Quidco and TopCashBack comparison
I have been a member of TopCashBack for a few years and have received over £400 cash back. Here is a link to my TopCashBack blog https://arthurd.art.blog/topcashback/
Good news not only will my family member get a referral bonus but I will get a £10 bonus when I have earned £5 cash back. If you want a £10 bonus as well please use this link https://www.quidco.com/raf/10026628/. You will get a bonus and I will as well.
Becoming a member
I entered my email address and created a password and I quickly became a member. Very easy. I was informed that I was now a premium member and that £1 would be deducted every month from my cash back. Not so good. I wanted the free membership to see how it goes. I was also a free member of TopCashBack and I wanted to compare like for like.
I received a welcome email that included a link to a video that “will show you how to earn cashback on your purchases by buying through Quidco”. The video didn’t give me any details of how to earn cash back. It just said that Quidco would keep track any purchases I made through their site.
I clicked on the “start earning” button.
The Quidco web page is not that dissimilar to TopCashBack then why should it be, they’re basically doing the same thing.
The first thing that I wanted to do was to downgrade from the Premier membership to the basic membership. I clicked on the account icon and was met with “Hi there premium account”. At this point in TopCashBack it would gave given my name. So far Quidco seems less personal. When I clicked on premium account it told me what I get as a premium member. Cashback has over 4,500 retailers, up to 10% top ups on cashback rates, up to 50% higher top up bonuses on the e-gift cards.
I clicked the downgrade button. I told them I didn’t think it was worth the retention fee and pressed continue. I was informed that I had successfully downgraded to basic. It was simple enough.
I was informed that with the basic membership, all I would receive was cashback at over 4,500 retailers. But I could upgrade. One of the things that I would loose was up to 10% top up on cash back rates. Basic membership with TopCashBack usually gives 2.5% or 5% extra on top of the cash back if you receive retailers cards rather than cash. Occasionally this is more. At 22/1/20 Virgin Experience Days e-Gift Card gave 17.5% extra.
There was an advert for hotels.com where I could win five £100 coupons and up to 11% cashback, so I thought I’d give this a try first.
Clicking on the hotels.com button opened my hotels.com app. So the price I pay for the hotel would be the same as if I just used the app. In fact will be the same price that I would pay if I went through the TopCashBack site. Hotels.com app gave me a code that I could use to get 5% off any bookings that I made. Quidco had previously warned me that I would loose the cash back if I used any code.
The Quidco page had said that I would get up to 11% cashback. It did not say the actual percentage of cash back I would receive. I presumed the 11% will be for Premier membership not Basic membership. The cashback I would receive from Quidco would probably be similarly to what I would receive through the Hotel.com app.
Quidco and TopCashBack comparison.
I want to compare Quidco with TopCashBack so I went over to the TopCashBack site to see how much cashback I would get through TopCashBack. TopCashBack will also give 11% but only for new customers to hotels.com. Existing customers would get 2% cashback.
TopCashBack is quite clear on whether I would get the full 11% or if I would get 2%. Quidco was not clear how much cashback I would receive. I may get 11%, I may get 2% as an existing customer the same as TopCashBack. I may get somewhere in between.
Rather than taking me through to the hotels.com app, TopCashBack took me through to the website. There was no indication that I could get a 5% reduction if I did not use TopCashBack but went through the Hotels.com app.
So far I have found that as an existing customer of hotels.com I could get a 5% reduction through the Hotels.com app. TopCashBack will give me 2% cashback, Quidco will give me an unspecified percentage up to 11%.
Why TopCashBack say they are better than Quidco (taken from TopCashBack website 24/1/20 – https://www.topcashback.co.uk/quidco
Why Quidco say that they are better than TopCashBack (taken from Quidco website 24/1/20 although it says that rates are correct as of 18/11/19 – https://www.quidco.com/quidco-vs-topcashback/
For clarity both have a basic free membership and a paid for membership giving higher cash back rates. TopCashBack have their Classic free account and call their paid for membership Plus while Quidco have Basic and the paid for Premium membership.
The only people who use either of the sites will want cash when they spend money so I will start off with the cash back rate.
Quidco say that TopCashBack give up to 105% cash back while TopCashBack say that this is only their Plus membership, basic membership gives up to 101%. TopCashBack say that Quidco only give 80%-100% while Quidco say that it is actually up to 110%. What is the truth? I am not sure that we will ever know. Both sites receive a percentage of income and a bonus from the advertising site. How much is that percentage and how much is that bonus? These are confidential matters so we shall never really know.
Cost of paid for membership.
TopCashBack says that both charge £5 per year while Quidco say that they charge £1 per active month. So if you have Basic membership then increase it to Premium membership when your car insurance is due before reducing it back to basic membership your annual charge will be £1. If you do the same for house insurance and changing energy supplier then annual charge will start to add up.
I will now choose at random a retailer site and see how I Quidco and TopCashBack compare. I went to Quidco and the first retail that I saw was Amazon. Quidco said that I could get up to 10% of sales at Amazon. TopCashBack also said that I could get up to 10%. The amount of cash back varied depending on what type of product was bought but they were identical except that Quidco said that I could “Get an echo dot from £24.99 + 3% cashback”. I know that this price has not been available for a few weeks since the New Year Sale ended. When I clicked through to the Amazon site it said that the price was £49.99. Going back to the Quidco site I noticed that there were terms & conditions one of which said “This offer/voucher code was correct at the time of publishing” and also “It is important that you check your order summary before purchasing”.
As of 27/6/20 I have received £46.59 cash back from Quidco. This is made up of my £10 Referral Bonus, £35 for buying car insurance through Quidco Compare Car Insurance, and £1.69 for uploading my shopping receipts to Quidco’s Click Snap. I did not receive any cash back for taking out National Trust Membership as “Quidco have not been recognised as the referrer of this purchase”. I was informed that this can happen when multiple browser tabs are open when purchasing.
If you want a £10 bonus for joining Quidco please use this link https://www.quidco.com/raf/10026628/ . You will get a bonus and I so will I.
As I use Quidco and TopCashBack, I’ll continue to let you know what I find.
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