If you're reading this then I bet you're one of the many online shoppers who has yet to benefit from potentially earning £100's each year in cash back on their purchases. For example, at the time of writing you could get up to £70 back for home insurance, 5.5% back from a book purchase at Amazon or 7% from Marks and Spencers. There are literally thousands of retailers who offer these sorts of deals. What's more, the process of getting cash back is very easy - all it takes are a few clicks but more on that later.
At this point you'd be forgiven for thinking that cashback sounds too good to be true. Retailers offer incentives for driving new customers to their sites and these incentives used to be paid to any site that could drive a customer to their site. Cashback sites came along to pass those incentives directly to you. That, as it turns out, is an attractive proposition to customers so cashback sites generate a lot of leads for retailers. All the sites listed on Cashback Guide are free to join, so what's in it for the cashback site? Some sites charge a small annual admin fee taken from cashback earnings. Some take a percentage of the cashback. Some just earn their money from advertising. Our reviews allow you to easily compare cashback sites. So as you can see there is something in it for everybody.
How Cashback Works
The cash back process is really straight forward. You join a cashback site for free. From there the cashback site makes special links through to your desired retailer. By following these links the retailer knows to credit your account once the online transaction has completed. From here, just use the retailer as you normally would. Once your transaction has been made, it should show up on your cashback site's account screen within a day or two. This is usually referred to as 'tracked'. From here the transaction has been registered, but the cashback site has yet to receive money. This is usually the policy of the retailer and the time before payment is received is anything up to 3 months. The reason for this is to give enough time for the order to be paid and for any return times to lapse. Once this time has passed then you may transfer your money to your own bank account. Payment methods vary between sites but Cheque, PayPal BACS and vouchers (e.g. Amazon) are all common.
Getting Started
A great starting point is to choose a popular cashback site that has a low minimum payout. Quidco and TopCashBack fulfill this criteria. GetPoundsBack are recommended too - although they have a minimum payout of £10, they have competitive rates and excellent customer service.
Once you get familiar with cashback then it is time to try more cashback sites to maximise the number of retailers (between all sites there are about 3000 retailers but any one site covers no more than 2000), get better rates or just find a site that you prefer.
Not all Cashback Sites are the Same
There are now over 100 cash back sites for the UK with more springing up weekly. They often differ in many aspects like offers, retailers, minimum payouts, payment methods... the list goes on and this is why we started Cashback Guide - we've done all the hard work of gathering this information into a single source allowing you to make the best decisions.
Cashback Annoyances!
One of the biggest annoyances with cash back is buying something online and forgetting to check for an offer first. Despite the obvious financial benefits of cashback, it can also be a pain having to check for cashback as you shop. This is why we created Cashback Guardian - a plug-in for your web browser that alerts you to the best cashback deal as you shop. Just download and install it and let Cashback Guardian tell you when a site that you visit has cashback. Maximum cashback. Minimum fuss.
Some Rules for Getting the Best Cashback
- Cashback deals are ONLY available online. If you pick up the phone to complete the order then you will not get cashback.
- Different cash back sites have different rates and offers. By searching for an offer on Cashback Guide first, we will tell you which cashback sites are available and which has the best offer.
- Cashback sites sometimes have minimum payouts so bear this in mind. If the cashback offer immediately breaks this limit then go with the best cashback. Otherwise it may be better to get a slightly worse rate but use just one site that gets you closer to your payout limit and the cash into your pocket quicker