FAQ
If its *that* easy to earn double your money or get games *this* cheap – why isn’t everyone doing it? There must be *some* risk?!
Hand on my heart… There is very little risk indeed. The common misconception is that if I buy 5 copies of a game at £4.99 in order to get £12 (each) worth of credit for it at Argos – if they refuse to give me the credit I’m out of pocket (5x £4.99) nearly £25. Wrong. If any of the loops fail (usually due to being store specific and shirty managers) then all you have to do is return the product to where you bought them. From the ‘goods’ arriving on your doorstep (if ordered online) or buying them instore, if you cant move them on to your designated ‘offloader’ then just return them to the source for a full refund. Worse case scenario you will be out of pocket the £2 postage to return them – but a lot of the online retailers nowadays offer free returns – and if bought on the highstreet, the only loss is potentially the petrol or the 60p it costs to park.
There really is no real ‘risk’ with 99% of the deals. Exit Strategy will be outlined at most points – but its no unheard to even ‘cut and run’ by dumping your goods on eBay (might be a slimmer profit then the desired loophole, but still a profit!)
Some loopholes wont have an exit strategy (and we’re talking less than 1%) such as deals for a super cheap subscription to a magazine on the promise of a cheap game to keep (or sell). If you buy the subscription for £20 (like we did with our “Dead Island” loophole) and you get the game (free) but the market drops and the game is only worth £5 (unlikely) then yes – you have subscribed to the magazine. You may be able to ring and cancel as a lot have 7-day-cooling off periods etc, but the chances of a game plummeting that much that quickly is unlikely (as the game in question was still *über* expensive in all the stores at the time).
I like the idea of this CashBack stuff – can you tell me a little bit more? Is it risky? Is it guaranteed?
CashBack is genius. Its basically money back (not instant) on purchases that 99.9% of the time – you were going to make anyway. The way CashBack works is that when buying games (lets say Play.com for example) you go to TopCashBack and click THROUGH to Play.com via there link. That tells TopCashBack that you have visited Play.com on that day (at that time). Then Play.com confirm that on that day – you made a purchase (if you did of course). TopCashBack track this purchase for you and you have an ‘accounts’ page at TopCashBack to keep track of all this. Once its tracked, you have to wait a few days for it to be ‘confirmed’ this is the period of time that needs to alapse so that Play.com know you haven’t returned the product (i.e. you don’t qualify for CashBack) or that your card wasn’t refused or something. Then once confirmed, TopCashBack wait for Play.com to send them their commission – then once they have it – they give it you! (This isn’t automatic, you have to check you accounts page and check to see if your CashBack has gone ‘Payable’ meaning TopCashBack are ready to pay you!)
The process is not always a 100% guarantee – so never buy something *just* because of the CashBack – consider it a brucey bonus treat!
You can read our CashBack section here – and give yourself a UK Exclusive £2.50 Sign Up Bonus too!
I’ve signed up – done some loopholes (thank you!) but I haven’t seen the CashBack come through? Have I done something wrong?
Firstly – did you go through the TopCashBack link when buying the goods? If so, then it might be something to do with your computer. Some computers are ‘too’ clever for CashBack. They might have blockers that disable the tracking. Or, you might have problems with ‘cookies’ (they’re like little internet footprints). If this might be the case – then go to the TopCashBack Test Tracking page here >>> Test My Tracking @ TopCashBack.co.uk
This will help diagnose your computer. If the tracking seems to be working – then get in touch with TopCashBack via their Enquiry system – and they will check everything for you.
I dont really want to be stuck with £100s of Gamestation Credit – as I only buy a few games. What’s the best plan for me?
There’s plenty of options for reaping the rewards on LoopHoler.com. For example, whenever we find ourselves with either a pocket full of CEX Credit Notes – we often bolster our BluRay collection or treat ourselves to a phone upgrade/free iPad2 etc (as your credit for trading games etc is universal instore – and CEX sell pretty much anything that has an electrical current!)
If its Gamestation credit we find ourselves drenched in – then you can ‘Buy’ £10 gift cards (or any denomination) and use these as quick win Christmas/Birthday presents – or even sell them on eBay for a small reduction in worth. We would have only paid half price for them, so if you can get £8 for a £10 card (after fee’s postage) then you’re still £3 up per £10 (30% return is not to be sniffed at!)
