Will imutual match offers from other sites?
For the time being, no it won't. As for why, there's a short answer and a long answer. The short answer is "Because we can't afford to, and it takes time to administrate". Now for the longer answer...
As a member-owned company, imutual operates differently to most sites you have been used to. We will try to be as transparent as possible, and pass on 100% of the cashback we receive for your transaction. In the small number of cases where we don't, we'll be open about that and endeavour to communicate the reasons.
Many merchants offer better deals for sites that can generate large volumes of sales for them. For instance, they might operate "commission tiers" where we receive a higher percentage of the order value for generating a certain number of purchases per month. This is good news for you and me because our company is destined to become the largest site of its kind in the UK and so in the long term we will have the best cashback deals due to our large buying power
We have already negotiated some reasonable deals even though imutual is newly-launched. But there will always be some merchants where you are going to be able to find more cashback elsewhere if another site has negotiated a particular deal. If we were to "price match" that would mean subsidising selected members; inevitably, at the expense of other members and the company's finances. I don't think that is the right policy for imutual
I would appeal to members to support their own company and do all their transactions through imutual, as this will help us to get established and secure top cashback rates in the medium-long term. The alternative is to let commercial companies, who have no intention of giving you shares, dominate the cashback world and your imutual shares will not achieve their full potential.