

Back to OP, I have always found mobileshop to be fair; if something is not clear then ask them (they always responded to me).

grayme-m

Actually, it appears that you have posted the same thing on numerous threads regardless of which company the thread is about?

veloo

The second post referred to phoneboxdirect.com, and hence my post here. Apologies, if this should not have been here. I have been stung unfairly, and I have been telling everyone to avoid them. I posted this at every discussion of phoneboxdirect.com, to make people aware of them, and possibly avoid losing a lot of money. I have lost more than £250.

mroller

try to sue them in the small claim court, for having confusing TC. Someone here did it before and he got his money.

bluep

For the record: this is how it works. These companies offer unbelievable deals that would make them virtually no money at all if everybody was successful in claiming cashback. So they factor in that a good % of people - say...as high as 70% will either simply forget, not be bothered, be away on holiday or get confused by increasingly complex instructions about which bill to send on which date. This means that they can then afford to pay the 30% that get it meticulously right, whilst pocketing the other 70% of cashback as profits and go on to offer more ridiculous deals without going completely bust.

So, they want to have stupidly complicated rules about which bill and which vouchers and which date. If you send your documents in by normal post, I wouldn't put it past some companies to pretend that they never received them (ALWAYS send via recorded post and if time is of issue then by next day delivery - you can then prove which date it arrived upon).

For exactly the same reason, once you have made a mistake and messed up a claim (usually the first), then in the T&C it voids all future claims, in order to make it easier for you to be in that 70%. Its in the T&C, so perfectly legal.

What's worse is that cashback is from the dealer, not the network, so as far as the network is concerned, they have nothing to do with it, you have a certain contract length and owe them cash each month. The network has already paid the dealer their commission for providing you as a new connection and it doesn't claw that back from them.

Best thing you can do if you have messed up the cashback is switch to the cheapest possible tariff for the remainder of your term and decide that if you ever take out a cashback deal again, you'll make sure you know which bill, which voucher, which month and send recorded, on time. I do sympathise with you guys, I really do but cashback is like...a reward for jumping through a large number of hoops and getting it all right. Even then, some poor guys end up with a company going bust on them (and STILL having to pay the network each month).

jcfareham

I followed the instructions for claiming the cashback to the letter and was paid for the first 2 vouchers even though a little late. The mobile shop web site does give confirmation that they have received and accepted the claim voucher.
However the latest claim which they received in January 2007 still has not been actioned. The live support service no longer has access to any cashback information and redirects to send an e-mail to cashback@mobileshop.com
my request for status was to say that they were currently experiencing difficulties with making cashback payments due to a technical problem with their in-house computing systems - and at this time (April 4th) they cannot advise on payment dates.

Maybe a higher % of their customers are registering their claims correctly.

It's a pity - I was very happy with mobileshop.com but at this time could not recommend them.

I wait with anticipation so that I can update this post with good news.....
otherwise it's off to the small claims court.

Llyllyll

Read this (http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=253911) thread.

Mobileshop has NOT (at least as of Friday 13th) stopped paying cashback. They clearly have some serious problems with their payment system but several people (myself included) have recently received their outstanding CB payments.

Get on to them and be firm but polite. Worked for me.