Topcashback Questions & Answers

Juzza12

Hi, my cashback through Dabs.com has tracked lower than expected because of a lower purchase price showing up. There is nothing to say they exclude VAT but is this the case?

TopCashBack_Company_Representative

Good morning,

@POPPYOSCAR, there is only one Love2shop card as such and they are intended to be used in store as you suggest.

@CHRISSYG, you can see a full list of participating retailers at the link below-

http://www.flexecash.com/flexecash/love2shop/retailers.htm

@Juzza12, I'm not 100% sure on Dabs, but I'll get you an answer and post back here when I do.

Best wishes,
John

Bootsalebargains

My sky broadband from november 12th has finally gone confirmed after 25 weeks when it said 11 weeks, any idea how long until it goes payable

TopCashBack_Company_Representative

Hi Bootsalebargains,

I'm sorry your transaction has taken so long to confirm.

Although the vast majority of Sky transactions for November have moved to payable, there have been delays with some of them. We have been speaking to their affiliate network and, as you have noticed, have managed to get them validated.

I am hoping the payment will be made soon and we do keep chasing it, but I couldn't say with certainty when we will receive the funds.

Can you post back in 4 weeks if there is no change? I should at least be able to update you then.

Best wishes,
John

Georgiegirl256

Hi,

I have a transaction from paddy power which has been confirmed for weeks now, the transaction was done on the 21st Feb, any ideas when it'll become payable?

Thanks

TopCashBack_Company_Representative

Hi Georgiegirl256,

Can you email us on [EMAIL="mse@topcashback.co.uk"]mse@topcashback.co.uk[/EMAIL]?

We can then access your account and take a look at your Paddy Power transaction.

Best wishes,
John

JoD63

After booking my holiday with British Airways via TopCashBack link I looked forward to receiving approximately £245 cashback. I booked in Feb and despite several nudges I have today received my reply....."I'm afraid that the merchant has taken the decision to decline your submission on this occasion. The reason that has been supplied for this in helping to clarify states that your 'Transaction cannot be traced'.
This does suggest that the merchant has been unable to locate your queried transaction based upon the information that you have provided as your main order number for this, but more likely they have been able to locate your sale - but they cannot prove that this has been the result of a Top CashBack referral."
How on earth do I prove that I went via TopCashBack?
To say I am angry & very disappointed is an understatement :mad:

TopCashBack_Company_Representative

Hi JoD63,

I'm so sorry to hear that your cashback has been declined on this occasion. I can appreciate how disappointing and frustrating this can be for our members, particularly when a large sum of cashback is involved.

It sounds like that on this occasion the last browsing cookie dropped before you made your transaction with British Airways was not a Top Cashback cookie. This cookie is imperative to the cashback process because it marks the fact that we led you to your transaction with said merchant and so we should therefore be awarded the commission for it, which we then pass on to you as cashback. If another cookie is dropped before you make your transaction the merchant won't be able to pay us the commission for the sale.

This can sometimes happen if you don't clear your cookies frequently or if you click through to a merchant but then browse other web pages/windows before/whilst making your transaction.

If you could kindly send me an e-mail to mse@topcashback.co.uk I can take a look at your account and into your Missing Cashback claim to see if there is anything else more that we can do for you here. The decision of the merchant is ultimately final and is at their discretion however I'll be more than happy to see if our Claims Team feel that there's anything more that can be done.

I really look forward to your e-mail; have a lovely day in the meantime.

Best wishes,

Jessica

james985

I purchase AA roadcover every year. In January I saw that TCB were offering £35 cash back for getting my cover through them. The price of the membership Approx £100 was no better than going through the AA website itself.
Before I purchased I contacted TCB and through their email system was told how it worked. After I purchased the AA cover I contacted them again to see how long I was to wait for my cover.
It was then that the opaque workings of the TCB sytem was explained. Essentially TCB every few months will ask the retailer for it's commission from punters who ordered through them. The retailer may or may not decide to comply and pay this commission to TCB who them may or may not pay the punter.
So after after 5 months I contacted TCB to see where's my cash back
and was told low and behold that there had been a mistake and the AA couldn't pay out as it hadn't got my code number, now I would have to wait another 3-4 months for them to make a claim.
After thinking about this, I will tell you how I think TCB really works...
TCB have an arrangement with retailers like the AA who will pay TCB a small commission for sales through it's site. Obviously TCB cannot pay you the commission in whole and direct to everyone or it would make no money. Because it doesn't promise customers cashback or even pretend that it definitely receives commission from retailers -it will aggregate it's commission then only pay out a proportion. As can be seen from this website MSE that says 40% of people get cashback. It's actually a legal swizz because they only payout to a proportion of cashback to customers to keep it legal.

