Quidco is a Cashback website which tracks purchases made through their website to give and pays you a percentage of your transaction back. They also send frequent emails of discount codes, sales and a check in feature where you can earn money by going into shops! (No purchase required) It is actually rather simple enough and I am glad I found it!

- How I use it -

I have a smartphone (Samsung Galaxy S III) so I have downloaded the Quidco app which allows me to take advantage of all kinds of offers whilst I am on the go. The feature I mainly use is the "check-in" aspect where it will give a list of shops nearby and if I go in-store and click "check-in" it will credit my account with an amount ranging from 5p - 20p. There is a wide range of stores available to check into such as Bodyshop, H&M, River Island, B&Q, Tesco, and many many more. Once you do check in, you normally can't check in to the same store until a month or two later, but from check ins alone last year I made about £10! I am quite cheeky as 90% of the time I don't even need to go into the store but it will track my whereabouts even if I am just walking/driving past in my car or sometimes even if I am on the opposite side of the road!

I also use the quidco page to track online purchases for cashback. As much as I love a spot of online shopping sadly a lot of the sites I shop on are not available for cashback e.g. amazon and asos (although there was a short spell where asos were available for cashback on there and I took full advantage!). My biggest cashback experience for shopping online so far was booking a hotel for amsterdam via laterooms.com. I can't remember the exact percentage the site was offering - perhaps 3% or so but as I booked a hotel room for all 4 of us travelling it was around 400 euros (£336.33 GBP) and I got back £16.80 or so in cashback. Every little helps!

- Payments -

It is possible to get paid via BACS or paypal but to keep things simple I just get paid via BACS. Payment runs are really efficient as you can set a threshold for immediate payments once it reaches the amount. I did set mine as £5 but at this time I was only really using the check-in feature so was taking me ages! Minimum payments are for £1 so I changed settings so it would pay me for £1. As sad as it is, I count every pound so it does make a difference! Payments run every week and whilst I don't think there is a set day, once I receive an email I generally get the money in my account within the next 24hours so I know what to expect.

Payments from checking in are really fast, they get confirmed within an hour or so of checking in, and are ready to be paid immediately. Payments from online purchases are a little trickier. Quidco retain £5 each year as an admin fee so it is good you are not charged to sign up but they will take it from cashback earnings so you don't really notice you have paid it. Tracking purchases online is also quite slow. When I booked our hotel online, it took about a week or so to get the tracking confirmation email. Then the average payment to be confirmed is about 3 months. I went to Amsterdam 9th November last year, and the payment was only confirmed to be paid today! (7th Feb). So you can't really make plans for the money (yes the 16 quid makes a difference to me!) but its a nice little addition when you get it. I even got a £5 bonus from Quidco (not sure what it was for!) so an extra fiver for no reason is always going to cheer me up!

I have not had any difficulties in tracking/purchase confirmation although I am aware the success rate of all purchases is not 100% and from time to time so it's always good to expect the least and be pleasantly surprised!

- Overall -

In my opinion Quidco is a fab site and the only cashback one I have tried and so far I have only positives to say about it. There is a wide range of services and sites to be used e.g. signing up for broadband/homephone, upgrading a phone aswell as checking in stores and buying online. I have never had any problems with transactions not being tracked, the only thing I seem to get now is Quidco automatically tracking me buying things online without me even signing into their website first, and then emailing me saying there is no cashback available for my purchase! I like their initiative or tracking my purchases for me now, as I do often forget to go through their website first, but it is an annoying email reminder telling me how much I have spent!

I would definitely recommend Quidco as I think long term there are some good savings to be had and although I have only used Quidco for the last 7 months it's been great. I've had no problems at all so it gets 5 lovely stars from me!