MutualPoints How-To Guide: Issue 3 - Getting the biggest cashback
Humans are essentially creatures of habit so it’s very common for us to find brands we like when shopping online and stick with them through thick and thin. When you are getting paid for shopping though, as you do here at MutualPoints, it literally pays you to do some research and work out how to get the best deal you can.
Cheapest price vs best cashback
Let me explain. Lets imagine you’re buying a widget.
Shop A sells the widget for £100 and offers 5% cashback = total cost of £95
Shop B sells the widget for £98 and offers 3% cashback = total cost of £95.06
So Shop A would actually be the best deal, even though Shop B is cheaper.
Lets use a real example
For the purposes of this experiment I’ll be buying a nice shiny new Apple MacBook Air 1.6Ghz with 80gb hard drive. Doing a search on Kelkoo revealed the following prices:
| Shop | Price | Commission | Total Cost |
| Misco | £1,180.85 | £41.33 (3.5%) | £1,139.52 |
| Amazon | £1,116 | £11.16 (1%) | £1,104.84 |
| PC World | £1,199 | £14.99 (1.25%) | £1,184.01 |
| Dabs | £1,174.98 | £11.75 (1%) | £1,163.23 |
| Dixons | £1,116.00 | £13.95 (1.25%) | £1,102.05 |
| MicroWarehouse | £1,111.20 | £27.78 (2.50%) | £1,083.42 |
| MacWarehouse | £1,133.88 | £28.35 (2.50%) | £1,105.53 |
| Apple Store | £1,199.00 | £23.98 (2.00%) | £1,175.02 |
So you can see from the above table that there are some interesting findings in this simple search alone. For instance on product price alone Amazon and Dixons are both well up there, but they both pay a smaller commission so the total value of the purchase for you is less. Similarly Misco pay the highest commission, which makes their higher purchase price more competitive.
However the winner in terms of value is Micro Warehouse, who have a great starting price and a decent cash back commission for you, so you end up with a great value laptop.
I hope this example will highlight the value in shopping around for the best deal and in taking account of the cashback you receive at MutualPoints when doing so.
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:50 am
Interesting. Be nice if this was something available for all products. That would be really useful, especially for those not so good at maths like me lol