Watch the Quids roll in: Quidco.com (Quidco.co.uk)

Member Name: x-cupcake-x

Product:	Quidco.co.uk
Date:	09/11/09 (170 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Money back for your usual purchases

Disadvantages: If you don't like shopping online it's no good to you, remembering to clear your cookies

My boyfriend is an avid reader of the Money Saving Expert forums and a couple of years ago he told me about this fantastic new website he'd about on there. The website was www.quidco.com , and apparently I could get money back for things I bought online. I was very sceptical at first, but after using it and successfully seeing money being added to my Quidco account and then having it paid into my bank account, I have become a convert.

**What is Quidco?**
For those of you that don't know Quidco is a website which if used when making an online purchase passes on an a fixed amount or a percentage of the purchase price back on to you the buyer (as long as the merchant is listed on the site.) Each merchant listed will tell you how much cashback they are offering and If there are any terms and conditions.

**How does Quidco work?**
If you click on a link to one website from another and then go onto make a purchase, the site you have bought from will pay the original site commission for passing on the business to them. This is called an affiliate programme. Instead of keeping the money Quidco pass it on to the person who has actually made the purchase. There is an "Earnings" screen which shows you which transactions have tracked, the amount they have tracked at, which have been validated (confirmed by the merchant) and which have been paid.

**Do I have to pay to use Quidco?**
You don't have to pay to join, however you do pay a yearly membership fee of £5 to Quidco, which is taken out of your earnings. If you don't earn £5 through them you will not pay, but you won't be able to withdraw the earnings you have got. After you have paid the membership fee, any earnings you make are then 100% yours. The £5 may sound like a lot but checking my earnings on the site, in two years I have earned almost £500 - all for buying things I would have bought anyway.

**Who can join Quidco?**
Anyone who is a UK resident aged 16 or above can join if they have a UK bank account or valid PayPal account.

**How do I join?**
Signing up is relatively simple, on the homepage click join us and enter your email address twice and pick a password and click that you have read the terms and conditions, and then click OK. You then get a message saying you have successfully joined Quidco and to check your emails (check your spam folder too) as you should have an email which you will need to authenticate your account. When you have clicked the link to authenticate your account, it will ask you to enter a screen (user) name and your real name. After that you're pretty much set to go.

**How do I get my earnings?**
You can choose to have your earnings paid to you by BACS or Paypal. I choose to have mine paid into my account by BACS as I don't want to pay any Paypal fees to get my money. To choose your payment method you go into your account settings and choose None (why??), Paypal or BACS. You then enter your Paypal details or your Bank account details and that's pretty much it. If you like you can set a minimum amount you want to have in your account before they pay into your account, so if you're trying to save for something you could set it at £50 and they wouldn't pay out until you have this amount in your earnings. Mine is set at £0 so whenever there is money in there when Quidco make the monthly payments I'll get a bit extra in my bank account.
Earnings are usually paid into your account between the 1st or the 8th of the month. On the "My Earnings" screen you can keep track of which merchants have paid out for you.

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As you can see the membership fee is a very small price for me to pay considering the cashback I have earned from using the site. Since becoming a member I've used it to buy our house insurance and life insurance, when I was thinking about changing network providers for my mobile I checked Quidco first and found out that Orange who I wanted to switch to anyway were offering cash back for a new contracts. I've had cash back when buying CDs and DVDs or presents for people if the store has been listed on Quidco. Since it was all things I would have bought anyway it's a nice little bit of extra cash and after paying the membership it's all money for nothing really.

Whenever I'm buying something online now I'll check whether it's listed on Quidco first, I also use a price comparison site so I can see if I'm getting the best deal. The DVD I want might be listed through a Quidco merchant with 3% cash back but if it's £2 cheaper on another site not listed then I know it's not worth going through Quidco for it as any cash back I get won't be as much as the saving I could make getting it elsewhere.
It can of course work the other way, when I was looking for home insurance last month I got quotes through a comparison site and although the company I eventually went through were not the cheapest on the initial quote the £80 cash back made it worth going for.

Checking if a merchant is listed is easy to do, you can click on the merchants tab on the left hand side which will bring them all up according to popularity, sort them by type e.g. Finance or Entertainment or you can simply type in the name of the merchant you want and search for it if they are listed it will bring them up and tell you how much cashback they are offering. It was also tell you on average how long it usually takes the merchant to pay out (usually 1 - 3 months) and how reliable the tracking of a purchase is for them.

The best way I have found to use the site is to look around first and see how much I should be looking to pay and then check if that merchant is listed. If I find a good deal on a listed merchant, I then clear all of my cookies and go through Quidco. Clearing cookies is a good way to help your purchase track, because if you have already visited the site before the merchant may not recognise that you have visited the site through Quidco which may lead to you not getting your cash back.
This also means that you must complete all of your purchase online, if you get a quote for something and then decide to buy it by phoning the merchant up it won't register that you have originally come via Quidco and you will lose any potential earnings. Not such a big deal when it's a £2.99 CD but when you're potentially getting £100 cash back for buying that insurance policy it's a big amount to miss out on.

A couple of times I've had examples of the money not tracking for me or the amount being different to what it originally said, when I took out my mobile contract it said I would get £50 cash back but it only tracked as £20. When this happens you can submit a "ticket" and as long as you provide the relevant details to prove you went entirely through Quidco in most circumstances they will contact the merchant and make sure you get the whole amount. I have only had a ticket declined once; this was because the cash back missing was less than £1.

One of the nice things about Quidco is that you can click on the fundraising tab and if there is a charity you would like to donate to on there you can choose to have an amount of your earnings donated to them. When you have enough cashback in your account they will make a donation on your behalf.

If you do online shopping, I would definitely recommend joining Quidco. Just make sure you don't buy things you wouldn't normally buy or don't need and you'll love it and with Christmas approaching it's a great way of getting something back.


Thanks for reading.

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