Hello, I have just signed up to my first pay monthly contract with Orange through the Carphone Warehouse online service with a total cashback of £245. Having just read experiences from other customers I am now worried that I will never see this money. I will be sending my 4th phone bill to Carphone Warehouse in March to hopefully receive my 1st cheque. Any tips?

Carrie

Shouldn't be a problem. Just don't forget to claim. They are hoping you do forget,
I am just coming to the end of contract and received my cashback ok. Though they were a month out.
I won't be renewing with cashback. It's a bit of a pain really.

Hi carrie,

I dont mean to alarm you but yes there are a few people who get there money back pretty hassle free, but the majority of people do not get anything back at all.

You asked for any tips so here goes, make sure you read all the small print so you dont miss something you should have done and also very important when sending your bill back send it recorded delivery because the bills have been known to go "missing in the post" which means your network would not recieve the bill in time and alas you will not get your cash back.

My advice for cash back deals is this stay well clear, if the shop like carphone warehouse is offering a cashback deal that would mean that you give them the money they hold the money for a while then give it you back surely if they had every intention of giving you the money back then surely they would not ask you for it in the first place!

Hi All,

Not wanting to alarm, but I have taken out one of CPW beautiful cashback offers back in July 06, and am still waiting for my first cashback cheque. My second becomes due next month and with that I will be demanding a reply as to why they have not then paid me the £120.00 that they will then owe me.

I am intending to take legal advice if they do not pay up as they have in essence signed me up on a worse deal than I was on before I went to see them if the cashback does not materialise, and I believe what they are doing is misleading the customer and mis selling products as I will be £180.00 out of pocket at the end of the contract.

If I had done my homework before signing on the dotted line I would not have taken up the contract, but I was seduced by the low monthly bills due to the offer through what I used to think was a respectable high street retailer, who has turned into what can only be described as a form of legal fraudster.

The only time I will be walking into a Carphone Warehouse Store would be to issue court proceedings,,,, oh and to cancel my telephone package when the 18 months is up.

STANDARD NOTE - If it doesn't all come out I'll try and do a part 2

1. Make sure you choose a reputable and financially sound company to do a cashback deal with. I have had satisfactory experiences with Dialaphone, e2save (a subsidiary of Carphone Warehouse) and Microline.
2. READ THE TERMS & CONDITIONS carefully before you enter into the contract and if you take out a contract follow them to the letter. For example keep to all the imposed deadlines and send your bills or copies by recorded delivery or special delivery or other method EXACTLY as the t&c instruct.
3. The Royal Mail track and trace reply you may get is COME BACK LATER. In my experience this never changes. E-mail RM and say you need delivery details and up to a fortnight later you should receive them. This leaves your schedule tight so do it after a day or so of estimated delivery. With Special Delivery I think you get up to £500 compensation. In my experience RM are good on delivery and bad on reports.
4. If you have a problem get in touch with the company straight away. They can be helpful! With e2save e mail Charles Dunstone, ceo of Carphone Warehouse – the offer should be in every monthly issue of CW’s magazine available in all CW shops. I would suggest that CW is the ‘blue chip’ in this sector of the market. Or go into a CW shop, tell them you’re WORRY and they may be able to reassure you.
5. NOTHING IS FOR NOTHING. My current contract with a Nokia 1100 is for 200 anytime minutes on 2 ½ g (I think that’s what they call the standard network now) and overall stands me in at nothing! So deadlines and dealing with RM are really a small price to pay for this sort of saving.
6. To all those who say that reputable and financially sound companies ‘run off with my money’. I respectfully suggest that you are ill informed. This is my informed understanding as to why CASHBACK is so attractive. A huge percentage of people (from memory more than 50%) simply do not send all their vouchers in. YOU NEED TO BE AN ORGANISED PERSON TO DO CASHBACK.
7. AND FINALLY. There is no such thing as a free phone. There is such a thing as a free* phone. If you want a cheap contract look for the cheapest phone first, like my Nokia 1100, and go from there. You may be interested to know that CW told me all the networks insist on CW/retailers including a phone with every contract they sell! Who needs a new phone with each contract? The er… networks I think. Environmentally friendly…
8. AND FINALLY2. Please remember that all the horror stories I have read on moneysuper have something missing. The OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY! Hello e2save here Fedora, Mr X has given us written permission to discuss his CASHBACK grievance. Before we start did you know that well after the deadline for payments he contacted us and demanded his CASHBACK. We eventually found out he left the country for a year, left his paperwork in the UK and did not contact us until he had been back for a month. We might have been able to make some sort of goodwill gesture but he’d lost all his paperwork. What do you say to that Mr X? I WANT MY MONEY.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The biggest and best tip is to send it recorded post, for the future avoid the independants like Carphone and Phones U you get much better deal if you went to Orange retail shop direct. for example you can go to the above independants and get an Orange contract for 500 min 500 text.a month
You can go into an Orange shop and get 500min and unlimited text saving you a packet. cashback deals are not as good as you might think they are.

Chris

Hi Duncs

I too have taken an 18 month contract with who I thought was the CPW, when chasing my cashback I discovered that I was with a subsidery company called e2save.com. I have written letters and phoned, I have been given different advice everytime I call and as a result I missed my 1st cash back date. I appealed only to be told hard luck...

I am now in the process of issueing a court summons in my local small claims court.

