You may well see a lot of different words around the site which are unfamiliar, we’ll try and give you a breakdown of some of these below:
Affiliate Network - An affiliate network acts as an agent between websites, known as affiliates (such as TopCashback) and a merchant affiliate program (such as Tesco.com). The affiliate network is involved with the tracking and payment of transactions.
BACS – Stands for ‘Bankers Automated Clearing Services’ where money is paid directly from one bank account to another. This is one of the methods which you are able to receive your cashback payouts by.
Cashback – The advertising commission which we receive for your purchases is awarded to your account as ‘cashback’ which is shown in pounds and pence. Some sites take a cut of your cashback, but TopCashback guarantees to pay at least 100% of this back to you.
Claim - A claim is a cashback dispute that can be lodged when you have reason to believe that you have not received the cashback expected or have not received this in its entirety. You can claim against cashback that has incorrectly tracked, has been declined or has failed to track.
Click Records – When you sign in to your account and you click through to a merchant, a record of this is made. The click record is used to match the cashback to your individual account. If a click is not recorded, unfortunately you will not receive the cashback.
Commission – This is another term for ‘cashback’, referring to the amount of money paid to TopCashback as a result of a purchase.
Cookies - In order to track your purchases, small chunks of information (known as cookies) are stored on your computer, they simply store tracking information so that when you visit a store via TopCashback, any purchases made will result in the store reading this information. The store will then send us information about your purchase, at which point we can then credit your account.
Declined Transaction – Your cashback has not been paid as the merchant has deemed that the purchase was not valid or you did not meet the terms of the offer.
Enquiry – An enquiry is a support ticket raised for the attention of our customer services team. This can relate to a query/question regarding a member’s account, a feature of their account or the merchants/offers featured on TopCashback.
Fairplay Policy - We talk about this quite a bit – and it might sound like just words – but we really do our best to be fair with everyone and obviously treat you, our members, with complete respect. Our whole ethos of doing our best for everyone, including our members, merchants and our staff has become summarised as our Fair Play principle – or to put it another way, we stick to the sentiment of “Do as you would be done by”
Incorrectly Tracked Transaction - A transaction which has been tracked to your account but is showing differently to the cashback which you were expecting. It is worth noting that a lot of merchants do not pay cashback on the VAT element or delivery charges of an order so this can cause discrepancies.
Marketing Channel – The agent or website which has been identified as referring the sale to a merchant. It is essential to click through from Top CashBack and purchase immediately and wholly online to ensure that TopCashback is identified as the referrer for this sale. For example, if you use a saved insurance quote, a comparison site may be credited as the marketing channel for your transaction and so we will not receive the cashback for this to pass on to you.
Status (of Transactions) - When you click through from TopCashback and make your transaction on a merchant’s site, your action is tracked by the merchant and reported back to us (along with your uniquely identifiable code – letting us report your transaction to you). When the transaction is first reported, it will be given a ‘Pending’ status. This means that the retailer has tracked your transaction and indicated the Cashback to be awarded. They haven’t yet, however, confirmed that all criteria has been met or that they will actually send the Cashback. After a certain number of days, your transaction will normally switch to ‘Confirmed’ status. This means that the merchant has pretty much agreed that all is fine with your transaction and your cashback will be forthcoming at some point. At this point, the merchant may not yet have been invoiced by their affiliate network (so your cashback will certainly not have yet reached us). At a later date still (sometimes as much as 90 days later), the affiliate network will have invoiced the merchant and should have received your cashback. At this point your transaction will switch to ‘Payable’ status. Once your transaction has switched to Payable status, you can claim your cashback at any time. In other words, you can ask for us to send your cashback to you at any time after your transaction has become Payable.
Tracking – Tracking refers to the process of your purchase at a merchant being recorded and reported back to TopCashback. A ‘tracked’ transaction indicates that we have a record of a purchase being made through TopCashback.
Transaction – A purchase made through a merchant having clicked from TopCashback. Often your cashback earnings may be referred to as transactions, yet the cashback is actually earned as a result of your transaction (purchase).
Voucher Code - Voucher codes, also known as discount codes or promotional codes, are entered during the checkout process to apply a discount before you pay for an item. These work differently to the cashback process, which is awarded as a result of a purchase. Voucher codes published and approved by TopCashback can be used in conjunction with earning cashback but codes sourced elsewhere may affect your eligibility to receiving the cashback and may cause your cashback to be declined. Voucher codes are featured on the Discount Codes tab for each merchant.
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