News: DGM go into administration

If you use cashback sites (as you should!) when purchasing items online you might interested to hear that DGM, one of the major tracking networks used by most UK cashback sites, has recently gone into administration. What this means is that we might start seeing a lot of retailers dissapear from cashback sites and money you currently have pending may not be paid. This is big news and could cause lots of problems in the industry. So far TopCashBack is the only cashback site to address the issue and this is what they had to say.

Hi,

We wanted to keep you informed of an important event which has happened very recently. On Friday 16 July 2010, one of the major tracking networks (DGM), which is used by all major UK cashback sites, was put into administration. This is obviously a major issue for our business and potentially for our members, as it makes it very likely that a large amount of cashback commission will not be forthcoming for retailers who operated via DGM.

To explain in a little more detail, all of the retailers on cashback sites have their commissions tracked and invoiced by various different tracking networks. It is these tracking networks that then pass over the commission to us – at which point we pass all of it over to you as cashback. This particular tracking network runs many programs – so many of the merchants accessible via cashback sites would have been tracked and billed via DGM.

At Top Cashback, it is important to us to always remember our Fair Play policy and put our members first. We have therefore decided, in line with our Fair Play policy, that it is more important to look after our members than it is to maintain certain other non-essential expenditures.

We have therefore identified marketing budget which we can use in this instance, to make sure that none of our members lose out as a result of this affiliate network going into administration. In other words, where due you can expect your affected transactions to proceed through to Payable status as normal. If you were due to receive a bonus Top Cashback Top-Up on these transactions (up to 10% extra), then that should also be included as normal.

Remember, Top Cashback is here for the long-haul to provide the best possible service and cashback deals to our members. We work with many other tracking networks and we have already been working to move the affected merchants over to our other partner networks. In other words – it is business as usual!

In return, we would like to ask just one favour of you, our members (which we would see as you Playing Fair with us ).

We simply ask you to talk about this gesture and our site on forums and with your friends, neighbours, colleagues and, well, anyone who will listen! As mentioned, we will have less budget left for our marketing as a result of this gesture – which could put us at a disadvantage compared to our competitors… So wouldn’t it be great if we felt that our members had supported us in return and made sure that we didn’t lose out – both in the short term and in the months to come as we build up towards Christmas.

Thanks to all of our members for your loyalty and for continuing to recommend Top Cashback.

Best wishes
The Top Cashback Team