Mobile Cashback Offers
September 11, 2008
In an increasing bid to remain competitive, mobile cashback has become an increasingly popular promotional tool, with leading mobile phone retailers including the Carphone Warehouse, Dialaphone, MegaMobiles, and buymobilephones.net among a number of companies offering deals to pay cashback on your mobile phone contract.
In principle, this deal is not any different from the various free gifts such as XBOX 360 consoles, Playstation 3’s, Apple IPODs and other such luxuries that many companies have given away in return for taking out a mobile phone contract with them in the past.
The difference is that the principle of mobile cashback has been causing a great deal of confusion to users because in principle it seems too good to be true. It is infact a very good deal and one users should take up, but as for it being too good to be true, that is not actually the case. To understand why, lets get into the mind of the mobile phone retailer.
Companies such as O2 and Vodafone predominantly target and benefit from business users, as this is where there profit lies. To service these major clients, they buy huge capacity to be able to cope with the demand. In order to provide the most competitive prices for their business customers, they try to achieve economies of scale by purchasing huge levels of bandwidth which they then fill with customer contracts (ie. every day mobile phone users like you or I). Therefore, in order to achieve their low cost business pricing, they need to retain a high number of personal customers to meet demand. For this reason, 02, Vodafone, Orange and Three offer huge incentives to the mobile retailers such as Carphone Warehouse, The Link and Phones4u.
Now lets step into the mind of Carphone Warehouse, who perhaps make on average £300 for every mobile phone contract you take out with them. Now in a perfect world, they would not need to offer any cashback and would simply keep the £300 as profit. However, with their competitors now offering cashback or free gifts with each contact, the Carphone Warehouse must now offer an incentive otherwise nobody is going to choose them as the company to make their purchase with.
The latest offer is in the form of cashback, which rewards the loyalty and prompt payment of the customer and can save you several hundred pounds on your mobile phone contract each year. There is nothing to fear with these offers, it is a legitimate business strategy which benefits both the retailer and the consumer.
To claim your mobile phone cashback, you simply need to email the retailer at pre-determined times in the year (this will vary from retailer to retailer) and assuming you have paid all your bills on time and not lowered your tarrif, you will receive cashback on your mobile contract.
On this page, we will summarise the latest and best mobile cashback offers to help you find the best value mobile phone contract.
Avoiding cashback transactions not tracking
August 6, 2008
Claiming cashback from your purchases is an extremely simple process and 99% of transactions track without problems. However, from time to time, problems will occur on a very infrequent basis. Note that these occurencies are very rare - otherwise advertising on the internet wouldn’t work! But here are just a few steps you can take to be extra sure.
- Clear out your Cookies.
It is possible that you visited the online retailer in the past by following a link from an advert or other Cashback Site. To ensure that the retailer rewards the Cashback Site for the sale and not another site that won’t give you cashback, it is a very good idea to clean out your cookies - Turn off your popup blocker
Some online retailers use popups as part of their method of tracking. The majority don’t but it’s worth disabling your blocker just in case. - Check that nothing else will prevent tracking
If you have some other systems on your computer designed to block advertisements or prevent tracking cookies, you should check that it won’t stop the sale being tracked - Go to the Cashback Site
Log into your preferred cashback site and find the online shop you want to use. - Click through and buy
Click through to the online shop and buy the product(s) you want. If there are any transaction numbers mentioned then be sure to make a note of them so that you can quote them if the Cashback Site has to put in a manual claim for your Cashback
Earn cash back for ‘No Purchase Offers’
August 5, 2008
One of the quickest and easiest ways to earn some extra cash via cashback websites is to take advantage of No Purchase Offers which can earn you in excess of £50, just by signing up for some free offers. These ‘one time’ offers come in various forms, typically:
There is no obligation to spend any money after signing up to request the information. Typically, you can earn around £0.20 - £1.00 for signing up for these offers. Companies pay these small incentives because they believe they can convert a sufficient number of signups into sales to make the venture profitable for them.
Different cashback sites have different names for No Purchase Offers so also look out for categories called Easy Cash/Points, Fast Cash, Free Cash/Stuff/Points, Freebies or Quick Points.
