There is a similar offer when you order Domino’s via their app. It reads like a total scam/rip off. I haven’t looked into it any further though.
It’s not technically a scam, because they lay out the terms clearly.
It’s just a terrible deal that many people will fall for because they don’t read the terms and conditions. In most cases, you won’t make much more than the £18 you’re paying per month. In other cases, you’ll earn far less and it’ll cost you money.
Some people will manage to make a decent amount of money.
They make money either way, because they send you to sites via an affiliate link. That generates them commission from the website you buy from.
If you use the affiliates a lot then it makes sense and you can save more then you pay a month.
It’s like a pay for topcashback (used to be free, no idea if it still is)
Not really a scam
There’s one of these scams when you go to buy a railcard from the official website which is just insane to me
They normally have a free trial and they hope you forget to cancel it and it’s pretty unlikely you’ll make more than the monthly fee in cash back
Its absolute bollocks, just like the free beers offer where you get a few tiny cans then they sign you up for the same again every month for like £50
It’s just a click bait to sell you another subscription.
The idea that it isn’t a scam would be that you make various purchases through the company that would be over £18/month in savings.
Cons – Unsubscribing may be complicated, you may not be able to claim your rebate(?) until you have been a customer for X months, you may simply forget to unsubscribe, etc.
I assume it’s a pain to cancel so people don’t bother. Heard you can make money if you use the websites they link to for your usual purchases
You pay £18 a month and get £20.50 back once. How is that not an incredible deal?!
/s
I hate these cashback popups, legitimate shopping websites have started using them and it makes THEM look like scams too.
It’s definitely not a scam. Perhaps slightly predatory, but not a scam.
You get 10% cashback on purchases from most places. Also, you get the £18 back each month as long as you make a purchase from the sign up site each month.
You think it’s bad now – The wording used to be even more misleading. You’re seeing the cleaned-up version after moneysavingexpert complained. Am amazed the ASA still allow it to be this bad
It’s actually a good service IF you can make use of it, e.g.
– you get your monthly fee returned when making any purchase (even £1)
– you can claim upto £250 (iirc) cashback a month from their site (it offers 10% on many retailers which can be much better than quidco etc)
– One 20% discount (aka £20) on a £100 one4all giftcard every month
If you have a use for the giftcard and spend quite a lot on places where they would pay cashback via their platform, you can “make” far more than the £18 a month fee which is refunded when you make any purchase.
it’s not a scam, it just catches out people who read the headline and don’t read the terms expecting the company to just give you £20 for free.
Not scam but scummy.
Legitimate scams are popping up everywhere found one on Toolstation last week
Argos also do this.
Very immoral. Think I fell for it and it took me nearly a year to realise.
Ah the flashbacks to working for a bank call centre explaining what these charges are and how to cancel them
Most people fall for this without reading the smallprint, but if used correctly it’s actually not a bad cashback portal (most of us peeps from r/beermoneyuk use it). It’s designed at glance like a scam (£18/monthly cost, overcomplicated “monthly bonus” crap) – I’ll do the explaining.
It’s like TopCashback or Quidco except it’s a “membership-based” spinoff that charges you £18 monthly that you can claim back through “monthly bonuses”. So, if you do one transaction per month at the shop you signed up through you can claim that £18 every month back. So if you signed up through eBay, you’d buy a pen or a SIM card, making it at minimum £1 monthly. If it already sounds like a hassle, don’t bother, your likely going to forget to claim the bonus every month.
Reason it’s slightly different to Quidco or TopCashback is it has 10% minimum cashback (max £250 monthly), and 20% off One4all giftcards (max £100 monthly). Since One4all giftcards are prepaid Visa cards it can be combined with the 10% minimum to make 30% off in certain cases (e.g. Argos shops). One4all cards can be used to purchase other giftcards in-store (even though your not really supposed to, it works) allowing savings of 20% on other supermarkets. Because of this it’s a pretty valuable savings tool if used correctly.
