I’m sure you all know the tricks about earning the most cashback from MutualPoints, but how many of you are doubling up on your cashback earning potential? Let me explain how you can earn even more from each purchase you make at MutualPoints. The first thing you can do is double up on your cashback by paying for your purchases with a cashback credit card. These credit cards also reward you for every pound you spend, whether online or in the supermarket. You earn money back on virtually all your shopping, with cashback usually paid once a year as a credit to your statement.

A quick example using the Amex Card

To give you an example of the potential, lets go on an imaginary spree using the American Express card. With the Amex card you can earn all sorts of rewards. Lets break it down before we get going on our spree.

- Signing up for your Amex card via MutualPoints = 1,875 points
- Earn 5% cashback on all purchases with the card

Lets go shopping

Hopefully you can already see the potential with this to earn some serious cash. Lets say you signed up for your Amex card and went off to Tesco Direct to buy a Nintendo Wii. Last time I checked the Wii sports pack costs £179.97. So, lets break down those sums.

Up front cost at Tesco Direct = £179.97
1% cashback from MutualPoints = £1.80
5% cashback from Amex = £9.00
Total cost = £169.17 (a saving of £10.80)

Shop around and save £££

Hopefully you can see from the above example how you can begin to save some serious cash if you shop sensibly, which in these hardened times is something we should all be looking to do.

If you have any other money saving tips we’d love to hear them. Get in touch below if you have any.

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:

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.

It’s frustrating both for you and us when your purchases don’t get tracked or rewards get lost in the ether, so this guide will hopefully ensure that you get all that you’re due. Firstly though a brief introduction to how these things are tracked. Please bare in mind that this guide only deals with shopping, if you want to learn more about the rewardmail side of things head over to issue 1 of our how-to guide.

How MutualPoints tracking works - Cookies 101

The tracking of your purchases made via MutualPoints is done via small text files called cookies. They are downloaded to your computer and allow us to associate you with your purchases, and also to enable you to be logged in to MutualPoints every time you visit and other handy things.

So in order for your purchases to be rewarded with us we need to ensure that these are accurately in place. To do this in Internet Explorer is quite simple as it is set properly by default, but in case you’re unsure follow these steps to check:

1. Click on ‘tools’ in your browser bar, followed by ‘Internet options’ (as below)

2. Once there you need to select the ‘privacy’ option, which will display a screen similar to the one below:

3. Make sure that your settings are set to ‘medium’. That will ensure that you’re kept safe whilst still allowing cookies from respected sites such as MutualPoints to be used.

How MutualPoints Tracking Works - Cookie Length

The other important thing to consider is the cookie length our shopping partners impose on us. All the jargon can be a little confusing so let me try and explain. Most of our shopping partners use 30 day cookie periods, which basically means that from the time you click on your MutualPoints link to visit a shop, you have 30 days in which you can buy your goodies and you will get your reward.

Unfortunately not all shops are born equal, so some will offer more than 30 days, others will offer less. The easiest thing to do to ensure your transaction is tracked is to make sure you click directly from MutualPoints to the shop and make your purchase there and then. That will provide no opportunities for things to get lost in the ether (touch wood).

Hopefully that should provide a basic introduction to how the tracking works here at MutualPoints. As always, if you have any questions don’t hesitate to post them below.

The MutualPoints rewardmails are a great way of earning points, with the majority offering an opportunity to earn a quick and easy 5 points.  With up to 3 emails per day it’s easy to quickly rack up points.

Unfortunately when I’ve spoken to some MutualPoints members a regular theme has been that the emails have stopped arriving, so I’m writing this guide to help you ensure that they are regular visitors to your inbox.

First things first

If you’re getting the emails fine and dandy, the best way to ensure that you continue getting the emails is to add support@mutualpoints.com to your safe list/contacts page then it will ensure that your email provider regards us as friendly.

Reasons why you might not be getting rewardmails

If you’re not getting rewardmail there are a number of possible causes.

1) I’ll get the obvious one out of the way first.  Make sure you’ve checked your account to ensure that you’re down to recieve the emails.  I know it’s silly, but it always pays to double check
2) If you’re registered to receive them, and still aren’t, then it’s probable that our system has stopped sending them.  Let me explain.  To ensure our emails have a good reputation with Hotmail, GMail and so on we want to ensure as many of them as possible are read and enjoyed.  If a large number of emails go unopened or junked we often get put on the email providers blacklist.

So, to ensure this doesn’t happen we operate a three strikes and you’re out policy to guarantee that our emails only go to members that regularly read them.

I can’t vouch for the system being perfect and it’s possible that your account has been entered there by mistake, but I thought I’d explain how the system works so you at least know.

So, what can you do about it?

It’s really easy to set things back to normal so you can rest easy on that score.  If you’d like to start recieving the emails again you can either email support@mutualpoints.com to ask them to reset your settings.  Alternatively you can post a comment below saying that you’d like to reset your settings (please don’t post your personal membership info) and I’ll look into things personally.

Hope that helps.

Adi