Quidco - manipulating customer reviews?

JReacher1

MarkBargain wrote: »

Your argument does not work as customers simply shop elsewhere. If a big coffee chain went bust, the staff put out of work you mention would simply go and work for a rival coffee shop. People would still buy coffee the same as they do now. We do not need tax dodgers in the UK, and cannot afford them with the country being in deficit.

Cafe Nero employ 4,000 employees. I'm not sure if they went best there would be 4,000 vacancies at other coffee shops.

The country is in a deficit due to years of overspending and a financial crisis, not because cafe Nero reduce their corporate tax bill.

Money-Saving-King

JReacher1 wrote: »

If everyone boycotts these companies then they would go bust, the staff would be out of work and would not be able to pay tax. Instead they would be claiming benefits.

In reality most would probably find jobs with the coffee chains who gained (where the people who boycotted the other chains went to) and got jobs with them rather than have to have no job & claim benefits.

Money-Saving-King

MarkBargain wrote: »

Your argument does not work as customers simply shop elsewhere. If a big coffee chain went bust, the staff put out of work you mention would simply go and work for a rival coffee shop. People would still buy coffee the same as they do now. We do not need tax dodgers in the UK, and cannot afford them with the country being in deficit.

Yep bang on as I've just said.

tux900

Petethevet wrote: »

Has anyone else had any similar experiences?

If this is widespread, I think Quidco could be reasonably accused of manipulating reviews in order to present itself in a better light.

I've had exactly the same experience. A purchase for car insurance failed to track and the reason given by the retailer was simply 'did not meet the terms and conditions'. They would not elaborate further on that - either to me or Quidco - and there was no means for further discussion on what exactly I had, or hadn't, done. This riled me because what's stopping every retailer just saying that as a get out without opportunity for challenge?

I left a review but Quidco refused to publish it on the grounds that they don't allow what are essentially 'did not track' reviews. I complained that this was unfair censorship but they wouldn't budge. They did offer me a portion of the cashback as a goodwill gesture though which I took given that I didn't feel I was going to get anywhere on the review front as it was clear what their position was.

Any thoughts on what I can do?

To my absolute surprise, they did allow me to resubmit the review, still with a 1-star rating, consisting of just the following:

My experience was very poor however I am not allowed to give the details why so my summary rating will have to suffice - poor on all counts.

What is unclear is whether or not a review of this nature is allowed by their policy (or rather 'not disallowed' if you see what I mean!) or whether a different person picked it up and just let it through unchallenged...

MarkBargain

JReacher1 wrote: »

Cafe Nero employ 4,000 employees. I'm not sure if they went best there would be 4,000 vacancies at other coffee shops.

New shops would open to fill the gap in the market though.

JReacher1 wrote: »

The country is in a deficit due to years of overspending and a financial crisis, not because cafe Nero reduce their corporate tax bill.

You are confusing debt and deficit. The deficit is because the country spends more than it takes on tax, now not in the past.

JReacher1

MarkBargain wrote: »

New shops would open to fill the gap in the market though.



You are confusing debt and deficit. The deficit is because the country spends more than it takes on tax, now not in the past.

New shops wouldn't open

Your view on deficit/debt is too simplistic which is understandable as it is a complex issue that I know some people have trouble with.

The over spending is a historic problem which the coalition are attempting to solve with drastic cuts in the public sector.

The deficit will be solved by reducing public expenditure not by increasing tax revenue. This is what the government is currently doing and it seems to be working as the deficit is going down.

On a side note I assume you also boycott Amazon, Google, YouTube etc. all of which adopt similar practices to cafe nero

Pagan98

Same here. Cashback tracked but the insurer messed up the policy and ended up manually processing it, then refused the cashback. Quidco categorically refused to publish a factually correct negative review. I now treat their reviews with a liberal dose of salt and will be downgrading to standard membership.

Money-Saving-King

JReacher1 wrote: »

New shops wouldn't open

Yes they would!

brightonman123

reviews on twitter and facebook get far more viewing, than quidco forum / review pages, i bet! !

JReacher1

Money-Saving-King wrote: »

Yes they would!

No they wouldn't.

It shows a basic lack of understanding of business if you think the closure of one company leads to an equal number of new stores to open.

It assumes all existing coffee chain stores are operating at full capacity and can't handle new business. The reality is other coffee chains could absorb a significant amount of cafe neros business without the creation of new stores (or jobs).