Axa won't pay my £80 Topcashback money

MarkBargain

I use Topcashback all the time and it usually works fine, with an occasional need to submit a manual claim which gets paid eventually. However, in May I took out an insurance policy with Axa on account of the generous £80 offered through Topcashback. It said "your visit has been recorded"in the usual way, but the cash back didn't appear in my account and so I raised manual claim in August.

In November, I am told by Topcashback that "After looking into your claim further for you, I am sorry to tell you that your claim has been declined as the network has not identified ourselves as the last referral to the merchant’s site and this transaction."

I questioned this with Topcashback and was told "As you know we have not been identified by the merchants network as the last referrer. Please note we by no means wish to imply that you visited a different website, it is that directly or indirectly a separate entity, for example a search engine or voucher code, has become linked to this transaction and been recognised as the last referrer instead of ourselves. Unfortunately due to strict confidentiality rules the network will not provide the name of this entity recognised as the last referrer and so we cannot specify exactly what has gone wrong in this instance."

I emailed Axa about a week ago, but no reply yet.

Is there any more I can do, or do I just accept that they keep my £80 in their pockets leaving me with an insurance policy which without the cashback was not the best value I could have taken back in May?

dacouch

Did you find Axa were the cheapest by finding their price on a comparison site or via getting a quote on the Axa website before you used topcashback?

Smithers37

TopCashBack isn't guaranteed, and they state this clearly. Think of it only as a bonus. I don't know if there is anything you can do about it.

MarkBargain

dacouch wrote: »

Did you find Axa were the cheapest by finding their price on a comparison site or via getting a quote on the Axa website before you used topcashback?

I didn't use a price comparison site, I just got direct quotes from the three companies' websites offering the biggest Topcashback amounts.

MarkBargain

Smithers37 wrote: »

TopCashBack isn't guaranteed, and they state this clearly. Think of it only as a bonus. I don't know if there is anything you can do about it.

All of my bonuses of three or four quid have tracked fine, loads of those over the past few weeks, but the big one is the one declined. :mad:

dacouch

MarkBargain wrote: »

I didn't use a price comparison site, I just got direct quotes from the three companies' websites offering the biggest Topcashback amounts.

Did you obtain a quote FIRST from Axa via the Axa website or did you obtain a quote for Axa via topcashback first?

Quentin

Issue a formal complaint to Axa in line with their complaints procedure which will be set out in their policy docs.


Tell them that unless they honour their offer and send you the £80 you will escalate the matter to the FOS as you have been missold via their agent.


If they don't play ball then do escalate to the FOS - it won't cost you anything, but Axa will face a £550 charge from the FOS (win or lose) to deal with your complaint.

MarkBargain

dacouch wrote: »

Did you obtain a quote FIRST from Axa via the Axa website or did you obtain a quote for Axa via topcashback first?

I logged onto the Topcashback website, clicked through to Axa and got the quote.

I did the same for two other companies.

I then went from Topcashback to Axa again, got a new quote, then purchased it.

At no point did I go directly to the Axa website or through any other sites, just Topcashback.

MarkBargain

Quentin wrote: »

Issue a formal complaint to Axa in line with their complaints procedure which will be set out in their policy docs.


Tell them that unless they honour their offer and send you the £80 you will escalate the matter to the FOS as you have been missold via their agent.


If they don't play ball then do escalate to the FOS - it won't cost you anything, but Axa will face a £550 charge from the FOS (win or lose) to deal with your complaint.

Excellent, thanks, I will try that.

planteria

i have found TCB to sometimes fail to pay Cashback when it comes to opening current/savings/card accounts, with no real explanation.
they should adhere to their offers, of course, but they just hide and ignore messages if they choose to. i like the approach Quentin, but i'm not sure it'll work.
i have found QC to be better.

callum9999

Quentin wrote: »

Issue a formal complaint to Axa in line with their complaints procedure which will be set out in their policy docs.


Tell them that unless they honour their offer and send you the £80 you will escalate the matter to the FOS as you have been missold via their agent.


If they don't play ball then do escalate to the FOS - it won't cost you anything, but Axa will face a £550 charge from the FOS (win or lose) to deal with your complaint.

I would be shocked if the FOS didn't reject the complaint outright and therefore not charge AXA.

Topcashback is NOT their agent. Nor do Topcashback guarantee a cashback payment. AXA has no direct relationship whatsoever with Topcashback.