Bags of Cash? (cashbag.co.uk)

Member Name: i_am_joy

Product:	cashbag.co.uk
Date:	21/06/08 (119 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to register, a good selection of cashback retailers, £2.50 joining bonus

Disadvantages: Slow payment, not many 'free' daily points to be found

I realised recently that I have too many cashback, points and survey sites to manage, I am at the point that when I open my favourites folder the sheer volume of links is putting me off even doing my favourite recurring points. Some of them have got to go.

I'm afraid Cashbag is the first one to go simply because it is the lowest earner and slowest paying cashback site in my collection. Before I go any further, please let me tell you that I have a main cashback site that I use for shopping online (Quidco) so Cashbag and a lot of the others are used mainly for the daily clicks and the odd one-off purchase on the rare occasion that they are offering a higher payout for a certain store. Cashbag has a lot of fans but for me it's not worth the time it takes to log in and do the daily clicks and free offers.

Registering is easy, you just need to fill in a very simple form including a valid email address and click the link in the verification email that Cashbag will send you to complete your registration. As with other cashback sites I'd recommend you use a spare email address from Hotmail or Yahoo as these kind of sites tend to result in a lot of spam and generally unwanted emails, whether it's from the site itself or one of their partners that you've signed up to.

When you have completed your registration Cashbag will instantly credit your account with £2.50 which is a nice little bonus but not the most generous welcome incentive from cashback sites, some of which will give you £5 for joining.

The site itself is nicely laid out, but to me looks a little bit basic and homemade especially when compared to the bigger cashback companies such as Rpoints and Quidco which look professional and well designed. Cashbag is easy to navigate because everything is accessed by a series of links on the left hand side of the of the homepage and also this list appears on every page on Cashbag meaning you can usually find what you're looking for without too much messing about. The search facility on Cashbag is quite good and I am usually able to find a specific retailer, although if I am honest the site is so well laid out that there is usually no need to use the search.

When you find your retailer it is just a case of clicking through to their own website (making sure you're logged into your Cashbag account) and making your purchase as normal. Cashback can take anything from 2 - 3 days up to over a month, depending on which retailer you are using.

You can cash out when you reach £15 in cleared earnings and to be fair to Cashbag it is quite easy to make your first £15 because the site has a good selection of 'Free Cash' offers where you can be paid anything from 10p to £1.50 for signing up to newsletters, taking out free DVD rental trials and entering competitions. I suspect it's much of this list that produces the spam generated by joining this site, but they're worth signing up to with your throwaway email address because they track very well and I would say that 90% of your clicks will be turned into real money with just the odd few that don't track and harvest your details for nothing.

The recurring section is the part of any cashback site that interests me most and Cashbags is absolutely dire. At this moment there are only two sites which will give you points each day and these are High Street Web which you can do twice a day and they pay 4p per search and Kelkoo which pays a measly 1p. I have just done a quick calculation and based on a 31 day month if you only do the recurring points you have the opportunity to earn just £2.79 per month, which to me just is not worth the effort as I can earn this in a couple of days on the larger cashback sites. You can earn extra free money by referring friends, but to be honest I don't think this is worth doing because anyone I have referred to this site has become bored and closed their account before they get to the threshold where I will receive anything from them joining.

Cashbag pay out by Amazon vouchers, Paypal or cheque. In the two years I have been a member I have earned a total of £37.52 which I requested as an Amazon voucher on 1st May, I still have not received my voucher and the three emails I have sent to Cashbag have been ignored. They do pay out as I sometimes use a forum dedicated to cashback sites and a lot of people say how quick Cashbag are at sending payment, perhaps I have an unlucky user name.

Overall I'd say this is not the best cashback site available. Of course the potential is there to earn money, but if like me you rely on the recurring sites then you definitely won't get rich!

Summary: This is one cashback site that I will not be using once I have received my payment.