You'll be quids-in with Quidco (Quidco.co.uk)

Member Name: djwhite1982

Product:	Quidco.co.uk
Date:	14/10/09 (67 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Earn money on the things you'd buy anyway

Disadvantages: Takes a little while for funds to get to you

Quidco is a online cashback website. I've been using this website for quite a while having found its information whilst browsing the money saving expert website. The concept is fairly simple and one that most of the dooyoo community are probably familiar with, however just in case, this is the idea.

You create an account on Quidco and then you search for various services, and shops via the Quidco website. By going to the various merchants associated with Quidco via their website, you will receive a portion of your spend paid back to you from Quidco. This will either be a fixed percentage of your total spend, or occasionally is a set figure for purchasing certain items.

The way these cahsback website work, is that they receive a commission form the merchants they display for advertising on their website and directing traffic their way. The idea being that because you get cashback you will use certain merchants as opposed to others and increase their total business, whilst being rewarded with a cash back incentive. Everybody's happy!!!

Quidco makes its money by charging you an annual amount of £5 membership for using the website. What is great about this website is that you only have to pay this fee, once you have made more that £5, so therefore it is impossible for you to be out of pocket. Say you purchased £100 of Christmas presents from Marks and Spencer who currently are paying 8% cash back. You therefore receive £8 back and from this £5 is deducted for your annual fee and £3 is yours to claim. The annual fee then covers you for a year (obviously!), and so all further cashback that year is paid to you in full. By the same token, if you go all year and only earn £3 of cashback, then this goes towards your £5 annual membership, and although it does mean you wouldn't have earned any money, you are not expected to pay the extra £2 so you do not lose anything.

There are a couple of pointers to bear in mind when using the website. Firstly, for all purchases you must login to Quidco and go via their website to get onto the merchants website in order to make sure the referral via Quidco is tracked and cashback is paid. Be careful to read any of the details in the pop up form Quidco, to make sure you are satisfying all the term required to receive cashback.

You also need to bear in mind that actually getting the cashback can be a lengthy process, and it tends to take 3 (ish) months from date of the original purchase, for the funds to actually be received into your Quidco account and be transferred onwards. So don't expect that if you're making a big purchase to have the cashback available instantly, it can take a while.

I really like the layout of this website. Account registration is very easy, and its easy to keep track of what you have earned via Quidco via their earnings summary. This also gives you an approximated date of when they are expecting funds to be available on your purchases. Each retailer can be searched for in Quidco either by name, or by category, and then merchants details are listed, along with amount of cashback they are paying and their reliability and speed in paying. I have made about 20 purchases via Quidco and have never had problems with any of purchases being tracked correctly. Everything seems very reliable and efficient, provided you do as instructed by the websites.

As well as making money for purchases there are a few little bits and bobs than can be done on Quidco if you are scrimping and saving like so many of us at the moment (me included). I recently requested a couple of new free sim cards via Quidco, which received a small cash back payment, and the same for retrieving car insurance quotes.

In terms of payment this is again very simple. You set a minimum payment amount with Quidco and the method you wish to withdraw. I opt for a straight forward bank transfer however you can also receive payment via Paypal if you prefer. Each month Quidco process payments if your account balance (that is the actual received payments, not those in progress) is above your threshold.

This is a great website and seems to be an easy way to earn money from purchases you would need to make regardless. There are some huge savings to be had and I tend to check out the cashback rates on Quidco first off ,whenever I am making a large one off purchase. As an added bonus I believe they now offer 1% cashback on all online shopping at Asda meaning you can earn a tidy little sum just from keeping the family fed.

Summary: A great way of saving money. Sign yourselves up!