If you don't know it, Quidco is a marketing/affiliate site that shares commission from clickthroughs with you. If you go to a company by clicking its link on the Quidco site, Quidco gets paid if you buy something. It then gives some of the money to you.

In the case of taking out a Legal and General ISA, you get paid £120. Allegedly.

Quidco: Where's my £120?

I'm not getting my £120, however. The tracking system uses cookies to identify who should get the lead - ie who should be credited when one site sends a customer to another site. A system that seems fundamentally flawed to me.

Legal and General advertises all sorts of places. So if I see its advert on lots of sites before I go to the Legal and General site, it decides which site should get the commission. If it's Quidco, you get the cashback. If they award the lead to someone else, you don't.

I got 31p ...

When I bought 5 itunes songs via Quidco, I got my free 31p. Whoopee. So the system can work.

but that's it

There was no sign of my £120, so I queried this. I've ben told Legal and General have awarded the lead to a competing site. I haven't been told which one. And this is complete rubbish anyway - I only went to the Legal and General site from Quidco. Did I see an ad somewhere else? Possibly. But the only place I clicked a link to go there was Quidco (I've checked my history file).

So the Quidco cashback system seems fundamentally flawed to me - there's no way to tell whether you're actually going to get the cashback even if you appear to do everything you should. And the judge of this is not you or Quidco, but the company - Legal and General in this case. And as Quidco says, there's no point contacting them about it. (Press 7 for queries about our internet marketing program ...)

I won't be bothering again.