In my recent review of Topcashback (TCB) I mentioned that I’d never had a tracking issue that resulted in cash back not posting to my account. I guess I tempted fate because I recently had ~$300 in pending cash back suddenly disappear (for those wondering it was all cashback from this booking.com promotion). I tried to reach out via social media to get the issued resolved (which is my favorite way of speedily fixing almost any customer service issue) but I didn’t even get a response let alone a solution.
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How To Lodge A Missing Cash Back Claim
TCB doesn’t make it easy to find the page to lodge a missing cash back claim, the easiest way to get started is by clicking here. Then click “lodge missing cashback claim”. You then need to follow the prompts, Topcashback asks for a lot of information for each claim (e.g merchant name, date of when you clicked through, time of when you clicked through
Negatives To The Claiming Process
- Takes a significant amount of time for each claim. I definitely wouldn’t bother if it was for a small amount of cash back, but for me it’s about the principal in most cases. I timed myself and it took at least 5 minutes per claim and that’s when I was doing multiple claims and had the process down to a T.
- Lodgement section of the website is slower than the rest. I’m not sure if this is maliciously done or not, but the lodgement pages on TCB take significantly more time to load than the rest of the site. This makes the whole process even slower.
- You can only make one claim at a time. I’m not entirely sure why I can’t just send topcashback a list of reference numbers and do multiple claims at once. It’s a real hassle making multiple claims and a time suck (see above).
- It takes 4-8 weeks to find out the outcome of your claim. At the moment I’m stuck in a hard place, I want to make more bookings to take advantage of this $14 cashback offer, but I have no idea if TCP/Booking.com is actually going to honor it (it seems to be working fine for my girlfriends account but not mine).
My Final Thoughts
All of my claims are currently in the pending stage. I’ll update this post as the claim moves along in the process. At the moment I’m left with a sour taste in my mouth, I always make sure I read the fine print and stick to the rules of a promotion.
TCB doesn’t make me feel secure in knowing that I’ll get the cash back promised if I hold up my end of the bargain. I get the impression that they’ll pay me if booking.com agrees to pay them. I can understand this stand point as they don’t have any built in margins, unlike other cash back sites.
At the moment I’m less likely to use TCB for my own purchases and as a result less likely to recommend it to my readers. That said I don’t have a lot of experience filing missing cash back claims with their competitors so this could be an entirely naive view point. In all likelihood I’ll continue to use TCB and consider how likely the merchant is to pay out on a particular deal, rather than how likely TCB is to have my back in any dispute that pops up.
For those of you you’ve filed a claim before, were you successful? How long did it take? Were you more or less likely to use TCB as a result? Share your experiences in the comments section below.Â