Webloyalty runs another portal that allows anyone to signup called NXRewards, which allows monthly bonus claims at any brand they support which a lot of peeps prefer instead of CompleteSavings, which is only through who you signed up with (e.g. if signed up through eBay, monthly subscription claims have to be eBay).
The fact it’s written as ’18 pounds’ and not £18 is clearly a deliberate attempt to disguise it to inattentive people who will assume it’s smallprint saying you need to be 18 years old.
Ultimately people need to be responsible with the things they sign up for, but I can see how it catches people out, because its designed to do just that
Exactly the same as the National Express bullshit whenever you buy a ticket on a local bus in brum
“Click on the below link to claim £16.87 cash back on your next order with National Express Bus. (By clicking the link, you can join NX Rewards for 15 pounds/month and claim your incentive.)”
Definitely scummy. My dad fell for it about 5 years ago (he’s middle-aged and semi tech literate). Didn’t even notice the monthly cost that was direct debiting out of his account for 2 whole years!
I was skeptical as well but tried it based on a recommendation from a friend
To me, it’s a bit like having a credit card. If you’re responsible with it, it’s good. If you mess up, it’s bad
I signed up with Trainline. I have to make one purchase with them every month. This can be of any value. I buy a ticket for around £3 that I’d need anyway. That gets me £18 in my account which offsets the monthly fee.
The main benefit for me is that you can use it for groceries. 10% off at Tesco equates to £40 cashback every month on a £100/week family food shop
I’ve also started picking up All4One gift cards. You get one £100 card for £80 every month. You can use that at IKEA, B&Q etc, so I’m banking it to cover a future highish purchase for the house, essentially at 20% off
The only issue I’ve had so far is that my account got blocked for a week for ‘suspicious activity’. Literally no idea why. So missed out on cashback for one grocery shop
Overall, if you plan to be diligent, I’d say it’s decent
This needs to be made illegal IMO. It’s legal but aimed at technically illiterate or busy people who don’t have the time to deal with admin. I’m suprised it’s still going.
So I’ve actually done this, and as long make a note of every way in which this can bite you in the ass, you can make a little money from it. Use it as they set out, get the cashback, cancel.
The news websites owned by Reach Plc must have a stake in these companies because every week there’s a massive story about how you can get “DESIRED ITEM” for 80% off (as long as you go through their cashback subscription company).
You can get 10% cashback, diaocunred gift cards and a rebate for a purchase at a participating partner merchant.
Scam definition: a dishonest scheme; a fraud.
It *isnt* a scam, but what it is is a very very bad deal.
I accidentally signed up for one of these years ago after drunk ordering a pizza. Could not work out for the life of me why money was being taken out of my bank every month – it didn’t say ‘cashback’ anywhere on the online banking transaction. after about a year I finally googled it and realised my mistake. I phoned Barclays and explained the situation, how I hadn’t claimed any of the cashback and they refunded all of it, was about £200 in total. This was about 8 years ago so not sure if they’d do that now
I was got by one of these.
Technically you could get your cashback if you sign-up, claim the cashback during the FREE trial and then cancel before the FREE trial ends. I didn’t realise it was a paid subscription after the FREE FREE FREE period ended so I had to both claim the cashback and cancel the paid subscription. I threatened small claims court over the unclear sign-up and notifications and they gave the cashback and half a refund.
They make their money on people not realising they’ve signed up to and have an ongoing subscription and their emails (which are legally required) to remind you bury the reminder in the small print which I think is questionably legal at best.
Iceland do this too.
National Express run one of these bs cashback schemes. You’d have to be taking long distance journeys on a weekly basis just to break even.
I got about £60 for nowt off it before, you got a month free with it, got the value of my original purchase back, made a purchase at the beginning of the next month and got that back and also there was some kind of bonus, then I cancelled before the charged subscription started.
My mother (in her late 70s) fell for this. She thought the order wasn’t complete and that she needed to put her payment details in again. Ended up with 9 months of payments before she realised her mistake. My father, a veteran complainer, argued for a refund because she’d never used the service but got nowhere. Yes, they do state the facts (in very small letters) but it’s still intentionally misleading.
