I am completely against money going towards Macmillan Cancer research as this research is largely carried out on laboratory animals many of them being deliberately injected with cancer cells and having to live out their entire pitiful lives in a cage. Why not choose an ethical charity which doesn't cause suffering to animals. The Dr. Hadwen Trust funds research that is not carried out on animals.

Speaking as someone who subscribes to neither charity you have nominated then the answer to the charity debate is obvious. If people don't like the charities chosen then don't use Quidblog. They are free to set up their own organisation if they want to. I say if you want to be a member of an organization then you have to abide by ALL the rules, not just the ones you like.

[...] Paul: I do get a little insulted when people make that claim. Yes we could hide things but I think the amount of programmes where we are publishing the highest tier shows that we are not out to hide anything. I would hope blog items like our eBay dilemma also show this. From the beginning the idea of climbing the tiers has been central to what the point of Quidco was as a cooperative, by pooling our earnings we climb into higher tiers. [...]

Any idea how much has been raised so far via eBay?

Great idea and as usual fantastic support by quidco. 5 thumbs up! ^-^bbbbb

at last....no worries from me...like you say...it's a no-brainer win-win really - and - a charity's a charity at the end of the day...and quidco's choices are fine by me...it'd be v hard for admin no doubt so maybe a member can volunteer / work with quidco ?

regardless...when does this start now please...i feel like binning some 14p's !!!!!

Thanks for the update Paul
Charity giving is a very personal thing, not everybody does or wants to. You have nominated two charities for YOUR personal reasons, I have a charity that I donate to for my personal reasons.
In the settings part of Quidco where we put our details, can you put a box or something so if people want their 21p can go to their own chosen charity as long as it's a registered charity, of course. Or leave it blank so it goes to your (Quidco's) chosen charity.
Like this maybe:-
Tick here to donate ebays 21p to the Quidco chosen charity.
Tick here to donate ebays 21p to another charity.
Please state the charity and the registered number.

Just a thought and I've no idea (Sorry) how hard it would be to implement, if it can be implemented.
Thanks,
Steve. :p

Ok decision time!

First of all thanks to everyone that has contributed to this thread and helped us out thinking of different ways to do things. It's great to see the community involvement here and that we have so many members that care about Quidco and what we're doing. So thanks guys

Our decision is to donate the extra 21p to charity.

There were basically two options that were popular in this thread and that we got the green light from eBay on: (1) donate to charity or (2) put it towards admin fees. I think the charity idea had a slight edge of support in user comments but when making a decision we also felt that charity was the better option. There are a few reasons but the main reason is that it still ties in with a member's personal Quidco account. This way when you buy on eBay through Quidco you can personally see that you are giving 21p to charity. If we had put it towards fees then the users who use eBay would be basically subsidising other users fees...so your eBay activity would be funding someone else's fees even if they had never used eBay.

To us it looked like a win win situation (as much as it could be). Members are still virtually "earning" 35p but they virtually donate 21p to charity each time. So it's like, get 14p for a BIN at eBay and give 21p to charity. I think we can all agree that is good thing

The difficult problem we have is that if you had actually received that 21p then you could donate to any charity you wished. Due to the admin problems with that we just don't have a way to do it right now. At this point we will donate the eBay 21p's to our Quidco charities which are Macmillan Cancer Research and the Motor Neuron Disease Association. These are both chosen for personal reasons here. What we do want to do is open up some way of having a monthly third option but we need to get something in place to give members the ability to vote and such. We don't have that right now but please be assured we are moving that way as it would be great to have a nice system where members have a vote towards a Quidco charity of the month.

Well that's that then! Please feel free to comment on this and so forth but it is a decision now and we are going to go forward with it Ideas on implementation etc are probably the most constructive comments....

I am in favour of a charity getting it, but as has been said this throws up it's own headaches, but surely everyone can agree on a national charity of good standing IE: Cancer research or even the Quidco charity Macmillan, another that has been mentioned is the NSPCC, but I am pretty sure this only covers England and Wales, meaning there is no contribution to Scotland or Ulster, this is the reason I think if we go down the charity route it has to be national where people from the whole of the country benefit

Zed, I use ebay, but as a buyer, and not a seller.

Although if you mean, credited to an ebay account, then hopefully that means paypal, and can only be used as part of a purchase of an item from ebay.

