Posted 1 February 2023

CompleteSavings Guide - 10% Cashback on eBay, TrainLine, Tesco + 1282 other companies

Whenever I mention the extra cashback you can get through CompleteSavings on a deal, I get questions about what it is and how to use it. There is a lot of negativity about this company, so hopefully this guide shows a balanced view of the cashback website and how to utilise it to save money instead of losing money.


What is CompleteSavings?

CompleteSavings is a cash back website, similar to TopCashBack or Quidco, but they charge a monthly fee in exchange for guaranteeing a minimum of 10% cash back, they also offer discounts on gift cards. If you make a purchase each month with the retail company you signed-up through (explained below under “How do I sign-up?”), you can reclaim this £15 monthly fee, on top of the cash back, and use the cash back website for free.


How do I sign-up?

If you open their website, you’ll quickly notice there’s no way to register directly on the website. The way to sign-up is to make a purchase with one of the retail companies that work with CompleteSavings - this could be Argos, TrainLine, MyProtein, eBay, Moonpig, etc. After you’ve completed the checkout process, you’ll see a spammy advertisement that looks like “Claim your free £16.57 cash back”. If you click on this, you’ll be able to register for an account.


Why the negativity?

You might have noticed CompleteSavings in the news, and not in a positive way.

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The TLDR: many customers click that “Claim your free £26 cash back” button, don’t read what they’re signing up for and then realise a year later, they’ve been paying £15/month for a service they’re not using. Others sign-up knowing what they're getting into, but don't keep on top of claiming their monthly fee back.

Ultimately, in a similar way to Gyms having a large % of their customer base paying and not using the services - this is how CompleteSavings makes their money and is able to offer such a high percentage cash back offer for active customers - those who sign-up and don’t realise they’re paying monthly, combined with those who do and don’t keep on top of using and claiming the discounts, subsidise the benefits for other members.




How do I save money?

1. Should you sign-up to begin with?If you’re disorganised and won’t keep on top of maintaining this account - don’t sign up. Chances are, you’ll lose money paying and not re-claiming the £15/month fee and not using the benefits.

“Yet research by money-saving app Snoop shows that more than three quarters of subscribers gained nothing or made losses of £97, on average.”

Read that quote 10 times and then decide whether to continue.


2. Choose the best company to sign-up through You can only claim the £15/month refund if you make a monthly purchase through the company you register through. If you register through Argos - you have to make a purchase through Argos every month to get that £15 back.

Pick an item/service you already regularly pay for. Find a company that is supported by CompleteSavings that sells that product/service. Unless you’re a member, you can’t see a list of all of the companies they offer cashback for, but here’s a few ideas (and feel free to ask in the comments which companies are available in the category you're considering):

Train Tickets - The Train Line
Dog food - ZooPlus
Gym Supplies - MyProtein
Tesco - Food shop
UberEats/Deliveroo - Takeaway
Discount Dragon - Overpriced short-dated chocolate
Toolstation - DIY


3. Sign-up
Make a purchase with this company - no minimum spend to trigger the sign-up advert.
You'll see an advert that says "Claim £16.47 cashback on your next purchase"
Click this and follow through the registration process.


4. Set a routine for re-claiming your £15 monthly bonusSet a reminder in your phone, 1st day of the month, to buy your train tickets, dog food, protein, or whatever other products you’ve chosen as your monthly spend. Make your purchase, and submit your receipt to CompleteSavings (this is done by either forwarding the invoice email to their mailbox with some other information, or by filling out the form on their website).


Next Steps

Now you’re setup with this routine, you can use CompleteSavings for free, as every month you receive your £15/month membership fee refunded to you, as well as 10% cash back on the regular purchase of the train tickets, or other purchase, you’re now making on the 1st day of the month. Now - how do you maximise the benefits?