If you make the most of their offers: 10% cashback at a good range of online retailers, hit the criteria for claiming the monthly fee back, 10-20% off £100 of gift cards each month it’s really quite worth doing if you are on a lower income.
But their revenue is absolutely relying on people not doing that and paying quite a steep fee.
Their advert is so strange, it totally comes off as a scam as they don’t mention any of the benefits I listed, only a one off bonus for a small print recurring fee not much less than the bonus.
That said it worked on me to sign up because I was thinking why the hell is Argos associated with this scam, leading to me looking them up, finding more out about them and thinking ok actually this could potentially be worth it.
Purely a stupid tax. Stupid people will do this and think they got free money.
No, it can’t be explained to you because it is, in fact, a scam
They will pay after the subscription is cancelled before first fee is taken. I used the referral link after buying a rail card a few years ago.
Complete Save isnt a scam, but they are extremely scummy. More people need to report them to the ASA and complaint to companies like Trainline who partner with them.
Loot of people defending CompleteSave here. I won’t say they’re astrotufing, but they’re astroturfing
My mother fell for this and paid for it for almost 3 years until she found out….
I’ve made over £1200 from it in about a year 🤷♂️
I’m a member of this and can confirm it’s not a scam. It relies on people not remembering they’re paying for it. You do pay £18 a month and then have to claim it back with any qualifying purchase. It takes about 2 minutes to do.
Your purchase does not have to be more than £18, you can literally buy something from eBay for 99p. There’s so many businesses on there all paying at least 10% that it’s easy enough to find something you’d buy normally.
I’ve had over £5000 in cash back since signing up. I have no affiliation with them and because I just think it’s a really good deal when Quidco/TCB pay a couple of percent and it’s so easy to claim back, I will recommend them to anyone.
42 comments
There is a similar offer when you order Domino’s via their app. It reads like a total scam/rip off. I haven’t looked into it any further though.
It’s not technically a scam, because they lay out the terms clearly.
It’s just a terrible deal that many people will fall for because they don’t read the terms and conditions. In most cases, you won’t make much more than the £18 you’re paying per month. In other cases, you’ll earn far less and it’ll cost you money.
Some people will manage to make a decent amount of money.
They make money either way, because they send you to sites via an affiliate link. That generates them commission from the website you buy from.
If you use the affiliates a lot then it makes sense and you can save more then you pay a month.
It’s like a pay for topcashback (used to be free, no idea if it still is)
Not really a scam
There’s one of these scams when you go to buy a railcard from the official website which is just insane to me
They normally have a free trial and they hope you forget to cancel it and it’s pretty unlikely you’ll make more than the monthly fee in cash back
Its absolute bollocks, just like the free beers offer where you get a few tiny cans then they sign you up for the same again every month for like £50
It’s just a click bait to sell you another subscription.
The idea that it isn’t a scam would be that you make various purchases through the company that would be over £18/month in savings.
Cons – Unsubscribing may be complicated, you may not be able to claim your rebate(?) until you have been a customer for X months, you may simply forget to unsubscribe, etc.
I assume it’s a pain to cancel so people don’t bother. Heard you can make money if you use the websites they link to for your usual purchases
You pay £18 a month and get £20.50 back once. How is that not an incredible deal?!
/s
I hate these cashback popups, legitimate shopping websites have started using them and it makes THEM look like scams too.
It’s definitely not a scam. Perhaps slightly predatory, but not a scam.
You get 10% cashback on purchases from most places. Also, you get the £18 back each month as long as you make a purchase from the sign up site each month.
You think it’s bad now – The wording used to be even more misleading. You’re seeing the cleaned-up version after moneysavingexpert complained. Am amazed the ASA still allow it to be this bad
[https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2024/10/complete-savings-advert-banned/](https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2024/10/complete-savings-advert-banned/)
It’s actually a good service IF you can make use of it, e.g.