How about ebay pay the commission directly to the persons ebay account, and it can only be used to pay ebay fees and cannot be withdrawn. That way they would know it would be used to promote their business far more than it would do otherwise, and they would also invariably get the paypal commission which by the time the p&p had been paid would come very close to the commission they were paying out initially.

If not give it to children in local authority care at christmas. Or better still - do that anyway while something else is sorted out.

It might also be a nice idea to use a similar donation to charity for all visits to sites that pay to use them if the visits excede a level mentioned on the page linking to them.

I agree with most other reasonable folk, collect all the 21p's and give them to charity, Ebay are mugs so lets do something good out of a stupid situation.

ebay are a bunch of gits! so many unessesary rules. They still wont slow the scammers. If they don't want the extra business from Quidco: shove them! I hope for a viable competitor to ebay one day.

why not a monthly prize draw where the winner gets to choose which charity the money goes to for that month??

Jak's idea sounds like a good one to me. The only difficulty I see with giving it to charity is that many of the smaller ones will get forgotten. Maybe you could have the competition and the winners get half (in the form of a prize or annual fee waived) and also get to choose which charity their other half goes to? It would mean that more charities get smaller amounts but isn't that what it's all about?

I think that Charity is a big winner here. Quidco would also like to reward "us" and thats why our opinion is sort after.

I think that the pot accumulated per month should be equally split between a charity of Quidco's choice and also a competition amongst the members with prizes like Ipods, XBOX 360s, PSPs, annual fee waived etc (similar to lucky dip as ManojChugh said above). And why have just one prize winner per month have more, surely the ebayers amongst us will clock up some deals.

All those 21 pences will surely add up, and it seems a shame to just let it go to waste.

I'M WITH DONALP TOO

keep it simple

the best idea will be a 50/50 spit between charity and a prize draw.
the prize draw will have quidco prizes or cash or merhcant's promotions hich will not include ebay but can involve other merchants as well.

the charity route can be a nomination basis but also a xx% towards current world events
eg famine/hurrincane etc..

I have close ties with the CF Trust Charity because my Daughter has CF.
I still think you should stand your ground with ebay, all or nothing, your way or no way.

shiggaddi - Good post. As you note the problem we would have putting this towards something like BACS fee is that that is there is no relationship between payments and eBay which means we would have no idea month to month whether fees would be covered or not etc. Speaking slightly off the cuff here but we try to keep the site so that we don't make any promises we can't keep and that we don't introduce fees later down the line etc. As we grow things should get better not worse! So for example we hope to eventually reduce or eliminate the BACS fee once enough members are using it and we can re-negotiate with the bank. A fluctuating fee just brings confusion I think. As for minimum limits on BACS we felt from the beginning of that that is was more important to have no minimum payment levels and a very minimal fee rather than instituting a minimum payment level.

I think the £3 is base price.

Also, the idea above of having the bonus split among members with eBay transactions or a prize draw to members with eBay transactions was ruled out early on as it was one of the first ideas we proposed to eBay.

Thought I'd add my bit in now.

I have bought the odd BIN on ebay, and having 14p extra is better than nothing at all, for doing something you would normally do anyway.

Just to clarify, is that £3 for the total price including P&P, or just the base price, without P&P?

I don't think this extra 21p should stay in ebay's pockets either.

Another good idea, is quidco run a monthly quiz, or something like that, to keep members interested in the site community, and the proceeds from ebay could pay the winner.

And another popular idea that has been suggested, is removing the 5p charge for BACS transfers (but perhaps impose a minimum of £20 to qualify) This would mean that people who have accrued only a few quid, can roll over their balance until they reach £20, rather than withdraw immediately (unless they choose paypal)

Imposing this limit for having free BACS transfers would reduce the number of people wanting a payout each month, and also it's unknown how much ebay traffic will come from quidco, so it's also unknown whether quidco would make up the money to fund this.

Maybe once the ebay programme has been running, then quidco can make a better informed decision on how to spend this extra money.

can be put towards make this website better and faster.

I dont agree with charities getting it.

