It has recently been brought to our attention that some members are not receiving rewards for using the Buy Central comparison service.

We would like to thank those who have informed us, and would like to let you know that our technical team have mounted their trusty steeds and are racing to your rescue in full shining armour. We expect to have the problem fixed very soon.

Don’t worry, you won’t lose any points for using Buy Central, but our customer services team are ready to help you should you continue to have problems.

Once the problem has been fixed we shall contact you through our Blog to let you know that the gremlins have been removed.

The MutualPoints Team

Long had it been that ‘Pricerunner’ gave you all the chance to locate the best prices for thousands of products. Alas, they no longer bless our wonderful pages. But, do not worry for there are others who can provide you with the best prices on thousands of products.

We would like you to allow our good friends Kelkoo and Buy Central fill your world with shopping opportunities to find the best price, save money and be rewarded.

These two comparison sites of greatness can be found in both our ‘Free Rewards‘ and ‘Information and Services‘ sections.

You’ll receive 1 point per Kelkoo search (Max 2 searches per day), and 7 points per search on Buy Central (Max 5 searches per day)

Remember though that in order to be rewarded you must search for an item and click one of the results.

Happy shopping everyone!

The MutualPoints Team

What would you say if we told you that you could get a huge amount of cashback, and in quite a few cases, even redeem £20 just for taking up one offer? Wow, fantastic or maybe even a prolonged ‘Ooooo’ or ‘ahhhh’?

There’s nothing better than getting what you need or want and getting some cash to shove
back in your wallet. So, just to make sure that you don’t miss out on these incredible and
extravagant rewards, here some retailers that achieve high cashback greatness:

Dial-A-Phone: : Get a handset on contract and earn £30 cashback
Virgin Media: : Sign up to get top notch entertainment and more and earn £32 cashback
AA Car Insurance: Buy your insurance with a 12.5% online discount and earn £35 cashback

You’ll find these and more throughout the site, but we’ll be listing a few on the homepage on a regular basis, so go on and get cashback crazy!

The MutualPoints Team

Firstly, allow us to apologise for the absolute lack of blogging over the last few months. How dare we leave you just before Christmas when we could have informed in our blogs of all the fantastic deals that were around at the time? For that, we have given ourselves a firm slap on the wrist and sat in the corner of a room facing the wall with no supper!

To make it up to you all, we’ll be posting regular updates to you letting you know about all the great things we’ll be getting up to as time goes by, making sure that you don’t miss out.

So, without further ado, allow us to introduce to you our summer holiday 2009 page giving you the opportunity to book yourself a stunning holiday during the summer months. You’ll find all the top retailers like Expedia and Thomas Cook who can help you book that ultimate dream getaway. It’s also a good place to search if you’re looking for something romantic for a Valentines weekend to whisk your loved one away to an unknown destination to wine and dine.

We hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive us and hope that you book yourself a wonderful dream holiday.

The MutualPoints Team

The month of August sees summer in full swing and with the Olympics capturing everyones attention, especially with our athletes in such supreme form the August stats are ripe for an upset or two.

Most popular search queries

August’s search queries produced some interesting figures, with our Doris Day fans (at least I hope there’s more than one of you!) still defying all logic, rising one further place into a incredible 4th spot, pushing perennial favourites Kelkoo down into 5th. In true Top of the Pops style here are this months leading queries, with their movement on last month included in brackets.

1. pricerunner (-)
2. amazon (+1)
3. eBay (-1)
4. doris day (+1)
5. kelkoo (-1)
6. tesco (+1)
7. argos (-1)
8. play.com (+2)
9. coupons (ne)
10. john lewis (-1)

So, what to make of those. Pricerunner is holding firm at the top of the charts. Doris Day continues to recieve an alarming number of searches from you.  Coupons meanwhile make a new entry into the chart, reflected by the growing popularity of coupons both in the wider web and on the MutualPoints website.

Top of the Shops

1. Pricerunner (-)
2. Kelkoo (+2)
3. Expedia (-1)
4. nPower (ne)
5. E.On (+4)
6. Virgin Media (-)
7. Vodafone (ne)
8. British Gas (ne)
9. Scottish Power (ne)
10. Tesco.com (-3)

Pricerunner and Kelkoo are popular favourites so it’s no surprise to see them towards the top. The big theme of the month however has been energy.  I blogged on the 21st about the predicted rise in energy prices, and thousands of you have taken the opportunity to switch suppliers.  nPower, E.On, BG and Scottish Power all enjoyed strong months as you all jostled for the best deals over these difficult months.

So that’s our take on the month that was August. As always we’d love to hear from you so let us know your thoughts below.