– you get your monthly fee returned when making any purchase (even £1)
– you can claim upto £250 (iirc) cashback a month from their site (it offers 10% on many retailers which can be much better than quidco etc)
– One 20% discount (aka £20) on a £100 one4all giftcard every month
More info can be found in the beermoneyUK sub [https://www.reddit.com/r/beermoneyuk/comments/1higlsx/nx_rewards_complete_savings_cashback_platforms_a/](https://www.reddit.com/r/beermoneyuk/comments/1higlsx/nx_rewards_complete_savings_cashback_platforms_a/)
If you have a use for the giftcard and spend quite a lot on places where they would pay cashback via their platform, you can “make” far more than the £18 a month fee which is refunded when you make any purchase.
it’s not a scam, it just catches out people who read the headline and don’t read the terms expecting the company to just give you £20 for free.
Not scam but scummy.
Legitimate scams are popping up everywhere found one on Toolstation last week
Argos also do this.
Very immoral. Think I fell for it and it took me nearly a year to realise.
Ah the flashbacks to working for a bank call centre explaining what these charges are and how to cancel them
Most people fall for this without reading the smallprint, but if used correctly it’s actually not a bad cashback portal (most of us peeps from r/beermoneyuk use it). It’s designed at glance like a scam (£18/monthly cost, overcomplicated “monthly bonus” crap) – I’ll do the explaining.
It’s like TopCashback or Quidco except it’s a “membership-based” spinoff that charges you £18 monthly that you can claim back through “monthly bonuses”. So, if you do one transaction per month at the shop you signed up through you can claim that £18 every month back. So if you signed up through eBay, you’d buy a pen or a SIM card, making it at minimum £1 monthly. If it already sounds like a hassle, don’t bother, your likely going to forget to claim the bonus every month.
Reason it’s slightly different to Quidco or TopCashback is it has 10% minimum cashback (max £250 monthly), and 20% off One4all giftcards (max £100 monthly). Since One4all giftcards are prepaid Visa cards it can be combined with the 10% minimum to make 30% off in certain cases (e.g. Argos shops). One4all cards can be used to purchase other giftcards in-store (even though your not really supposed to, it works) allowing savings of 20% on other supermarkets. Because of this it’s a pretty valuable savings tool if used correctly.
Webloyalty runs another portal that allows anyone to signup called NXRewards, which allows monthly bonus claims at any brand they support which a lot of peeps prefer instead of CompleteSavings, which is only through who you signed up with (e.g. if signed up through eBay, monthly subscription claims have to be eBay).
The fact it’s written as ’18 pounds’ and not £18 is clearly a deliberate attempt to disguise it to inattentive people who will assume it’s smallprint saying you need to be 18 years old.
Ultimately people need to be responsible with the things they sign up for, but I can see how it catches people out, because its designed to do just that
Exactly the same as the National Express bullshit whenever you buy a ticket on a local bus in brum
“Click on the below link to claim £16.87 cash back on your next order with National Express Bus. (By clicking the link, you can join NX Rewards for 15 pounds/month and claim your incentive.)”
Definitely scummy. My dad fell for it about 5 years ago (he’s middle-aged and semi tech literate). Didn’t even notice the monthly cost that was direct debiting out of his account for 2 whole years!
I was skeptical as well but tried it based on a recommendation from a friend
To me, it’s a bit like having a credit card. If you’re responsible with it, it’s good. If you mess up, it’s bad
I signed up with Trainline. I have to make one purchase with them every month. This can be of any value. I buy a ticket for around £3 that I’d need anyway. That gets me £18 in my account which offsets the monthly fee.
The main benefit for me is that you can use it for groceries. 10% off at Tesco equates to £40 cashback every month on a £100/week family food shop
I’ve also started picking up All4One gift cards. You get one £100 card for £80 every month. You can use that at IKEA, B&Q etc, so I’m banking it to cover a future highish purchase for the house, essentially at 20% off
The only issue I’ve had so far is that my account got blocked for a week for ‘suspicious activity’. Literally no idea why. So missed out on cashback for one grocery shop
Overall, if you plan to be diligent, I’d say it’s decent
This needs to be made illegal IMO. It’s legal but aimed at technically illiterate or busy people who don’t have the time to deal with admin. I’m suprised it’s still going.
