What Is Cash CompleteSave on My Bank Statement?
Cash CompleteSave is a Complete Savings membership. It is a cashback subscription that costs around £18 a month after a 30-day free trial, and it is one of the most common charges people find on their statement without remembering signing up for anything.
The reason it catches so many people: you usually join at someone else's checkout. A cashback or voucher offer appears after you buy something from an unrelated retailer, you enter your details to claim it, and that enrols you in a monthly membership. Large retailers publish their own help pages explaining this charge, which is a fair indication of how often it happens.
At a glance
- What it is
- Complete Savings, a cashback membership
- Typical cost
- Around £18 a month
- Free trial
- 30 days, then it bills
- How people join
- A reward offer at a retailer checkout
- Descriptor
- Several variants, all completesave.co.uk
- Refunds
- Ask for the full period, not one month
The descriptor variants
Complete Savings publishes the descriptors it uses. All of these are the same membership:
CASH.COMPLETESAVE.CO.UKWLY*COMPLETESAVE.CO.UKCOMPLETESAVE.CO.UKWWW.COMPLETESAVE.CO.UKGO2.COMPLETESAVE.CO.UK
The WLY* prefix is a payment processor marker. The important part is completesave.co.uk — if that string is in your descriptor, this is what you are looking at.
Note the spelling difference that makes searching harder: the website is completesavings.co.uk, but the statement descriptor says completesave.co.uk without the "ings".
How you probably joined
You almost certainly did not go looking for it. The usual route is:
- You buy something from an unrelated retailer — travel, gaming, tickets, general online shopping.
- After checkout, an offer appears for cashback, a voucher, or money off your next order.
- You enter your details, often including card details, to claim the reward.
- That enrols you in a 30-day free trial of the membership.
- Thirty days later it begins charging monthly, and it keeps charging.
Nothing arrives in the post. There is no monthly reminder. So the charge continues quietly, and people frequently discover it years later.
Check how long it has been running
This is the single most useful thing to do, and most people skip it.
Look back through your statements as far as you can, searching for completesave. At roughly £18 a month, two years is over £400. People routinely find charges going back far longer than they expected.
Your bank must give you access to your transaction history, and generally holds at least six years of it. Ask if you cannot see far enough back online.
Cancelling it
Cancel with Complete Savings directly. They have a customer service line and an online account area. Ask for a cancellation reference and keep it.
Then stop it at your bank as well. This is a recurring card payment, so you can withdraw consent through your bank without the company's agreement. Banks sometimes wrongly tell customers only the retailer can cancel a card subscription — that has not been correct since 2013.
Do both. Cancelling with one and not the other is how people end up back here in three months.
Getting your money back
Do not settle for one month refunded if you never used the service.
Ask Complete Savings for a refund of the full period. Say plainly that you did not knowingly sign up, that you have never used the membership, and that you want everything refunded. A membership with no usage at all is a strong position.
If they refuse, use your card. Chargeback covers debit and credit cards, usually within 120 days of each payment. Section 75 applies if it is a credit card and any single payment was £100 or more, which is unlikely here at £18 a month.
Escalate if the bank refuses. Complain in writing, give the bank eight weeks, then take it to the Financial Ombudsman Service free of charge within six months of their final response.
Is it a scam?
No, and it is worth being precise about that. Complete Savings is a real, operating cashback service that does provide cashback to members who use it. It is not fraud.
The complaint against it is about how people end up enrolled — a reward offer at another company's checkout leading to a recurring charge that many members say they did not realise they had agreed to. That is a consent and clarity problem rather than a criminal one, but the money leaving your account is just as real.
If you genuinely use it and get more than £18 a month back in cashback, it works as intended. Most people who search for this descriptor are not in that position.
Check for the siblings
Membership and rewards subscriptions of this type rarely travel alone, and a checkout that enrolled you in one may have enrolled you in others at different times of the month.
