Quidco Cashback not being paid

Lynn63

Hi, is anyone else experiencing problems with getting cashback from Quidco? My partner and I have followed Martins tips on going through a cashback site to get the best deals and my partner is now owed over £250 from three deals. All three are past the due date to be paid and go back to transactions starting Dec 19.  I have checked Trust pilot and suddenly there appears to be lots of complaints re non payment and then blocked accounts.  We have emailed Quidco customer service and are receiving the same generic response that others are receiving ie they are waiting on suppliers to pay them.  Do we have any legal rights to pursue Quidco for this money as we could have got cheaper deals had the cashback not been on offer? Advice would be greatly appreciated as the money would come in handy. 

Sandtree

Havent looked at the T&Cs in a long time (nor "Martin's" advice) but both were very much the case that you get paid when the cashback site gets paid and if for any technical reason the cashback site doesn't get paid then nor do you. Similarly the advice here was always that cashback should be seen as a bonus and you shouldn't pay significantly more in the hope that cashback will bring the price below someone else because things do go wrong.

I would be highly surprised if either T&Cs or the advice has materially changed since I last looked

powerful_Rogue

As it says in the Martin Lewis guide.

- Think of cashback as a bonus - it's NOT guaranteed

- Focus on the cheapest deal, not the highest cashback.

To answer your question, no. You don't have any legal rights to pursue Quidco.

born_again

Lynn63 said:

Hi, is anyone else experiencing problems with getting cashback from Quidco? My partner and I have followed Martins tips on going through a cashback site to get the best deals and my partner is now owed over £250 from three deals. All three are past the due date to be paid and go back to transactions starting Dec 19.  I have checked Trust pilot and suddenly there appears to be lots of complaints re non payment and then blocked accounts.  We have emailed Quidco customer service and are receiving the same generic response that others are receiving ie they are waiting on suppliers to pay them.  Do we have any legal rights to pursue Quidco for this money as we could have got cheaper deals had the cashback not been on offer? Advice would be greatly appreciated as the money would come in handy. 

I'm still getting mine.
Jul 01, 2020 Photobox £0.70 (March)

Jun 25, 2020 Card Factory £0.03 (March)

Jun 25, 2020 Moonpig £0.99 (April)

Remember Covid will have put a delay on some payouts. Staff that will have been checking these at some retailers, will either have been furloughed or moved to more important roles.  Especially if they are heavily phone related.

Timings of payouts can vary. Some such as Insurance & financial's can take months to come through.

Any payouts are just a bonus. But over the 5 years I used them, only a handful have ever not been paid out of £4,465.40 😍

Lynn63

Thanks for replies. Until now I haven't experienced any problems with getting lower amounts repaid but two of these are over £100 each and unfortunately I didn't know Martins bit of useful advice (my fault) not to let the cashback influence my deal, it certainly did. You live and learn. Will have to keep my fingers crossed they come through in the end although it has been 7 months now.  One last thing, how do cashback sites earn their money as one of the suppliers was adamant that they don't pay 3rd parties to sell their goods? 

Sandtree

Lynn63 said:

one of the suppliers was adamant that they don't pay 3rd parties to sell their goods? 

Then the person you were talking to was ill informed.

Traditional marketing you would pay someone say £1 for every 1,000 times they showed your advert to someone which was potentially ok but could mean you were a contraceptive company paying a company aimed at the over 80s market money to advertise your product... so not a good fit. You risk wasting your marketing budget and the other company doesn't get great revenue

So an alternative form of marketing was created, called affiliate marketing, where instead of paying someone just for showing your adverts you paid them a percentage of the sales they generated by showing your advert. You will see the adverts on this site with a * next to them are affiliate ads and so MSE gets paid for each sale generated from a click on the link. This derisks advertising to the wrong people for the company being advertised and potentially increases the revenue for the company having the advertising if the products match their customer base well. In principle both companies can win.

There are market places for affiliate advertising so you can see whos offering advertisement and what rates of pay they offer... obv if you are a big player you can ask for a bigger share than these sites show.

Then came along cashback sites which original said that rather than having content (like on this site) which talks about relevant topics and then provides links to the merchant instead we will be more open and say that if you click the link and buy we will give you a proportion of the fee we receive. 

How they make money will depend... some take a fix minimum amount per year from the commission you earn them, some may not be passing across 100% of the fee they are receiving for the sale. The later is hard to say because their deals with the advertiser are clearly confidential so you may be happy with the £100 for taking out a credit card but they may be getting £150 for it... but then again MSE may also be getting £150 and giving you nothing if you click through from this site.

Often affiliate schemes have middlemen, the market place, in the data flow as clearly the company hosting the advertising (be that a cashback site or a normal website) are at risk of the advertiser lying and saying that actually none of the clicks resulted in sales and so they got no commission this month. By both parties implementing the middlemans software then there is a higher certainty of accurate tracking and a certain independence to the data but even still things can go wrong.

Sandtree

PS. obviously any company, and particularly "tech" companies, typically have multiple revenue streams and so they may well also be offering "consultancy" or data services to advertisers and such to help increase sales etc.

Lynn63

Thank you so much for that detailed explanation it really cleared up the process for me.  I did think that the representatives were wrong when they said they don't pay 3rd parties but when they keep transferring you through depts and they are all saying the same you start to believe them. 

Sandtree

it can be a combination of the coal face employees not really knowing whats going on and also nuances… if you were to be pedantic, as I unfortunately am, they are not paying third parties to sell their product as it is the merchant themselves that handle the sale... they are paying third parties who promote their products a proportion of their sales instead where the sale is directly linked to the promotion. Think like the old "recommend a friend" type schemes but its not friends but random visitors to your website

quidco_Company_Representative

Hi
There have been a lot of delays due to many retailers affiliate marketing teams (the guys that do the cashback stuff on their end) basically being furloughed since the beginning of lockdown.
They are now slowly starting to return so we are working very closely with them to get any delays sorted asap.

Sorry for any disappointment guys!

HopingForClarity

i have a similar issue 

over £50 due for a broadband deal - not paid after more than 12 months  - everything was correct - tracked correctly etc 

on attempting to progress it with Quidco i received the usual lame disowning excuses from Quidco  - who initially said they have a dedicated team chasing this regularly  - but after months of the same response i asked what actual steps were being done since last month  - and was told they aren't actually doing anything proactive as they are powerless to do so and are simply waiting / hoping for a response from the supplier .......

so much for the dedicated proactive team!