Is it really that easy?
Yes, it is! Put simply, in today’s highly competitive world, some sites are willing to pay for the exposure and new referrals that affiliates such as cashback sites can give them. Even if just a small amount of these referrals become active participants or buyers then it’s probably worth it to them. And that’s great news for you!
Advice for Signing up for Offers
In one respect such sites are paying commission to cashback sites (meaning cashback to you!) for the opportunity to email you and try to grab your attention. Therefore, you will receive a lot of email from these ‘No purchase offer’ sites and some ’spam’ from their partner sites.
However, you can easily sidestep this by setting up a free webmail account from a provider such as Hotmail, Yahoo etc and using this email address when you sign up for these offers. You don’t have to use the same email address that you used to sign up to the cashback sites. Alternatively, you may have a spare email account from your ISP that you could set up to use for your cashback activities.
How does cashback shopping work?
August 5, 2008
Cash back shopping is becoming hugely popular in the UK with a increasingly large number of websites offering cashback rewards on online purchases from 1000s of internet retailers. Cashback sites have already been popular in the United States for many years, but are now becoming prominent in the UK with the leading sites constantly looking to find the best deals for their members.
So how do I earn cashback?
The process could not be simpler. The first thing you have to do is register with a cashback website.
Next you simply browse the cashback website to find the retailer you are looking for. Lets imagine you are looking for Dell, which pays up to 6% cashback on your purchase. You would simply search for Dell on the cash back site, then click on the link to the Dell homepage.
It is important that you go to the Dell homepage via the link on the cashback website rather than by typing dell.com in your web browser or searching by Google. This is because the link on the cashback website features a tracking code, which is how it identifies that you are entitled to cashback on your purchase.
Once you are on the Dell homepage, you just complete your purchase as normal. There is no need to enter any code to claim your cash back or enter any additional details. You just purchase exactly as you would have if you had gone directly to dell.com. However, you will not receive any cash back if you have not used the link on the cash back website to go to Dell. This link is the part of the process that ensures that you get your cashback reward from the retailer.
How do I receive my cash back?
Once you complete your purchase via the Dell website, the tracking information contained in the link alerts both Dell and the cashback website that you are owed cash back on the sale. You will still pay the full purchase price on the Dell website - so lets imagine the PC costs £600, you would pay Dell the £600.
Once the sale is complete, Dell will be notified that cash back is owed to the cashback website. In turn, the cashback website will display the commission on the sale (in this case 6% of £600 so £36) as “pending” in your account. This is because Dell have some time to cancel the transaction (due to fraud, stock shortages or if you yourself decide to cancel your order).
Once Dell validate the transaction, the money (£36) will be released to the cashback website and will now be available to withdraw into your bank account, paypal account or via cheque.
Why do retailers pay cash back?
Internet shopping is fiercely competitive and online retailers must be constantly offering the best deals and rewards in order to ensure loyalty from their customers.
Cash back websites traditionally enjoy high Google rankings for key search terms that retailers want their customers to find them under and are therefore able to send hundred of thousands of users to the retailer. To encourage the cashback site to send the traffic to their website instead of to a competitor, the retailer will pay the cashback site a commission on the sale, which is in turn passed to the customer in the form of cashback.
How do the cashback sites make a profit?
Top cashback sites generate sales of hundreds of millions of pounds each year for internet retailers. Different cashback sites operate on different revenue models, but some of the most common include keeping the first £5 of a users earned cashback as an admin fee, or keeping back 5-10% of the commission earned from the retailers and paying the remaining 90-95% to the customer.
There must be some catch?
Again, the answer is no. The only restrictions are those the cashback sites set in terms of minimum payout levels, but with just one big-ish purchase you might exceed this in one go.
Finally, there’s no limits on the amount of cashback you can earn with cashback sites and with 98% of retailers you can make repeat purchases and get cashback every time!
Cashback sites are free to join and there is no catch. They are simply a response to the increasingly competitive nature of internet shopping and should be considered a marketing tool by retailers to encourage loyalty amongst their customers.
