Cashbag - Who the hell needs a proper job ?

I came across Cashbag.co.uk in late December whilst surfing for reward sites on Google. To my suprise I was already a member of Cashbag and had apparently joined in August. I must have registered with Cashbag through another reward site or something but i'd never bothered looking at the site and forgot it even existed until finding it by chance in December. As a member of other reward sites Cashbag really appealled to me as it seemed like a much easier place to earn rewards than my usual reward sites such as iPoints, MutualPoints and the shockingly bad SweetCollect.


What is Cashbag and how does it differ from similar sites?
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As previously mentioned Cashbag is an internet reward site where you can earn cashback by shopping online with hundreds of merchants, completing free offers, entering competitions and doing daily recurring clicks. It differs from many other reward sites by aiming as much towards non-online shoppers as it does to online shoppers. A lot of other reward sites such as iPoints generally appear to aim towards the online spenders and it can be hard to build those rewards up just by completing the free things.

Cashbag is much easier to earn high rewards without having to spend a penny. Plus Cashbag offer proper money as Cashback and completion of offers/clicks whereas iPoints and MutualPoints pay out in points which you then have to convert to cash. It seems much more worthwhile to see cash build up in your account rather than points. Also as a member you feel more inclined to take your time completing offers and clicks when the reward for doing so is stated in pounds/pence. As an example, MutualPoints offer 9 points per product search through the Kelkoo and Pricerunner comparison sites which I can never be bothered to complete because 9 points sounds crap. Cashbag offer 5p per Kelkoo seach and 10p per Pricerunner search which is much more encouraging and motivating.

First impressions about Cashbag
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As you've probably guessed my initial impression about this site was pretty good. The rewards seemed very encouraging and the site looked professional, none cluttered, easy on the eye and extremely easy to navigate. One thing bothered me though. Cashbag seemed too good to be true. Some of the offers and rewards appeared much MUCH too generous. One such cashback reward was for Blue Square Casino where to receive £36 cashback all you had to do was join the site and deposit £5. How would that work? Another one which seemed too good to be true was the eBay rewards scheme where for each bid you placed you'd be rewarded with 8p cashback and you were able to do this up to 100 times per day. This would enable you to earn up to £8 per day if you were shrewd enough with your bidding. Madness!!


Because of the one little niggle I had about Cashbag sounding too good to be true I read some reviews of the site before plunging headlong in, though unfortunately not many reviews existed. I also placed a message on a forum but again no-one had heard of the place. If it wasn't for Cashbag looking so professional and even having it's own member forum (which i'll talk about later) I may not have been so willing to jump in the way I did. I've dismissed other sites instantly due to the way they looked.


More about the ways to earn cashback rewards
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Cashbag has over 750 retailers/merchants participating in their reward scheme. Some of the retailers are well-known companies such as Marks & Spencer, Woolworths, Play.com, Comet, Asda and Direct line etc etc but also included are many smaller and less well-known retailers such as GroovyChocolate, eDiets, FragranceBay and GlassesDirect etc etc Hell they even offer cashback if you order online from Dominos Pizza and Cadburys which aint half bad. For online purchases the cashback awarded can be anything from 1% to 10% and even beyond.

Daily recurring clicks which involve completing searches on comparison sites are a permanent fixture on Cashbag and require no money to be spent. Rewards here range from 2p per search to 10p per search. This is a good way to build up your reward account at a steady pace but it can become extremely tedious doing them everyday when there's a much better way to get that reward account shooting right up almost instantly. This leads me nicely on to eBay.

Yes eBay. I loved the offer of 8p cashback per bid placed but unfortunately that offer has now ended. I probably made easily in excess of £100 through placing these eBay bids just during the last few days of december and 3 weeks of January. Shame it had to end as it was an excellent money earner once you worked out which items to bid on and how to go about doing it to the best advantage without ending up winning something (doesn't take brains to work out if you bid on a dvd box set which starts at 1p you can bid it up by 5p each time and make a fortune cashback without having any chance of winning) No problem about the offer ending though as now there's a much better eBay reward. Receive 35p cashback for every eBay item you purchase on a Buy It Now (BIN ) and you can purchase up to 100 BINs each day. You don't need brains to manipulate this reward either. Just purchase items such as ebooks, pictures or information etc which is on a BIN for 1p. If you do this you can earn £35 cashback per day by only having to pay out £1. If I had no life or Son to attend to i'd be purchasing 100 BINs each and every day. It'd make me an absolute fortune. Sod a real job in the real world.

The other rewards offered are in an area of the site called Fast Cash. Here you'll find dozens of offers and competitions which take only a couple of minutes each to complete for cashback rewards spanning from 5p to £3+.

Oh and let's not forget the £2.50 you get just for joining Cashbag and the 25p bonus you'll receive for recommending friends and family through your own unique referal link. For each person who joins using your link you'll also receive an added bonus of £2.25 when each person makes their first payment request. There's so many ways to earn money, is there any wonder I thought it all sounded too good to be true?

How long does it take for rewards to be added to your account?
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Some cashback rewards are added to your account after only a few days as I found out with a few of the Fast Cash offers I completed, but generally it takes between 30 and 45 days for each offer/reward to be validated, verified and added to your account. From what i've gathered from the forums most of the time Cashbag dedicate a certain period each month to upload certain things. For example the eBay rewards tend to be added around the 20-25th each month as one bulk lot.

For the first 4/5 weeks of becoming a member you may become disheartened as your account balance barely moves but stick it out and you'll soon see the cashback coming in thick and fast. Trust me, i've been there. My reward account remained pretty low for most of January but towards the end of the month the eBay rewards were uploaded and my account was shooting up before my eyes. Very pleasing.