I consider the cashback contract 'Unlawfully restrictive' and it is clearly designed to ensure that the majority of people will fail to meet the terms and conditions, I agree that this a form of 'Legal fraud'.

I have every intention of putting this to a judge for consideration.

My predicted outcome:

1. e2save.com (CPW) will not attend court. The judge will automatically find in my favour, I then demand my money as per the court order. Failure then to pay up means I send in the bailiffs...

2. They will most likely settle out of court. This is most likely the probable outcome.

I think that CPW will not want a judge to confirm that the cashback contract is 'Unlawfully restrictive' or even take a chance of this decision being made, as it would open the flood gates for everyone to take court action against them, potentially costing them thousands.

A clear example currently is the banks, people claiming for excessive charges etc... the banks are not turning up to court.

I have no intention of renewing my contract with CPW or e2save.com. I will never do business with these companies again, and will not be recommending them to familly or friends.

Lots of complaints about these sorts of things, but personally i've had 20 deals with various companies and never missed a single cashback claim. There was only ever one problem, and even that was only a typo on the cheque, and corrected after one phone call.

From the above: how can you not know which company you're signed up with? (no offence). If you keep all the paperwork, this can't happen - you just look back to the printout of the order. Of course, they won't make it easy once you have problems, but that's the nature of the deal. They can only offer them if a large chunk of customers don't follow the conditions.

moneymonster:The biggest and best tip is to send it recorded post, for the future avoid the independants like Carphone and Phones U you get much better deal if you went to Orange retail shop direct. for example you can go to the above independants and get an Orange contract for 500 min 500 text.a month

No shop can offer deals remotely close to the best cashbacks - they'd be out of business in months. You can pay £400-£500 total over the length of the contract from a shop deal, or do it via cashback and pay £0 to £100.

For example I got a free LG Chocolate on Orange £30/month, with 11 months @£2, last month @30, and quidco of £40ish. Sum total for 12 months was £12, I got lots of free minutes, and a nice unlocked phone which I ebayed off for £100 when I got bored of it.

Hi
beware of trusting their small print: 4th monthly invoice isn't as straightforward as you might think: I sent off invoice 4 , got my cheque - eventually - next time invoice 8 - no reply - telephoned - they say it should have been 8th month which in fact is invoice 9 - by the time this delay is sorted out they say I might well be timed out for that one. Also they cannot check up unless you can quote the recorded delivery number of your letter.
I've got 3 phones on this chequeback basis from esave, using the invoice number has been fine up till now, I would guess they have got cash flow or other problems and are resorting to dirty tricks to hang onto the money.

I made my first claim (month four) in August 06, got a text from CPW stating I would have a cheque in 15 days. Despite numerous complaints, I still haven't received my money. I have now resorted to letters.

I would recommend anyone having problems go into a CPW and demand to get screen dumps (as they "can't print a report") of their records and conversations with between you and CPW. You might be surprised that what they have written isn't what you were told by their help desk.

My second claim (month twelve) went in last week and I received a text from CPW saying they have received it and to expect a response in 30 days. What, however do they mean by "response"?

I saw the BBC Breakfast report earlier this month on cashback offers They found that most of the seller of contracts that offer cashback deals try to keep 70 pence in the pound by making it nearly impossible to get your money back. CPW denied this.

I have one more claim in month 18 when it comes time to renew my contract I will go straight to my phone provider.

I will never use CPW again.

Wouldn't be surprised by that 70% figure - although knowing some in the industry, most of the problems are due to people not following the conditions exactly.

Personally, I've got another 2 cheques from CPW companies (onestopphoneshop, and e2save) in the past month. Still never had a failed one, from any company.

Hi Carrie,
I have got the same problem, I have just brought a mobile phone from Virgin and presumed my contract was with them, unfortuantly it was with Carphone Warehouse, which is Talk Talk, and many more companies are attached to these two useless Companies, that make more errors than all the other Companies I have ever been with. For all the people who have praised Carphone Warehouse, on this site then you are very fortunate, but as you can see on this thread there are many people unhappy. And these companies are ripping people off, and I will also seek Legal Action if they try and wrangle out of returning my cashback, and I urge anyone having problems to get intouch with Otelo the phone regulators.

Dear All

There is a general feeling among unhappy CASHBACK users that they wil never use it again and we will go back to those lovely big reputable networks direct. Without the networks' blessings how could CASHBACK possibly have come into being? Networks deserve flak as well. They shouldn't be seen as safe havens from the naughty CASHBACK boys but a PARTNER TO IT. CASHBACK in this form should never, never have come into being in my view. Contracts should have been with the networks with commissions/volume commissions paid to agents. If I was say the networks' boss of CASHBACK I'd be laughing myself silly at how the CASHBACK operators were taking all the flak.

Overall I am not a fan of the way I perceive that many British retail giants operate. I am even less of a fan of the mobile network operators.

I sent my 1st cashback claim in December by special delivery and phoned at the end of January when I hadn't heard anything and got told 'we never received it' despite me having the proof of delivery showing it had been signed for. I have since emailed all the documents and heard nothing, whenever I phone I get told it's being dealt with and it should be with you by this date (never is). I've sent off my letter of complaint today and am going to try from a data protection act point of view in that they have supposedly lost documents in their possession which contain personal data. So sending my recorded delivery doesn't really make much of a difference.