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1. Welcome Reward - When you sign-up via a retailer, you'll be offered a sign-up bonus if you make a second purchase within a set period, with the same retailer.
2. 10% Cashback - This is where most of your earnings will come from. A minimum of 10% cashback, up to £250 per month. They run different promotions through the year to increase these rates, currently OnBuy is 15%, eBay has been 15% and 20% before. 17% at The Body Shop currently. There is 1285 retailers to choose from covering every category.
3. Monthly Bonus - This is covered in the setup process above - this shouldn't be an after-thought, make sure you schedule doing this.
4. Gift Cards - You get 20% off 'Top Offers' - this includes Argos, One4All, New Look and River Island, up to £100 per month combined total of all in this category. You also get a standard discount on a long list of other companies gift cards, but the offers aren't anything special - 3% Asda, 3% B&Q, 4% Boots etc.
5. In-Store Cashback - This is one I haven't tried. The cashback rates for these aren't all above 10%, but a very low selection. Yo Sushi - 10%, MattressMan - 5%, etc.
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  1. justin89's avatar
    Can't seem to get eBay to trigger for myself too. Ended up going via Trainline too... Seems like I'll have to buy a train ticket each month now lolz.
    tommytbone1's avatar
    Never seen the eBay one either. But Trainline is fine for a cheap turnaround.

    E.g: child ticket for
    Stourbridge Junction
    To
    Stourbridge Town
    Less than £2 with fee Inc
  2. Jonwillis's avatar
    I've got it come through eBay now I've got to find something to buy every month.

    The FAQ did say any retailer, but once signed up it explicitly says only the one you signed up through. I was hoping to do Argos click/collect orders to bypass it
    Pe_te's avatar
    Author
    They don’t make it clear enough. A few years back they decided to swap from any retailer to only the one you sign up via, but even now, they still haven’t corrected many parts of the website.
  3. tommytbone1's avatar
    Signed up recently too. It's brilliant. First time through discount dragon, which I found restrictive due to their (DD) minimum £25 spend per order. It was too much expenditure to get the monthly bonus. So cancelled that and signed up under my missus via the Trainline. I'll be buying a £2 train ticket each month to claim the bonus.

    I spend a load on ebay, so 12% is amazing on top. Especially with nectar promos. Used it on a £100 Sainsbury's shop this week too. Brilliant
  4. Van1973's avatar
    Thank you for posting this - very useful. Been thinking we should sign up for this for a while now.

    We make regular purchases from ebay but never see the "spammy advertisement" to sign up - I assume as we've normally linked from Topcashback so that advert is disabled?? Will complete a low price ebay purchase without TCB to see if the advert is triggered.
    Pe_te's avatar
    Author
    I’d love to know if you find out.

    I remember seeing it on eBay after a purchase via CompleteSavings. I assume every retailer has this embedded into their checkout somewhere as they’ll probably get paid for each sign-up, or they get the benefit of the on-going spend.

    I’ve seen it on TrainLine, MyProtein, etc.

    I’ve only seen it in a web browser as well, never on a mobile app.

    I’ll grab a screenshot next time I see it to add to the post. (edited)
  5. newbie68's avatar
    Very useful information. The only one that stands out for me is Tesco. Do they change the offers. For example could they end the cashback on Tesco at any time?
    Pe_te's avatar
    Author
    Yes. Tesco is a new one.
    There’s a couple that have disappeared either temporarily or permanently.

    They used to allow you to reclaim that £15/month with any purchase from any retailer - so I’d assume they’d default your account to that if the retailer you register through is removed.

    Worst case, it’s quite quick to cancel and then re-open another account with a different company as your monthly purchase. The T&C says 6 months gap, but they didn’t stop me signing up after a 3 month gap when I closed my MyProtein tied account and opened one via TrainLine for my commute.
  6. LEB123's avatar
    Thanks for this, I've been on the fence about it for a while. I've just signed up and for the welcome reward I've sent the details for the original purchase I made on ebay is this correct?
    Pe_te's avatar
    Author
    I think you have to make a second purchase to claim the welcome bonus. See how they respond though - if you get away with it, even better.
  7. slostp's avatar
    Tesco order is working for anyone? I did not receive any signup link after tesco purchase.
  8. justin89's avatar
    Does anyone know if you can use credit card to purchase the gift cards on complete-savings gift cards? it used to go through fine but some sites which i buy gift card now somehow lead to credit card company treat it as a cash withdrawal instead of a retail purchase.
    leeanne123's avatar
    I've not bought any in a while, but i've never had issues paying via Barclaycard
  9. justin89's avatar
    Cheers will give it another go and see what happens
  10. sc03tye's avatar
    Have used these guys a few times in the past, going to rejoin again, hopefully eBay are still an active reward?

