[quote="richard@imutual"]The final score was 13 for, 11 against. Close, but the decision of the members is to award this claim :thumbup:[/quote]

If we are going down the route of members deciding claims then the above outcome is only right.

The final score was 13 for, 11 against. Close, but the decision of the members is to award this claim :thumbup:

Lumme, I'm doing my fair share of our Ebuyer transactions!

Sadly, I think the answer has to be if iMutual isn't paid, the member isn't paid.

The caveat to that would be perhaps an amount of any orphaned payments received (transactions not connected to a member click and never claimed for) could be set aside for a first-come-first-served fund to paying genuine looking claims from members with a history of being above board..

Whilst respecting the claimant right to anomomility - I feel that they have avoided addressing the question - did they previously access the product page on ebuyer from a non imutual link and then subsequently use the imutual link for the purchase. If they did then they are in my view accepting the risk that their transaction would not track to imutual.

I think that there are two key points to this claim.

1. Mel's question [quote]Is this the only transaction that e-buyer have refused[/quote] led to the answer that ebuyer is generally reliable and has paid commision in good faith elsewhere.

2. Richard's info [quote]the claimant is a long-term member of the site with an excellent record of contributions[/quote]

I think that the general position should be that imutual shouldn't pay out in these cases.

However due to point 2, in this case maybe a discretionary goodwill payment could be made so as not to open the gates to bankruptcy ( I know that i have been on the benefitted from imutual's goodwill & trust in the past).

As an additional point, I always close all browsers and use ccleaner to clean all cookies before purchases. For insurance purposes, I use slightly different criteria on the price comparison sites to the criteria that I will actually use to buy the insurance, so that they do not have a matching quote.

I can see problems with both of those approaches.

If we have a stated policy of approving [b]all[/b] such claims, we leave ourselves wide open to abuse. An individual could start a process of clicking on our link (for a given cashback offer), immediately using another cashback site to do the actual transaction and then putting in a claim to imutual. Sadly, my experience tells me that there are such people out there and it would only take a small number of them to cause significant (possibly fatal) losses for imutual. Eventually, we'd be forced to abandon the policy

But we also have an ambition to establish a trustworthy reputation, including honouring genuine cashback claims. Tracking is not infallible and I suspect that some claims are unfairly rejected by merchants in this manner. The problem is, we'll never know which ones. And while seasoned cashbackers might be tolerant of excuses such as "you didn't clear you're cookies", there are many other current and prospective members who probably don't even understand what a cookie is, never mind how to clear one. All they know is that they were promised some cashback, they did everything they thought they were supposed to and they will expect imutual to threat them fairly. Again, it would only take a small number of individuals with rejected claims to make their complaints public across other forums to have a significant impact on imutual's reputation.

That's why I feel the "appeals" process is a suitable, if imperfect, half-way house, because at least it places the onus on the claimant to restate their case and be judged by their peers. Members can request whatever supporting information they think is appropriate, and form a judgement based on the claimant's response. I think this is likely to filter out most dishonest claims, and therefore members can take an approach of "Award an appeal, unless there is evidence to the contrary".

In this case, the claimant is a long-term member of the site with an excellent record of contributions

This is an open and shut case for me - the member made a genuine transaction, but someone else got the cashback. It is pretty certain that there was a cookie left from a price comparison site, daily click, or similar. iMutual simply needs to have a policy for these cases: either it pays them (in which case it pays them *all*), or it doesn't pay them (in which case it pays *none* of them). Document the policy in the help section and apply it consistently. We don't need to do this every time.

This is an excellent demonstration of mutuality. Guidance is genuinely being sought from the members/co-owners on pivotal decisions instead of by a faceless person behind an admin email address.

Building societies take note.

In the Imutual messages you had with the claimant that led to the rejection, was s/he asked if they ensured they cleared their cookies/cache/history etc before making the purchase?

The "sale being attributed to another website or marketing channel" is a very vague, general get-out for networks & I think it's utterly ridiculous that they refuse to give any clue as to what the other website was: Google ad/another cb site/price comparison site... (I say that because other cashback sites have said they get told no more than that phrase, I'm assuming iMutual is no different)
That said, members using cashback sites also need to be educated about cookies/cache etc., & told that it's necessarily simple to get the cashback due.

Yes, you can change your vote at any time within the 7 day period