What if i've got a problem, question or things go wrong?
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If you find you have a problem such as not receiving a particular reward there's a very simple form to complete. On the left side of the site there's a link called 'submit claim' which takes you to this form which you complete with basic details and claim information. This form then goes off to the claims department who'll look into it for you and aim to sort it out within 30-45 days. They'll apparently also let you know by email the outcome of the claim investigation. I can't give my opinion on this process as i've not had to go through it yet. (fingers crossed I won't ever have to)

For other problems, concerns, worries or just general chit-chat with other Cashbag members there's the Cashbag forum which is a great idea and addition to the site. I visit here every day as a guest and occasionally make a post or two. Cashbag Team Members and Staff even visit and are available to personally answer anything to do with Cashbag, they can even be seen having a bit of light banter in the General Chit-Chat area when they've got nowt better to do. It's rare to find an internet site these days where you can interact with the people who help run it.

The forum also has conversation areas dedicated to non-Cashbag chat such as competitions and freebie/samples/money saving hints, tips and links. I've ordered quite a few free samples from links given by members on this Cashbag forum. It saves me having to visit seperate freebie forums (such as Bobs Free Stuff) when this forum here has it all in one place.


Does Cashbag pay-out then? How long does it take?
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Yes Cashbag does pay out. My initial impression may have been it all sounded too good to be true but I can 100% clarify and promise that Cashbag does sound too good but IT IS true. Though I didn't start using Cashbag until towards the end of December I ended up with nearly £30 in my account at the end of January. Bare in mind that this £30 i'd been credited was mainly due to things i'd completed in December so it wasn't bad going at all. I'm looking forward to them crediting the January eBay bids which they should be processing in the next week or two. I'll have a small fortune coming to me (all being well)

You can cash out when your account reaches £15 which I think is a reasonable level to achieve. At the end of January I requested £25 of my earnings as a Paypal payment. In total all it took was ten days to reach my account. I was impressed.


There must be some bad points, surely?
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Well yeah I gotta admit that sometimes the site is a little slow to load pages. This is especially true when you're trying to view your account balance which seems to take forever. Cookies need to be cleared on your computer very regularly otherwise full rewards may not be received which isn't a big problem, just a minor inconvenience. Also there's a link called Daily Play on the left hand side which is total crap as all it takes you to is a useless Jackpot Joy scratchcard. Another downside could be the amount of spam/junk email you'll receive from offers/clicks completed. Now spam/junk emails don't bother me, it makes me feel loved when I receive hundreds of emails, but I know other people aren't so fond. At least the spam received from Cashbag isn't anywhere near as bad as other sites (SweetCollect instantly sprinds to mind) though a seperate email address would be wise if you're a spam hater.

One thing which really bugs me is having to go through the Cashbag link every time I want to do a BIN on eBay. It takes longer to keep closing the eBay browser down and reopening it through Cashbag for each and every purchase than it would to just keep eBay open and do 100 BINs all in one go. Unfortunately and understandably this can't be helped as eBay need to track all BINs individually and the only way to do this is to go through Cashbag each time. The same rule also applies for other daily multiple offers like the searches on the comparison sites. Whenever you're allowed to do something more than once a day you HAVE to go through the Cashbag link each time.

For non-UK based people there is one huge downside. Cashbag.co.uk is primarily for UK based people. You can still become a member if you live elsewhere but Cashbag can't guarantee you'll receive the rewards offered. I'm sure I read somewhere on the forum that there are some non-UK based members and quite a lot of the rewards do get credited to them though some don't. I'm sure I also read that although Cashbag allow non-UK members to join they don't advertise or encourage it and they will not chase reward claims up for them if they've not been credited to the persons account. This is because the decision to pay overseas members the cashback is up to the individual sites who are offering whatever the cashback is. So if Kelkoo are happy paying overseas members then you WILL be credited, but if Pricerunner only want UK based people you WON'T be credited (those were just two made-up examples) Don't take my word for gospel on the above comments but i'm sure it's more or less correct.


Let's sum up the good points then
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Simple and quick to join and each new member receives £2.50 in their account instantly. Easy and quick to earn good rewards without having to spend a penny. Extensive list of merchants who offer Cashback rewards for buying online. Great referral reward scheme. A community forum where members can chat to each other. Approachable staff who are available to answer questions and queries through the forum. Can redeem your reward money in 3 different ways. Quick to process and send out your reward money.

My overall opinion
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Cashbag.co.uk isn't particularly unique as an internet reward site as various other sites can be found offering more or less the same offers and cashback. Uniqueness doesn't bother or interest me though. What I am interested in is whether a site is pleasurable to be a member of and whether the site lives up to and honours what it states. This is why I love Cashbag. I may only have been an active member since the end of December but it's up there at the top of my favourite sites. I visit every day and probably spend more time using this site than anywhere else online.

These days most of the offers/clicks available are ignored by me as i've become addicted to the eBay rewards. I can't believe how easy it is to earn 35p by spending 1p on some rubbish ebook or an emailed photo of someones rusty old moped. OK so these particular eBay rewards haven't been added to my Cashbag account yet so I can't vouch for the manipulation of the scheme working, but there's absolutely no reason why it shouldn't work. I was credited full cashback for my December eBay bids and I manipulated it back then too. In fact if you read the Cashbag forum it appears everyone is doing the same thing when it comes to eBay. The forum is full of conversations involving members trying to get as much money possible for doing nothing. We're all a bunch of scammers, lazy arses and money loving manipulators at heart. Are you one too? If you are then give Cashbag.co.uk, and especially the eBay reward scheme, a good old try. I'd certainly highly recommend it anyway.