1 goes against the ethos of quidco
2. seems like one big headache which charity to give it too.
3. If the incentive is effectively only 14p to the quidco user, then ebay can keep the rest
4. Or ebay could give us as quidco users a code towards paypal discounts
5. I dont think quidco should keep it.
6. I dont see why ebay are naffing around with this. I can see the appeal of over £3 to stop all those 1p BINs., but if theyve agreed over 3 quid then fair dos.
7. Why not give MORE money to sellers showing a buy it now ? ( im biased there, I use BIN quite a bit )
8. out of all the options I think my choices is that each ebay user via quidco goes into a weekly draw for it.

I favour quidco keeping it, afterall, if it helps you improve etc etc then i comes back to us in the end. Next best to me is attempting to use it to offset the admin fee or BACS charge.

Given that ebay are saying you're not _allowed_ to pass it on it doens't bother me that it's not the 100% you advertise.

I agree with a lot that has been said here, 21p on its own is nothing 10000x 21p is significant.The charity idea is a minefield, i dont support any charity in particular but can see that some wouldnt support this or that charity, so would be offended if the proceeds go to the "wrong" charity, IMHO i think Quidco should tell Ebay to take a hike with this stupid condition, either we get all of the cashback or tell them their not wanted!!

Actually, don't pass, there's plenty of suggestions posted here, I just hope the fairest one is chosen, although it could be tricky, suppose charity one could be a good straight down the moddle one for all.

We don't need ebay, tell them we'll pass on this one.

I think we're going to sit down and go through all the suggestions and comments and then make a decision based on that and post it here with the reasons.

Good discussion though everyone! 70 replies so far

Can we just have a vote, please

How about 50% of the 21 pence goes to charity and the other 50% benefits the members in some way. Would this keep most people happy?

Discounting the membership seems to me like a good way that we all benefit and that it wouldn't be too tough to organise (obviously I could be wrong on the difficulty to organise bit!)

ok...it seems this is gonna run and run and no'one's gonna agree...one of them damned if u do and damned if u don't scenarios....so....let's stop the buck right here everyone...and...go with ylhf a couple of posts up

I think the 21p should go to charity to be honest. Every months, 3 months of whatever quidco members are given the opportunity to vote on who deserves the money, the one with the highest votes gets it. OR... Whatever the percentage difference is between them that's how much they will get out of the pot.

My only concern is eBay shifting the goalposts again and withdrawing from paying referral monies to quidco!

I vote for telling ebay to stick it where the sun don't shine!

Ebay really do think they have the monopoly in just about every area of the net, they have gotten far too big for their boots and personally I want nothing to do with them.

Failing that I vote for the charity idea. [img]http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/3444/crazy1no.gif[/img]

From my personal opinion, I don't trust charities as it is said that only about 20% of all donations go to the people who really need it. 80% is either used for marketing or go to someone's pocket. I am willing to help people but I am NOT supportting those 'profitable charities'.

As a quidco member, I would suggest the 21p can either be paid towards the membership admin fee or be collected as a 'monthly prize draw'. Remeber, 21p is a small amount of money, 10,000 times 21p IS NOT A SAMLL AMOUNT OF MONEY.


A hard studying and hard working student

I'd bin E-bay forever thinking about it , dictating terms & conditions like a big bully .
Stuff them

IMHO i really do think it should be kept in savings account for 1 year then given over to a charity, that we all can vote on.
Using to fund prize draws or even t shirts etc... is a waste. The money could be used used better, remember it is only 21p not £21
At least by doing this, it would show us savvy shoppers that we do care and are prepared to hand over the cash to people who REALLY need it.

Use the excess 21p's to fund a members monthly prize draw. The prize(s) can be added direct to a members account as cash or in the form of vouchers from the Merchants.

It seems to me as if it would be a lot of work for you guys to implement a system where by the 21p goes towards a members £5 admin fee. Personally, my suggestion would be you simply keep the money towards future development of the site.

If you really can't do that, how about your create a prize fund, where the money, and other money that may arise from similar programs goes, and then once a year (or when the fund reaches XXX) the winners are picked from those who took part in any program that contributed. If you wanted to get technical you could do something like every Xp a member gets towards the program they get an entry in the draw.