Read a full year of statements in one sitting rather than glancing at each month. Annual and irregularly-dated charges only become visible that way.
- All four agencies: in one report: Experian, Equifax, TransUnion & Crediva
- Spot the errors: and old debts that quietly get applications declined
- It's a soft search: so checking never leaves a mark on your file
- See what lenders see: the same information banks pull when they assess you
Free for 30 days, then £14.99 a month: cancel online anytime. Check the current price before subscribing. We may earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you.
🛡️ Build your recovery plan
Tick what applies to you. The order below is deliberate: most of these organisations will ask for your Action Fraud reference number, so doing it in this sequence saves you making the same call twice.
Nothing ticked yet: the steps below are the ones that apply to everyone. Tick a box above to add the rest.
- 1
Report it to Action Fraud and get your crime reference number
Action Fraud: the national reporting centre for fraud
- Onlinereportfraud.police.uk
- Phone0300 123 2040
Do this second, and do it before you contact anyone else. Almost every organisation in this list (lenders, credit reference agencies, debt collectors) will ask for the crime reference number Action Fraud gives you, and without it you end up making the same call twice. It also creates the official record you'll rely on if you have to dispute anything later. Expect an update within 28 working days, though that's about the investigation, not about clearing your name; that part is on you and starts now.
Have ready: What happened and roughly when · Any account or reference numbers involved
- 2
Get all three credit reports and read every line
Experian, Equifax and TransUnion
- Experian0800 013 8888
- Equifax0800 014 2955
- TransUnion0330 024 7574
All three, not one. Lenders report to different agencies, so a fraudulent account can sit on one file and be invisible on the others: checking a single report is the most common way people miss the second and third account. You're looking for accounts you didn't open, searches you didn't authorise, and addresses linked to your name that you've never lived at. That last one matters more than it sounds: a linked address you don't recognise is often how the fraud was set up in the first place.
Have ready: Your addresses for the last six years
- 3
Add a CIFAS protective registration
CIFAS: the UK fraud prevention service
- Onlinecifas.org.uk
- Phone0330 460 9601
This puts a warning flag against your name in the National Fraud Database, so member organisations run extra identity checks before granting credit in your name. It costs £30 and lasts two years. It does not affect your credit score, and it doesn't touch accounts you already hold, but it will make your own applications slower, which is the trade-off. If someone has your details, that's usually a trade worth making. Note that not every application is checked against the database, so treat it as a strong deterrent rather than a lock.
- 4
Check you're on the electoral register at the right address
Your local council
A quick one that's worth doing while you're here. The electoral roll is one of the main ways lenders confirm you live where you say you do, and being missing from it both weakens your own applications and makes it easier for someone to claim your identity elsewhere.
- 5
Escalate if you get nowhere
Financial Ombudsman Service, or the ICO
- Financial Ombudsman0800 023 4567
- ICOico.org.uk
If a bank refuses to refund you, or a lender won't remove an entry it has accepted is fraudulent, complain to the firm first and give it eight weeks. After that, or as soon as you get a final response, take it to the Financial Ombudsman. It's free and its decisions bind the firm. Where the argument is specifically about inaccurate data staying on your credit file, the Information Commissioner's Office can also look at it. Both routes cost you nothing.
- 6
Close the door behind you
You
Change passwords on your email account first, not your banking: email is the master key, because it's where password resets land. Turn on two-factor authentication wherever it's offered. If documents were lost or stolen, report the passport or driving licence to the issuing body so it can be flagged. And set a reminder to re-check your credit reports in three months: fraudulent applications sometimes surface long after the original breach.
Contact details and process reflect Action Fraud, CIFAS, the credit reference agencies and National Debtline guidance for England and Wales. Scotland reports fraud through Police Scotland on 101 rather than Action Fraud; the rest of the process is the same. General information, not legal advice: free, independent help is available from National Debtline, Citizens Advice and StepChange.
