Dell are getting Quidco ready for back to school/uni/whatever?! with a short-term increase to 6% Quidco cashback. This rate is only going to be up until the 5th of August so there's a little incentive to think ahead and get the laptop, monitor, printer, PDA sorted for those papers

As a further incentive to head over to Dell and check what's happening they have sent us a laptop (Inspiron 1525) to give away to Quidco members. As ever it is easy-peasy to get in - just (1) visit Dell through the Quidco link and then (2) write a comment below letting us know the specs of your first computer

We will keep comments open until midnight 5th of August and then pick a winner from the eligible comments using random.org.

Start here! Dell Home and Dell Small and Medium Business

Enjoy

EDIT: Congratulations to w.harper7 who is the winner of this giveaway

e2save have been the most popular mobile merchant with Quidco members for a while so they thought they'd put together a spicy cashback and giveaway for members

Until midnight Thursday 31st July e2save are upping cashback on four pay monthly mobile contracts packages to £130 Quidco! The best thing is these aren't the bottom of the line handsets but rather four of the current top-sellers: the Sony Ericsson C902, the Samsung F480 âToccoâ, the Samsung U900 Soul Silver, and the HTC Touch Diamond, all available on £35 monthly tariffs giving you 600 minutes and unlimited texts.

To check out these offers start at the Quidco e2save page here: e2save on Quidco

We always like a cherry on top for members so we have an Acer Aspire laptop from e2save to give away to one Quidco member. You don't even need to purchase anything at e2save for this one - all you need to do is visit e2save through the Quidco link, check out the handsets and then tell us which of these four is the best (justify it!) in the blog comments below.

We will keep the comments open until 31st July midnight. We will then pick a winner by midnight Tuesday 5th August (gives us a bit of time) from the eligible comments posted using random.org.

Have fun! And donât forget the £130 cashback is a limited offer.

Quidco cashback at e2save

EDIT: Congrats to mfardoe who won the laptop giveaway here

One of the most rewarding things about helping to found Quidco and hanging on for this crazy ride has been working faithfully to the founding principles and seeing how they continue to bear fruit. The powerful thing about the internet is that it allows anyone to have simple and honest ideas that can scale up to a size usually reserved for big corporations!

When Quidco was started the idea was to make a site where we could all join together as a community to access the referral commission for our own purchasing decisions. As we say in our story, we wanted a cashback site with a heart (that didn't look a pound sign).

One of the tough parts about managing the Quidco community is balancing the needs of our members and our merchant partners. We need to make sure members are treated fairly by merchants and that merchants are treated fairly by members.

The biggest problem area here is when a transaction fails to track. We need to make sure that a member who made an eligible purchase at a merchant (Quidco was the referrer, genuine transaction, fulfilled merchant terms) does receive their cashback regardless of any technical tracking problems that may occur on the network's part. On the flip side we need to make sure that merchants only receive genuine enquiries about cashback.

The hard decision which we've had to make is to reduce the number of tracking networks we work with in order to keep the highest levels of service for the merchants and members. Over the coming 6 weeks you may see a slight reduction in merchants as we remove those which are not fully supported by a network and are not part of the SureShop programme. This stronger focus on quality processes means that our network partners will be able to better manage Quidco member enquiries and that Quidco members get quick and fair resolutions from merchants.

When we made this decision after many conversations with our tracking networks we felt it was mutually understood that we would be best able to improve your Quidco cashback experience by reducing our network partners. You can imagine we were surprised when a network we have decided to close posted public statements about Quidco SureShop and our members on their blog and a popular industry forum. You can read this statement and the merchant responses here and here.

To get to the point, we would appreciate your support here We believe that an essential part of cashback is to ensure members do get timely responses to their enquiries and that they are paid for eligible enquiries. No member should be to blame for problems due to technical reasons and equally no merchant should have to worry about inaccurate enquiries.

We are asking for your support in two ways during this period. First, one of the statements from the network is that Quidco members will simply use an alternative cashback site for the merchants that will become unavailable on Quidco. There is no doubt in our mind that members will prefer to support merchants who are investing time and effort into providing premium customer service through SureShop. To be honest we are unable to continue pushing for improved service levels from networks and merchants unless all our members help us by continuing to purchase only from those merchants which support their customers! Fortunately, most merchants are committed to their customers and recognise the importance of SureShop.

Second, if you have the time this is a great opportunity to speak directly with merchants about how important SureShop is for your purchasing experience. It is very powerful for merchants and agencies to hear directly from the customer what you think. Posting a reasonable and personal response on the Quidblog here would be an effective way to let them know why this matters to you as their customer.

