themutual.net > Reviews > REVISED - Be A Fatcat Shareholder, Errr Sort Of

Author's product rating:   

Presentation/navigation of site	Good
Reliablility/speed of site	Good
Quality of content	Good
Range of products/services offered	Excellent
Competitiveness of charges	Good

Advantages:	Get 'paid' for logging onto Ciao !  Seemingly money for nothing .  .  .
Disadvantages:	.  .  .  . but precious little of it sometimes .  Redemption charge  -  ouch .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I’VE REVISED THIS REVIEW QUITE HEAVILY SINCE I FIRST WROTE IT FOR SEVERAL REASONS:-

a) THE VALUE OF A MUTUAL.NET SHARE HAS RISEN SHARPLY SINCE I FIRST JOINED,

b) THEY HAVE SINCE COMBINED BY TAKEOVER, WITH MYPOINTS, RELAUNCHED AS MUTUAL POINTS, AND

c) THEY NOW PAY YOU TO VISIT CIAO – SIGNIFICANT, I’D SAY!

Now as they say in all good narratives (and this one), back to the plot…………..

Now here’s a novel incentive to buy ‘stuff’ via the net.

“Yeah, yeah, Chris, another ‘iPoints’ or Air-miles scheme no doubt.”

Well, yes and no really.

TheMutual.Net’s angle is payment in shares in a company quoted on the LSE's AIM listings, i.e. themselves.

Before you get too carried away in a frenzy of buying in a depressed market with a hope of making a killing later, these really are ‘Penny Shares’, or ‘Point Two Seven Of A Penny Shares’ to be accurate at time of re-writing in November 2003. Titter ye not, these shares were worth only 0.155p a matter of eight weeks ago.

Joking apart, you are free to buy or sell shares in TheMutual.Net through normal channels.

I wondered why they could afford to give you 5,000 of the little blighters just for signing up, but at 0.155p each, that explained it. However, this was the closest to a free lunch I’d gotten for weeks.

HOW IT WORKS

Original sign-up is easy enough – you know the kind of thing, socio-economic questions, inside leg measurement, interests, sex (answer Yes Please!). I followed a link from the now 'resting' U-Rate-It opinion site to the www.borntoloaf.co.uk site, whence I was led gently down the path to TheMutual.Net, with an exhortation to earn a free £5 – someone wasn’t doing their sums. 5,000 x 0.155p equalled…….er…..somewhat more that £5, £8 being nearer the mark. Of course, shares (and other things) can go up as well as down, as Fergie was often informed, by her financial advisor!

Shopping through the Mutual.net site falls into two main categories.

a) One-off activities like signing up for a new credit card (Accucard, in this case), and you guessed it, casinos. This kind of deal gets you a specific number of shares. Accucard, for example earns you 20,000 shares, worth around £50, which, if it was the kind of thing you were going to do anyway, is better than “un coup de pied aux noisettes”.

b) The more reliable way to rack up shares, is to buy things through their comprehensive list of retailers, and I really do mean comprehensive. Many of the big ‘Web High Street’ names are their. Names like BOL*.com, W H Smith, Amazon, PC World (holds up crucifix and garlic), Dixons (don’t put the anti-vampire kit away just yet) and Argos.

* BOL give a generous 10% discount - some of the others are more meagre, but TheMutual.net's site lets you sort retailers by alphabetical, % or Shares order to see who the big payers are.

The are many other lesser-known sites like www.amandakiss.co.uk where for the princely sum of £34.95, I could now be the (proud, ahem) owner of a ‘Munroe’s Lips Male Vibrator’ (Soft and succulent lips and a vibrating jelly shaft with nodules to tease you to a great climax every time you switch on. A deep throat orgasm every time*.) Sorry, I had to put that bit in - as the bishop said to the actress.

More importantly, I get a 5% discount paid back to me as TheMutual.net shares.

*Of course, a truly lazy person would just put a female vibrator inside, make sure they’ve both got batteries and let them get on with it.

On a more serious note, this kind of scheme does help you to shop around. For a start you get shares every time you use Kelkoo to search for something. I notice also that I’ve earned one lone share not attributable to shopping since I signed on. Must be for turning off the PC properly or something! Actually, it's for being sent an e-mail. You can earn another 50 for altering your default web-page to theirs (changing it back doesn't seem to lose them again!)

Here’s a real example of what I mean. I was in the market to get a digital camera for my wife (no, it’s not a swap!). The one we were after was the Canon IXUS 400, retailing anywhere between £350 and £400.

Thanks to links to Amazon, Argos, Dabs.com, Dixons and EmpireDirect, PC World, I found that Dixons (shocked gasp) was the cheapest at £349. However, they only give 2% discount in shares compared to Amazon’s 2.5%, so it obviously pays to be a bit canny, and extras like delivery charges start to figure largely in the decision. Another fly in the ointment, is that Dabs, whilst being a couple of quid dearer, and only giving me 1.25% discount also give me ‘Dabsmiles*’, arghhh, quick get me something to cool my fevered brow, possibly something from the www.amandakiss.co.uk range!

*Convertible to Airmiles at a 10-1 ratio.

Joy of joys, you now get shares just for following TheMutual.net’s link prior to logging on to CIAO! – at time of re-writing (Nov 2003), this amounted to 37 shares per go, at 0.27p, say 9p worth. Not bad since it would take somewhat longer than a trice to earn 9p on Ciao, and that’s if your opinions even qualify.

WHO GIVES DISCOUNTS?

At this stage, I would have inserted a list of all the retailers signed-up to this scheme, but the transfer to text-only has cocked up the formatting that I so carefully set into columns. You can easily access the list from the front page of their website however.

Take it from me that I could spot literally dozens of firms that I already deal with (No, not www.amandakiss.co.uk BTW), such as Amazon.co.uk, Screwfix, WH Smiths, Woolworths, Argos, Dabs.com, Dixons, Currys, PC World, so hopefully, the prognosis for my not spending any extra is good.

I think the major thing to bear in mind with schemes like this, is that they are designed to get you to spend more money. Obviously, TheMutual.Net’s income has to come from somewhere, presumably a commission from the retailers. I think if we are all honest, those of us that shop on the internet probably do spend more than we used to, just as credit cards increased people’s spending when they were first introduced – after all, it’s not like REAL money, is it?

However, IF you spend money at any of those listed, then why not do it via www.themutual.net in the first place?

There is just one (or two) cloud(s) on the horizon though. These being:-

a) Despite being 'shares', your awards sit in limbo merely as awarded points for up to three months before being convenrted into shares, and

b) Once they are shares, the only way to redeem them is through normal brokerage channels with a 1% or £17 minimum commission, therefore you have to run up quite a few to make it worthwhile cashing them. Of course, they could always go up in value too.........

As Sue Magee has pointed out, these things have a habit of going t***-up at a moment's notice, so the dilemma you face is whether to cash in frequently, and see several lots of £17's creamed off, or wait and risk not seeing any of it.