Thanks for your efforts!

give all the 21p's to my mother in law on condition she moves out and leaves my wife and I alone forever
then again anyone want to bid on her on ebay? I have a buy it now for 1p

Going against the flow here, but I'm against the charity donation. As mentioned by many people, Quidco's raison d'être is the 100% cashback, and that's clearly not possible. There's also the very real possibility of people arguing over the charity - I do a lot of work for SPARKS, and I'd obviously like the money to go there, while others will do work for Cancer Research and wish for the money to go that way instead.

Personally, I'd kick eBay into touch. You'd retain your integrity, and your unique appeal. For those that have said 'who needs the 21p?', the same is surely true of the 14p...

re above...i agree quidco...also..i know not feasible with u but i too wouldn't mind if u got to keep it for providing this excellent service for us all

giannijambo - I think eBay are still a little bigger than we are

davidsalter - A referral scheme is not on the cards at this time. The reason we do not have one is not only that it's not really economically viable for us (because of our model) but also because we don't really like the effect they can have on people and their honesty. We'd rather have people recommend us because they really believe we are the best thing going, rather than trying to get a few extra pounds off someone. Not saying that you or most members would do that but judging by the kind of posts we see on forums and even in our own personal email it definitely has this effect on some people.

Surely the obvious answer is to blow the lot on coke and whores?

Some good ideas here already - I particularly like the idea of making up queeried transactions for which merchants only pay 50%.

A couple of other suggestions to add to the debate: Would the introduction of a referal scheme where members are paid an amount for recommending friends help both members and quidco?

Alternatively, if eBay don't want to to favour BIN auctions why don't they split the extra 21p according to the ratio of BIN and normal auctions and give quidco members an amount for winning any auction?

I say give to to charity and let us members decide which charity by having a voting poll of say the 5 charities for eg RSPCC, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research, RSPCA, UNICEF or even more,

I CAN'T BELIEVE EVEN FOR CHARITY THERE ARE DEBATES ! True in that 1 month there may be more 'in the pot' than others...also...I do think eBay will either pull out again or lower the awards in any case as they've underestimated how popular they are / this will be ( AGAIN )

They're more likely to retain and honour it if associated with charitable actions etc

In reflection of my opening sentence however, I think pool the money ie select NO specific charity and give to a / any disaster relief - as and when they happen - ie Tsunami / 7/7 victims / New Orleans flood victims etc etc etc...it's a crying shame but it's inevitable more disaster(s) will occur. What do you / fellow members think ?

I think another option is to reject the offer from ebay. Their inclusion would jepordise the whole ethos of passing 100% to the members. I beleive that it is worth protecting the excellent and honest reputation that quidco has by sacrificing ebay as a merchant. After this see if ebay change their tone.

I think it should be given to charity. Each member could choose a charity they wish to support and one is pulled out of a hat and supported for a year, then a new charity supported the next.

I would like to nominate the NSPCC if Quidco are going to increase the cause's.

For the sake of 21p & all the money people save here anyway , just give it too charity

Charity is a more worthy option though, membership is low enough already but the above is an option.

Use it to reduce next years membership fee. As afterall you wouldn't have to explain how the membership fee has become cheaper.

Hmm ok how about a serious suggestion from Thewyzewun. Let's have a vote on this in a few days - get all the options together, present them in a poll, and email the info to every member. You'd have to leave the poll to leave for about a month to make sure everyone gets their say, sending people reminder emails to vote, and there'd have to be an option saying you disagree with all the options, just incase you get a majority ticking that.
OK maybe some of the options on it won't fit in with the 100% to members ethos, but at least everyone's had a good chance to have their say choosing whichever path we decide to follow.

My vote is for charity!

Charity is the worst option, yes I am that poor. Give it back to the members: take it off the annual fee or give a prize draw with a free telly or something with the proceeds.

Could QuidCo simply use the cash they've collected in the month to buy a prize and have a monthly competition??

I support the idea of giving it to charity, 21p that you never have you will never miss.

The issue I have with using it for BACS payments or membership payments is that commission "earned" on one account could/would be paid out on another account that has never used ebay. How would you proportion it fairly between users? Same goes for non-payments by merchants, I dont think quidco should underwrite these payments, we know the system is not 100% perfect and can make value judgements based on the statistics provided on each merchant.

Charity looks like the winner then?!?

How about we all suggest the charity we would like the money to go to and Quidco have the final say on a list of charities and split out the money to these charities equally each month?