Now I am not saying don't use TCB, but be prepared that in all likelihood you will have wasted a lot of time and a lot typing and receive nothing.

On the plus side they answer your queries quickly and most politely.

I will now look forward to the Official TCB representative posting a message apologizing and asking me to send my details for them to sort it all out for me. Don't bother I have just done that through your website. I realize now that was never any real likelihood of cashback and I don't want to waste any more time.

Buyer Beware.

TopCashBack_Company_Representative

Hello james985,

I'm sorry to hear that you feel this way about our website. If I may, I'd like to correct you on a couple of things because this isn't quite how the cashback process works.

A member makes a transaction through our site. We ask that they clear their browsing cookies before doing so to optimise their chances of their transaction tracking however it is already high without them doing this so it's not 100% necessary. We have a help section with lots of tips to help our members improve their tracking because we want their cashback to successfully track as much as they do.

When they click through to a merchant to make their transaction this tracks back to their TCB account through this cookie trail. If the last browsing cookie before making their transaction is a Top Cashback one (as it should be) then the merchant passes the commission for the sale on to us. We then pass 100% of this on to our member and even include a 1% top-up of this from our own pocket.

As a company, we make money by selling advertising packages and space on our website. We never, ever take anything from our members' cashback nor do we withhold cashback at any point. We can't guarantee that cashback will be awarded because sometimes tracking can fail or the merchant will decline the cashback (for example if a policy has been cancelled or they can't see Top Cashback as the last cookie), however we can absolutely guarantee that as soon as we receive the commission for a sale we pass it on to the member that it belongs to.

I can assure you that we would never say that there's been a 'mistake' with your cashback. It will have either not tracked (which as aforementioned can sometimes happen simply due to the nature of the tracking process), it will have tracked at an incorrect amount (which sometimes happens due to reporting errors and as I'm sure you can appreciate, out of millions of transactions to report this can occasionally occur) or it will have been declined by the merchant (who never decline cashback without good reason).

The majority of transactions do track for our members without a problem and you can view this on the statistics pages for each of our merchants. We are transparent about their success rates, customer satisfaction and estimated payable speeds alongside to name but a few things included on our statistics pages.

We have our Missing Cashback claiming process in place so that we can do everything that we can to recover any missing cashback for our members. Until we receive the funds from a merchant we simply have no funds to pass to a member so sadly we can't just pay cashback on a merchant's behalf.

We state throughout our T&Cs and on our merchant pages that although cashback isn't guaranteed if it should fail to track for whatever reason we'll do our best to chase it for our members. We have to make our members aware that it's not 100% guaranteed so that they don't make large transactions based solely on the cashback they might receive in case it doesn't track for them.

Missing Cashback claims by their nature are lengthy and we would expect them to take 2-4 months to be resolved. There are lots of administrative processes involved that we can't speed up, but we work as hard as we can with the merchants via their affiliate networks to recover the cashback.

Sometimes merchants do require a little extra information for cashback claims, especially if they can't track your order via cookies. This sounds like why they asked for your AA code.

I will be more than happy to look into this for you if you'd like to email me at mse@topcashback because I can ask the Claims Team for an update for you to see how your claim is progressing.

I'm really sorry you've had a negative experience and I hope that this message has helped to clarify your understanding of the cashback process. There is no 'swizz' involved and the majority of transactions do track and cashback is awarded. If for whatever reason they don't, many of our claims go on to be successfully resolved. We offer a service that's not about making a huge profit for ourselves but for simply helping our members save a little on their online shopping. We see it as a bonus for shoppers who enjoy shopping online; if you're going to make a purchase then why not do it through our site where you're more than likely going to receive cashback for it? And should you not, where we're happy to do our best to chase it up on your behalf.

Best wishes,

Jessica