The credit doesn’t expire, so you can of course sit on it and either build it up (countless times we have ended up just buying a new console for the crack of it!) or wait for the next big release game that you want!
If I do a massive deal of buying then trading at Gamestation – can I really earn CashBack AND Elite Points?
Yes – of course. They are two separate entities – so they are treated as such! Gamestation offer ‘Elite Points’ on any purchase OR trade. So when you trade anything to them (even PriceMatched) they will give you an additional 2.5% back in Elite Points for you to spend. Then the CashBack we receive for buying the games (from wherever we end up buying them) is rewarded to us for the purchase. So basically its like Double CashBack.
That means that even if we aren’t buying for profit (why would we ever do this?!) but we could buy a game for £10 and get (for example) 2.5% CashBack – then trade it into GameStation and receive 2.5% in Elite Points. So we pay £10 – get £10 store credit at Gamestation but in the process of doing this we get 25p in our CashBack account – and a further 25p in Gamestation points. So that’s 50p for doing nothing. That’s just on 1 game for £10 – can you imagine how much money/credit/elite points we’ll earn after a few cheeky loopholes? It soon mounts up (we have receipts to prove it!)
I’m dubious – why would you be sharing this information if its this easy to make profit in my favourite stores?
True. There is in fact nothing in it for us to tell you this information. We simply share out of pleasure (if anything, its run at a loss – as the site servers cost £50 a year!) *BUT* We do get awful lot of karma come our way for helping people out get the games/goods they want for cheap! There are plans to affiliate ourselves with sites in the distant future. This means that anyone who doesn’t have/want a CashBack account – by using us – they will in fact give us the 1% (etc) commission their purchase. This obviously will go towards the aforementioned server costs. But this is in the future – there is no immediate plans to turn this into a cash camel.
Don’t get us wrong – we’re not martyrs. 9/10 we have already done the deal (or in the process of doing it) by the time we post it (as we don’t want to post duff information). There’s plans to include receipt scanning into the posts so A) you know the LoopHoler is *NOT* full of nonsense and B) You can have an extra slither of evidence/proof to use against the retailer if they decide to play it hardball.
I’ve tried following your LoopHoles, but the manager at [Insert Shop Name Here] keeps giving me grief. How do you *make* them do it?
There’s no easy way around this. There will be managers that are douches. This much is true. But all these stores have a lot of different managers on a lot of different shifts. The best way to do it is to build a rapport with the stores you are using. On the plus side, you are doing all this hard work (and by hard work, I mean clicking on stuff on the internet and waiting by your letter box for it to arrive) in order to get credit at their store – so you WILL become a customer for them. Buy your games (with your ill-gotten funds) and chat them up, talk to them, be friendly, ask their advice, ask them their views of the game you are buying. Basically, butter them up. Be their best friend – because best friends let their friends get away with it!
If they continue to be super arsey towards you – then reduce the goods. They might start waiving made-up-rules in your face like “you cant trade more than 1 of each title at one time” – if so – do it! Trade 1 in – then give it ten minutes and return with another one. Go into town with your Mum/Mate/Girlfriend and get them to do one/a couple for you – you’ll soon bang through your stock pile! (You accomplice can even use your Elite Card and Trade Card – you don’t have to give your name everytime – this’ll save having a million different cards on you!)
It always pays to be polite and well mannered. This is proof.
If you want to easily convert CeX vouchers into cash, you can always recover 75% of the value by buying and then trading for cash certain items. The effective exchange rate is hence 75%, so you should not settle for cash unless it is 75%+ of the exchange value (i.e. never accept cash at £6/£9 or £7/£10). There are quite a few DVDs and blu rays that you can do this with, such as Game of Thrones S1 BR which is £24/£25/£32. Use multiple copies for larger recoveries.
Most stores will allow this, though some may resist taking other stores’ vouchers, as it distorts their sales performance.
If you are patient, it may be worth holding out for a better item. In the past, I have seen an 80% recovery rate (Avatar DVD £8/£8/£10) and an 83-86% rate when the third-gen iPads first came out.