The promise sounds good: hunt bargains together as a community and warn each other about overpriced offers. Platforms like MyDealz, Shoop and Questler present themselves as digital savings clubs, where the little guy takes on the big companies.
I see another side to this. It gets too little attention, and it deserves a critical look. This is an opinion piece, based on what I have seen and read.
1. From saving tip to exploit manual
What happens in some deal threads has little to do with clever saving anymore. A deal gets “hot” when the comments explain how to claim it more than once. The methods vary: extra accounts, swapped new-customer codes, made-up household members.
The 1 euro USB stick is not a saving tip in this logic. It is a way to deceive the retailer. The goal is not to save once, it is to drain the company’s marketing budget.
Shared coupons. The line to illegality is crossed at times, for example when digital supermarket coupons are passed around. Many Payback coupons at Netto are tied to a personal account, and the coupon terms say points are reversed in case of misuse. Sharing and mass use of such codes is not a harmless trick. Depending on the case, deceiving a retailer can amount to fraud under German law, and at the very least it can let the shop cancel the order.
2. Who earns from this
Commissions. Portals earn an affiliate commission when a deal leads to a sale. If a fake-account order goes through unnoticed, the commission can be paid too. Retailers can reject orders as fraud or duplicates, and commissions are usually pending until a validation period ends, so this only works when the abuse is not caught.
That does not mean portals plan it. But their income does not drop when a deal is exploited, as long as the retailer does not notice, and I find that uncomfortable.
Who pays for the loss. Retailers write off losses like any other business expense. That lowers their tax bill by a fraction of the loss, and the company carries the rest. So I would not say the public pays for these deals. The retailer does, and in the end often the honest customer through higher prices and tighter conditions.
3. Culture and incentives
The comment culture. Anyone who raises the ethics of these tricks in the comments is often piled on, and in my experience moderation rarely steps in. A community that drives out critical voices protects the status quo.
Clicks, not consumer protection. Portals like to see themselves as consumer advocates. Their income, though, comes from retailers who pay commission, and that model rewards volume: more clicks on affiliate links means more revenue. Quantity beats quality.
Conclusion
Deal and cashback portals are not only savings clubs. In my view, parts of these communities have turned into manuals for exploiting retailers, and the business model pays out as long as the retailer does not catch it. That damages the trust between retailer and customer.
The user with twenty fake accounts is not the clever underdog he thinks he is. He is a tool in a system that profits from his clicks. And the platforms are less the helpers of the little guy than the architects of a game that rewards volume over honesty.
Update, November 2026: I rechecked the claims in this post. I removed the figure for retailer losses, because I cannot support it. I also dropped the claim that taxpayers subsidize these deals, since a loss only lowers a company’s tax by part of the amount. The commission section now says that retailers can reject fraudulent orders. Shoop and Questler are cashback services, not forums, so the points about comments and moderation concern deal communities such as MyDealz only.