So I’ve actually done this, and as long make a note of every way in which this can bite you in the ass, you can make a little money from it. Use it as they set out, get the cashback, cancel.
The news websites owned by Reach Plc must have a stake in these companies because every week there’s a massive story about how you can get “DESIRED ITEM” for 80% off (as long as you go through their cashback subscription company).
You can get 10% cashback, diaocunred gift cards and a rebate for a purchase at a participating partner merchant.
Scam definition: a dishonest scheme; a fraud.
It *isnt* a scam, but what it is is a very very bad deal.
I accidentally signed up for one of these years ago after drunk ordering a pizza. Could not work out for the life of me why money was being taken out of my bank every month – it didn’t say ‘cashback’ anywhere on the online banking transaction. after about a year I finally googled it and realised my mistake. I phoned Barclays and explained the situation, how I hadn’t claimed any of the cashback and they refunded all of it, was about £200 in total. This was about 8 years ago so not sure if they’d do that now
I was got by one of these.
Technically you could get your cashback if you sign-up, claim the cashback during the FREE trial and then cancel before the FREE trial ends. I didn’t realise it was a paid subscription after the FREE FREE FREE period ended so I had to both claim the cashback and cancel the paid subscription. I threatened small claims court over the unclear sign-up and notifications and they gave the cashback and half a refund.
They make their money on people not realising they’ve signed up to and have an ongoing subscription and their emails (which are legally required) to remind you bury the reminder in the small print which I think is questionably legal at best.
Iceland do this too.
National Express run one of these bs cashback schemes. You’d have to be taking long distance journeys on a weekly basis just to break even.
I got about £60 for nowt off it before, you got a month free with it, got the value of my original purchase back, made a purchase at the beginning of the next month and got that back and also there was some kind of bonus, then I cancelled before the charged subscription started.
My mother (in her late 70s) fell for this. She thought the order wasn’t complete and that she needed to put her payment details in again. Ended up with 9 months of payments before she realised her mistake. My father, a veteran complainer, argued for a refund because she’d never used the service but got nowhere. Yes, they do state the facts (in very small letters) but it’s still intentionally misleading.
If you make the most of their offers: 10% cashback at a good range of online retailers, hit the criteria for claiming the monthly fee back, 10-20% off £100 of gift cards each month it’s really quite worth doing if you are on a lower income.
But their revenue is absolutely relying on people not doing that and paying quite a steep fee.
Their advert is so strange, it totally comes off as a scam as they don’t mention any of the benefits I listed, only a one off bonus for a small print recurring fee not much less than the bonus.
That said it worked on me to sign up because I was thinking why the hell is Argos associated with this scam, leading to me looking them up, finding more out about them and thinking ok actually this could potentially be worth it.
Purely a stupid tax. Stupid people will do this and think they got free money.
No, it can’t be explained to you because it is, in fact, a scam
They will pay after the subscription is cancelled before first fee is taken. I used the referral link after buying a rail card a few years ago.
Complete Save isnt a scam, but they are extremely scummy. More people need to report them to the ASA and complaint to companies like Trainline who partner with them.
Loot of people defending CompleteSave here. I won’t say they’re astrotufing, but they’re astroturfing
My mother fell for this and paid for it for almost 3 years until she found out….
I’ve made over £1200 from it in about a year 🤷♂️
I’m a member of this and can confirm it’s not a scam. It relies on people not remembering they’re paying for it. You do pay £18 a month and then have to claim it back with any qualifying purchase. It takes about 2 minutes to do.
Your purchase does not have to be more than £18, you can literally buy something from eBay for 99p. There’s so many businesses on there all paying at least 10% that it’s easy enough to find something you’d buy normally.
I’ve had over £5000 in cash back since signing up. I have no affiliation with them and because I just think it’s a really good deal when Quidco/TCB pay a couple of percent and it’s so easy to claim back, I will recommend them to anyone.
https://preview.redd.it/1kl65oc13ihf1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f9bfa5bf1f7a59ed37d4ae8d0373e7b92b944056
Comments are closed.