This week we had the pleasure of adding a stonking great website to the MutualPoints stable - Jackpot City.  They’re one of the more established online gaming websites, having been established back in 1998, and when you sign up and deposit £27 you get a whopping 4,500 points from us.

About Jackpot City

Jackpot City Online Casino offers 2 versions of the online casino: the Lite Casino, which is a free download; and the Flash Casino, which does not require any downloads. The Lite Casino file will be downloaded to your desktop, as a default location.

Registering

Registering on the site is a doddle.  The Jackpot City site also has a handy How to Play section, making it easy for beginners to start playing! The How to Play tutorial serves as a step-by-step guide, teaching you how to download and install the software, how to log-on, how to deposit and withdraw money, and how to play the online casino games.

The Incredible free £500 sign up bonus

What’s more, Jackpot City give you £500 for free, just for signing up.  Yes, that’s right, £500.  For free!  You can use this pot to do your thing, and any winnings you earn from this you get to keep.  Bargain.

To sign up simply click on the Jackpot City Casino link here.

Back in June I wrote about how energy prices were predicted to rise by as much as 40% this winter, with the prices set to be risen in August. True to form E-On this morning announced that they are set to raise gas prices by 26% and electricity prices by 16% tommorrow, the 22nd August.

Predictably the price hike was blamed on an increase in wholesale costs, which E-On said had risen by more than 51% since February, for the latest rise - the second in a year.

EDF Energy and British Gas raised their prices for domestic customers in July, and others are expected to follow suit. We advised back in June to shop around, and that advice still applies today.

- MoneySupermarket - Probably the largest utility comparison site out there, you earn 1,500 points for a completed comparison when you go via MutualPoints.

- USwitch - Not quite as well known as MoneySupermarket (and the reward isn’t as high either at just 750 points) but the moral of this particular story is to shop around, so it always pays to use a few sites to see which offers you can find.

Hopefully shopping around will enable you to soften the blow a little and approach winter with a little more confidence financially.

It seems that fewer and fewer of you are happy waiting for the man, and are flocking to the Internet to get your pills and lotions. Twenty-five per cent of online shoppers in the UK either have or would be prepared to buy prescription drugs over the web, according to a survey by WebCredible.

The survey had some interesting findings, perhaps the most startling is that more people would buy prescription drugs online than would buy cars or garden sheds. The survey ranked the ten things surfers would most likely buy online, and drugs came in at #5.

The research polled more than 1,200 visitors to Webcredible’s site between June and August this year. Books (84%) and clothes (63%) were revealed as the items that most consumers are prepared to purchase or have purchased online while, perhaps unsurprisingly, diamond rings (11%) and pets (7%) proved the least likely online purchases.

Do you buy drugs online?

There have been many scare stories abound of people being scammed when shopping for medicine online and it’s a practice that has to be taken with care. Thankfully we have some respectable retailers on MutualPoints to help guide you in the right direction.

Pharmacy2U are one of the leading brands in the online healthcare market and stock a wide range of medicines, health and beauty products, fine fragrances and exclusive skincare ranges at reduced prices. You earn 4% cash back on each purchase.

Nature’s Best are a more natural alternative, stocking a range of vitamins, minerals and nutritional supplements. The 6% cash back you earn is a nice stirrup too and is sure to raise your spirits.

We have a few other retailers in our health & beauty section. As always it would be good to hear from you. Are you one of the 25% that shops for drugs online? Do you have any safety concerns about it?

DIY retailer Wickes has joined MutualPoints in a love of all things user generated since it launched consumer ratings and reviews a few months ago. The company revealed that during the four month trial of their reviews service they recieved more than 1,500 reviews covering almost 800 products on the Wickes site.

The retailer, which wanted to create customer conversation about products to enhance sales and harness word of mouth online, says it is happy with results of the trial and customer feedback will now become a permanent feature of its site.

The figures show similarities with the reviews section here at MutualPoints. Since launching a few months ago we’ve had nearly 500 reviews posted by you all. Rewards also help get you all typing. Here at MutualPoints we offer £100 each month for the best review each month, whilst at Wickes they’re offering £10 off of the next purchase for each review written.

Have you used the Wickes review section yet? Indeed have you used the MutualPoints review section? Always good to hear your views.

Two MutualPoints favourites, Play.com and Cineworld are teaming up to offer visitors to the Play.com website plus thousands of Cineworld ‘Unlimited’ members the chance to buy lots of great movie related clothing.

Members of Cineworld’s Unlimited club, who pay a monthly fee in return for unlimited admission to their local screens, will be offered a 20% discount on clothing — such as Batman and Star Wars t-shirts — and a chance to win computer hardware.

The offer is on for a limited period of one month, and includes things like Joker t-shirts and Top Gun hoodies.