Ipoints or Ipointless? (ipoints.co.uk)

Member Name: GuruOnAMountain

Product:	ipoints.co.uk
Date:	04/06/07 (142 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Get a return for money you'd be spending anyway.

Disadvantages: Can be slow to gain points and tempting to spend or sign up for things just to earn points.

Ipoints is a reward site similar to many that exist on the internet where points are earned for shopping, responding to surveys and so forth. I've been a member for a few years now and have found my membership a benefit, although not a huge one.

Sign up:
Is easy and straightforward and asks for the usual that you can expect from these sites such as your age, name and address.

Earning points:
Points can be earned in a variety of ways such as filling in a profile of yourself in your account, responding to short surveys on the ipoints website and longer ones which you may be sent links to in your email, clicking on links to other websites, signing up for competitions and other websites and earning points back in return for spending at certain websites.

Like other sites like this, you're in danger of ending up with tonnes of junk mail in your inbox every day if you sign up to all the sites for which you're offered points, but other ways to earn points such as surveys are relatively quick, easy and can be quite big earners. However, surveys tend to be few and far between. There is usually one on the ipoints homepage about once a week, but it only earns you 10 points. Surveys sent to your inbox tend only to arrive about once a month.

The largest amount of points are usually available to earn by putting down a deposit on a gambling website or by applying for a credit card. Don't be encouraged into signing up to one of these kind of things just in order to earn points, but if you're intending to sign up for them anyway, then make sure you do it through ipoints and you can be rewarded for your efforts.

Similarly, don't be tempted to spend money on websites just to see a return in points, but if you're spending anyway, then use ipoints. There's plenty of merchants you can buy from that will earn you points in return, although the points you earn can vary from merchant to merchant.

Usually if you click on a merchant you'll be taken to their website, although annoyingly, in the case of Amazon, you need to use a search facility on ipoints and this is fairly badly designed and doesn't find nearly all of the stock Amazon has.

You can trade in your earned points for rewards which vary from a voucher for a 2 for 1 meal that costs a mere 200 ipoints, to a Toshiba laptop for 143360 ipoints!

The speed of your earning will depend largely on how much you spend online. For me, I earn fairly slowly as I tend to only spend a tenner or so a month online, if that, but for those spending a large amount every month, it is definately worth signing up and getting something in return for your spending.

Summary: An online reward scheme.