If your suggested charity doesn't make the list then you can always make a monthly donation yourself. In the end it is still going to a good cause (probably a few each month!)

Give it to charidee!!!!!

I'd be quite happy to give it to charity too,and would be happy to support the designated quidco charities.

For the sake of 21p give it to charity , none of us are that desperate , or are we ?

I agree with mrme, give it to charity, there are people out there who need 21p more that you or me.

ooo souvenirs Sounds more fun than anything! My first thought on those two ideas is great! but they are not necessarily very cooperative? What do other members think?

One other idea....

Quidco souvenirs...

With the extra earnings, quidco sends souvenirs to the most active (or lucky dip winners)....

Free marketing and buzz for Quidco !!!

and Members will not mind free caps, bags, pens, stickers, t-shirts etc....

How about a monthly lucky dip.

Quidco keep the earning in a LuckyDip account which are given out to one hella lucky member every month.

None of the other cashback sites do this so it will be another First one for Quidco.

Every suggestion throws up a problem . Mmmm , tricky one this one .

I think the key would be to keep it simple! Some of the ideas sound great like a reduced admin fee or putting the money towards BACS but it could get very confusing & time consuming for QUIDCO & time is money Every month the amount of transactions will differ (I have no idea by how much though) & the amount of members is constantly growing also. It could mean for example each member gets a penny added to their account which I am sure everyone could live without. I guess it could be shared out only to those who used EBAY programme but then we go back to the point of the amount of time it would take to share out the money fairly. hmmm hope I have made sense!!!!

Regarding charity choice we already have Quidco selected charities which we have chosen because of personal reasons, Macmillan Cancer Research and Motor Neuron Disease Association. However, we would be open to new suggestions although I don't know if we could change it on a monthly basis or not. It would be easier to stick to an "approved" list.

The only simple solution is one that benefits everyone here , in that instance it must be Quidco direct that benefits . Using the allocated 21p per each transaction to offset BACS & Annual fee charge is the only solution without running into conflicts of interest .

The problem with Charities is still, Why that Charity and not mine etc.
Also, it goes against what Quidco is well known for, passing on 100% to its members.

I think you should give all the 21p's to me, and I'll put them towards buying myself cool stuff on eBay. Then I could write a blog on Quidco's site about all my cool new stuff and how great I am.

Alternatively, we could give it to a good cause, like Children's Hospice or Cancer Research UK.

Let's have a vote on it

Even if we only get 14p, it's better than nowt, which is what we get now. The consensus of giving to charidy (said in a smashy-and-nicey voice) sounds good to me!

Thinking about the charity situation , the monthly received money might be higher one month than the previous & visa versa . How about collecting it over a 12 month period , or quarterly , then distributing it evenly amongst the nominated charites . Each one then gets a fair share . The only problem I see is that of preferred charities on an individual basis , it might cause problems . We would need a nominated list each time period that was fairly voted for .

That extra 35p could sway a potential buyer to buy the item. If they have a limit of say £10.00 for an item and it's £10.50 then, they may think 'I'll pay the extra 'cos I'm gonna get 35p via Quidco' :)

I can't understand their worry over incentivising buy it nows . If an item is available as a buy it now at the price I want then I will buy it , if its overpriced I won't ! I think there might be some arguments over what charities are to be helped so my suggestion is to either let Quidco themselves keep it for administration of BACS & fees or nominate a list of charities , possibly in a poll , the top 5 voted for get the shareout .

Who has the most to gain from ebay being on Quidco?
If it's ebay, stand your ground. You have a reputation to uphold of passing on 100%.
Ebay will not be missed if they are not on here.

Mmmm, Charity is a good option, or a monthly prise draw or competition, have 3 prises 1st, 2nd & 3rd - this would be a good marketing promotion to spread the word about Quidco as well and gain some good media attention!

Well what ever you decide it's a good problem to have

Yes Pablo you have that right. The reason they restrict it to 14p is to prevent Quidco and any other site that would offer 100% back from passing back 35p. They are worried about incentivising BIN's so they are only willing to pay an incentive of 14p to a site member.

So basically it puts us in the awkward position of promising 100% to members but only being able to pay out less than 50% to a site member.

That's it. ;)
Use it to cover the £5 fee and the BACS charge.
Good idea davidnorfolk & ManojChugh

If you decided to give it to a Charity I would want it to go to the one I support (CF Trust) and other people would want it to go to a charity they support.