    Just checked the terms and looks like from how I read this, that you can claim the monthly fee back via ANY member, like I’m used to. Unless others know different?
    50362223-9cWpy.jpg
    Pe_te's avatar
    Author
    eBay is still available, temporary increase to 12%.

    The monthly bonus used to be claimable on a purchase from any retailer. I re-opened an account two years ago and got rejected for a monthly bonus:

    "We recently received a request for your Monthly Bonus. Unfortunately, we have not been able to process it at this stage.

    Upon joining you were offered a Monthly Bonus for a repeat purchase each month with Myprotein.

    If you have accidentally used the wrong receipt, please simply sign in to the Complete Savings website and add the details of the correct transaction."


    I pointed out the page for every retailer still says (and still does today..), "Claim your monthly bonus after this purchase", and the T&C don't have any mention of this. I didn't get any response and decided it wasn't worth fighting it.
  11. TristanDeCoonha's avatar
    I have only ever had it come up once, and by the time I found info to see if it was worth it, my window had closed. It might be safe to say that you will have to turn off all of your security, pop & ad blockers, and similar. Perhaps use a one off browser. I have never had it come up with Ebay, and that is not due to TCB as I often forget that. Perhaps there is a minimum spend to trigger.
    That is a bad rule that it has to be the same retailer as your sign up. How many people buy train tickets for example, every month. It would be useful to know which sites sell the cheapest stuff (Ebay?) to guarantee not having to pay your fee.
  12. EdenSB's avatar
    Is there a minimum amount of months? So for example, anything stopping someone from signing up, claiming the discount in month one and submitting the receipt, then closing the account and not having to pay a monthly fee after the first month?
    Pe_te's avatar
    Author
    I don’t believe there’s a minimum. You can close it whenever you want. There was a deal on here a while back when they had an increased upfront bonus that was doing this.

    There’s a 6 month cooling off period to open a new account, although I don’t think it’s really enforced as I managed to open a new one sooner. I was trying to swap my monthly purchase from MyProtein onto TrainLine (edited)
  13. jco83's avatar
    I used to order from Papa John's a lot, and remember would get the pop-up after ordering, saying something like "get £16.xx back". I just always assumed it was a scam!
  14. Jonnybegood88's avatar
    I've done a couple of ebay purchases today but not getting the link to sign up. Any tips for this?
  15. TristanDeCoonha's avatar
    The problem I had with Complete Savings is that they refuse to operate your account if you give them what they stupidly classify as a throw away email address. You cannot give them a unique address (you can then see who's responsible for the spam), but insist on one that is active elsewhere and is on a database. However the script readers on customer service have no idea, are utterly useless with any issue, and tell you that if you can't sort it out then come back in 10 days.
    My account was suspended 3 times in the first month without explanation. I even verified myself, and answered emails from the account they didn't believe existed. I never got around to paying my first fee, and only got my initial payout. (edited)
    Jonwillis's avatar
    I'm having some issues with automated replys, they keep asking for a missing claim for the retailer, order number and amount. In the end I took screenshots and annotated with arrows+labels and they still came back asking for the same data. The customer service is none existent, I'll try and persist with it but it's been less than a month and I'm getting ready to cancel. (edited)
  16. cheekster's avatar
    Thinking of trying out Complete Savings for ebay purchases but I can’t say I ever recall having seen the pop-up after making a purchase to join. 

    Had anyone seen one recently and if so was it only whilst using a web browser as opposed to the ebay mobile app?

    Is there anything stopping you from visiting ebay via TCB or Quidco to earn cashback from either of those sites and also forwarding your confirmation order email to Complete savings afterwards as from everything I’ve read it doesn’t state that you have to visit the retailer via a Complete Savings link on their website?

    Thanks.
    Jonwillis's avatar
    I've seen on mobile and PC. I place an order every month, whilst my friend didn't see it.

    Complete savings require you to go via their link, so you either get them or another cashback website. They are usually 10-12% sometimes 20%. Topcashback is nearly always 1% but can be 20% on black Friday. I've got £378 since December using complete savings in cashback, also saved money on giftcards

    The only exception is the £15 monthly bonus, you just email them a receipt regardless of how you accessed eBay (edited)
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