Quidco issues

jaydeeuk1

gollum007 wrote: »

You're naive if you think that means anything

It's by no means unheard of for a large company to have cashflow issues, or for that matter to fall over completely, and TBQH the business model of the cashback sites is at best a risky one.
As far as I'm aware, Quidco's sources of earnings are these:
* Membership fees for premium.
* Incentives from retailers for X number of customers passed on. (I'm assuming for the purposes of this that they're passing on the full commission paid per transaction, but not necessarily any volume based bonuses)
* Clicks from ads on site.
* Selling profile data (I.E. Customer Y clicks on these retailers, hence other people in this demographic are likely to do the same)

On the other hand, we have outlay:
* Staff costs. (Payments don't make themselves, plus people need to negotiate with advertisers etc.)
* Server hosting costs- For someone like Quidco & Hotukdeals, these will be astronomical.
* Office/ property rental costs.

Even if we include Hotukdeals in this, all it takes is for one or two major advertisers to pay late or not at all, and IMHO their business model is well and truly on the rocks.
Advertising/ clickthroughs don't pay a massive profit!

Over the years I've been about, I've seen plenty of smaller cashback/ surveys/ points sites hit the rocks, and it wouldn't surprise me one bit for the same to happen to Quidco.

Again, I'll say treat with caution, and don't treat cashback as *anything* other than a bonus until and unless it's in your account

-Gollum

Good post, hotukdeals owners are getting greedy (or desperate) too and allowing the likes of gearbest and dealextreme on there as they pay a decent commission compared to the likes of amazon and ebay.

Never had a problem with quidco myself over the 7 or 8 years I've been with them.

gollum007

For good measure, here's a site which shows some free figures from the Companies House accounts:
https://www.duedil.com/company/05498276/maple-syrup-media-ltd/financials

Last year, they made an operating profit of just under £1,000,000, which looks relatively reasonable.
Cash in bank was approx £6,000,000, which looks relatively reasonable until you look at what they paid out (Cost of sales, although I'm sure this includes other stuff as well), of approx £46,000,000
That means that their cash in bank figure represents somewhere a little under 2 months worth of payouts & general operating costs.

If a large creditor hasn't paid them as expected, it'll have a nasty knockon effect
That's not even mentioning the £17,000,000 worth of liabilities the company has, of which I'm presuming a large proportion of which is payouts owed to users.

-Gollum

skid112

gollum007 wrote: »

For good measure, here's a site which shows some free figures from the Companies House accounts:
https://www.duedil.com/company/05498276/maple-syrup-media-ltd/financials

Last year, they made an operating profit of just under £1,000,000, which looks relatively reasonable.
Cash in bank was approx £6,000,000, which looks relatively reasonable until you look at what they paid out (Cost of sales, although I'm sure this includes other stuff as well), of approx £46,000,000
That means that their cash in bank figure represents somewhere a little under 2 months worth of payouts & general operating costs.

If a large creditor hasn't paid them as expected, it'll have a nasty knockon effect
That's not even mentioning the £17,000,000 worth of liabilities the company has, of which I'm presuming a large proportion of which is payouts owed to users.

-Gollum

Look I know they have been slow to pay some me included, but others have been paid. Your reading their balance sheet incorrectly, total assets of £19.4 against liabilities of £17.6 shows a plus balance of £1.8m. Net cash flow is positive which is another good sign.
My experience has not been the best, I have moved back to TCB, but scare stories isn't going to help.

thanks

chuckley

£30 has just gone missing from my quidco tracked, but I can't see what it could've referred to, unless it was an error to begin with.

the one's I'm waiting on, are still there, and they're the only two that surpass £30!

TBC is sooooo much better! I need to downgrade my quidco.