Six years ago I reviewed an upcoming cashback + deal-sharing site. Buckscoop has a community of its own that’s a bit different from OzBargain’s, although it has been slowly dying over the past year. On the cashback side though, they still remain one of the better ones out there in terms of cashback rate (see our cashback sites comparison blog post). On OzBargain I usually recommend them alongside StartHere.

Buckscoop, however, announced a big change earlier this morning. Buckscoop admin, aka Donkey, posted this announcement at 3:44AM. Buckscoop is undergoing a dramatic change, to split into The new Buckscoop (listing deals, vouchers, freebies and sales discussion community) + Qwibble (cashback community).

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Joining the team is Peter Wakim — ex-Quidco (UK’s largest cashback site, one of the first site giving back 100% aff commission). I have met Peter a few times this year, and this is the guy who knows cashbacks. The old Buckscoop site felt like it was built by the Quidco/HotUKDeals team in UK, and it was also hosted there. The new site might still have UK-built backend, but it is now hosted with ServersAustralia which is a lot faster.

Adir & Steve at StartHere.com.au definitely have a tough fight ahead. BucksBack guys might be not even in the league. A rough market indeed that I’ve seen a few small players dropping out over the years (for example, OzRewards, Cashloop and many others). However the market penetration is still lacking — comparing to UK, a lot of people here still have no idea about commission cashbacks. Majority of online merchants don’t offer it either. StartHere did well with a mass-media mention on Today Tonight to raise general awareness. We might finally catch up to the online shopping scene in US/UK?

(… or maybe not, judging from last night’s clickfail.)