Although this is a tough situation, and not a situation we ever hoped to be in, we think it is indicative of how rapidly the cashback industry is maturing. When we started it was something personal that we cared passionately about - and now it has grown into a powerful community. It is times like this that we can make a difference as a co-operative - to continue changing the industry and making OUR voice heard as consumers.

Thanks for your support!

Paul and all of the Quidco team

We're excited to be pulling the wraps off a new feature here on Quidco! After the Christmas Cup competition where loads of groups were made and a lot chat flew around (1200 groups formed and 6300 comments) we understood there was a real desire for more communication among members. The huge amount of comments we get on the blogs also highlighted this!

So we've gone and built a new feature we call Quidclans. A Quidclan is a chat group which can be started by any member and which any member can join. The member who starts the Quidclan chooses the theme, logo, guidelines and favourite merchants.

We've been doing a bit of testing internally but we want more members to help test it out before we roll this out fully. If you'd like to jump in and check it out please go to: http://www.quidco.com/quidclans

To join and chat in any Quidclan (you can also un-join whenever you want) click the Join button when viewing the Quidclan.

If you have a special interest or topic and you'd like to find other Quidco members feel free to start a new Quidclan! You can start up your own by clicking the Start a Quidclan button in the main page.

Please leave feedback on bugs and more in the comments below

Our third staff profile, following those of Fiona & Dominic, is that of Steve:

Steve, who works in member support, is from Sheffield. He enjoys movies (especially Star Wars and anything by Tarantino), the band Night Wish, and Chinese food. His dream holiday would be skiing on the planet Hoth, and the furthest heâs ever been from home is a galaxy far, far, away (but he doesnât say which one).

He has pets. (What kind, you ask? Ah, well, so did we, but that didn't get us very far.) Steve speaks two languages, and his favourite book is the Argos Catalogue. His most unique talent is top secret, although he may be able to rub his stomach and pat his head at the same time. Apparently this skill level varies with the distance to the nearest pub.

Steve lives by the motto âCarpe Diem; Seize the Day.â Given a chance to ask one question of a famous person, Steve would ask Alec Guiness, âWhy did you let Darth Vader cut your head off?â

When asked if there was anything else heâd like to share, Steve offered some Jaffa Cakes, âbut I canât send them down a computer.â

Steveâs 30-Second Quidco Bio:

What do you do at Quidco? Member Support
How long have you been with Quidco? Since August 07
Whatâs your typical workday like? Fun Fun Fun!
Quidco superpowers: The Force
Secret weapon: A Light Sabre
Nemesis: Darth Vader
Greatest weakness: Chinese Food
Sidekick: Chewbacca

**Update** Okay, good news! The developers are resending the affected PayPal payments now. It will take a few hours, so they should be showing up tomorrow. (Please note that if you have changed your payment details within the past 10 days, however, the 10-day hold is still in effect during this run.)

Thanks everyone for your patience & understanding

+++++++++++++

A few of you have contacted us saying you've received a notice from PayPal to the effect that the payment we sent through didn't clear. Our payment team are on this, and we'll get it sorted. Right now we're running a PayPal report so we can find out exactly what has happened. These reports are slow, so it may be a few hours before we have any more information, but as and when we do, we'll post it here.

--- Carol, who's looking for her umbrella because when it rains, it seems to pour!

We've been notified by our bank of a processing authentication problem with the BACS payments that went out July 1st. These will come through Friday instead of today.

The long and short of it is that an authentication card had expired and the new card sent to the wrong place... the second emergency replacement was then sent to the wrong place a second time! We've been trying to push for an alternative option so no delay would happen (as it was the bank's fault) but there was no way they could escalate it (BACS is actually handled through a third party organisation that the bank does not directly handle).

We apologise for the delay but please be assured your cashback is sitting out there in bank limbo and waiting to drop into your account

We have put in a secondary BACS processing service so that if something like this ever happens again in the future we can use the backup service and avoid any delay.

It's not often that we get a cashback deal come through that makes our jaw drop but Vodafone have definitely extended some of our gaping maws here with the £130 Quidco cashback offer that just went live. Yep that's £130 cashback for taking out any of their mobile contracts and it's the highest ever Quidco cashback we've had for mobiles.

The great thing is they have just released a new batch of offers including the online exclusive plan with 600 anytime minutes, unlimited texts, 3 months half-price for only £30/month (18 month contract). This plan is available for handsets including Samsung U900 Soul, LG Secret, SE C902, Samsung F490 and Samsung G600.

As always we try to get a little bonus icing on the Quidco cupcake so this time around we've got an extra £10 cashback available to the first 100 members who take out a validated contract from Vodafone and post in the comments below (transaction has to take place after the blog post). In the comments let us and others know which deal you sprang for!

Get started here: Vodafone £130 Quidco cashback

Enjoy