We've already asked about keeping the 21p and distributing to all members. Maybe they misunderstood what we said or maybe they just didn't trust what we were asking (see Europcar post below...) but they said we could not collect the 21p and distribute to members even if we didn't tie it to eBay transactions.

I would have to think that emmamaw's suggestion of appying it to the enquries where we were only paid 50% or ManojChugh's should be possible though.

I think the only problem with may be that it will be too small to make much of a dent..but then again I could be wrong! We would have to see how the programme performs I guess.

Personally I like the charity idea and others here do too, but discussion is what this thread is about!

As an add-on I'll forego the 21p each time in order to make the site better if possible . Whether that means a reduction in the fee , donation to charity , I'm easy on 21p .

Let me get this right , E-bay are willing to pay Quidco 35p per BIN transaction over £30 but they are also restricting what you pay out to each individual concerned to 14p ?
If they pay you 35p what is the reason from them to stop that being paid out to the person who HAS earned it by buying from E-bay in the first place ?

What about using it toward the £5 annual quidco subscription?

Either rewarding the individual member who earns it by discounting their membership cost, OR collect all the 21p's and divide by number of members to make a discount for every member?

That has the benefit that members still benefit, you're not directly paying it to the member (instead you're keeping it but are able to reduce the service cost to the member).
That has the potential to remove the annual charge altogether and quidco may even be able to make further profit if ebay pay more than the total annual charges (since you'd have to keep it as you couldn't pay it to members).

Why can't quidco keep it? It is not being selfish... Quidco can also have a bit on the side.

Or even better, quidco keeps eBay earnings and removes the 5p charge for the bank withdrawals.

What would happen if you stood your ground?
Quidco are well known for passing on 100%, that is why I'm here.

I'll have it )

Can it be pooled centrally and then shared out as a percentage? It could be akin to a negative tax on all transactions.

How about using the 21p toward the annual £5 subscription in some way?
Perhaps either, taking it off the annual cost for the member that achieves the reward (so indirectly paying them) OR accrue all the 21p's from every member, divide it by the number of quidco members and so reduce the annual subscription by the reward amount.

Sort of an annual quidco membership discount paid for by ebay.
That way, you're not actually paying to us you're retaining it yourselves BUT it is still of benefit to members.

Seems to me there's only three options;
1. Quidco keep it - you've already ruled this out.
2. Give it to charity - obvious solution.
3. Find a way to give it back to members.
One idea, although it may seem a bit complicated, is to put the excess in to a pot, and every month divide it amongst genuine members who have had transactions where the merchants have only paid out 50%.

dinosteveus - It's slightly delayed as the blog filters out spam. It's now showing above you a few posts.

dinosteveus - The reason they are restricting the amount passed on is because they tried this previously and it spun out of control. So now they are putting a minimum on the amount passed on so that it is not incentivised too much. This isn't just for Quidco, it's for all incentive/loyalty sites. It's not a problem for other sites as they just keep the 21p as their cut, the problem for us is that we pass on 100% to our members and don't take a cut.

payless - Thanks for that option but we've more or less struck it off at this point. I think if we put our minds to it we can come up with something here where everybody wins. Obviously it's something we've thought of but I don't think it would work well in this instance.

I posted a comment and it's gone??
Can anybody explain?

I also think that giving it to charity would be a great idea. As to the charity, you could put up a selection each month and we could vote on who we think the charity of the month should be.

I see no reason why in this one special instance it is not just retained by quidco. I would have no objection, especially if I thought it gave the site a better financial footing, so I can benefit in the long term ( ie less chance of fees being increased / spent on resources chasing claims etc.)

Paul,
I don't understand this.
If ebay will pay you, quidco 35p for every BIN over £3, why are they saying you can only pass on 14p? What do they expect you to do with the other 21p?
Either way, imo, this won't last long, it will cost them too much.
Steve.

Thanks mrme! That is one of the things we've come up with too. I'll update the first post with suggestions as members make them and we can keep discussing in here.

So basically with that suggestion we would keep take the 21p per transaction and send it off to a selected charity each month. I'm assuming it would be best if people could see how much that was? We can check if displaying that amount would be ok...

Give it to charity?