Another mobile question - redemption cashback

[Dave Liquorice]

My contract is due end soon and I'm happy with my phone, so will be free to choose a SIM only deal on any network (once phone is unlocked).

Digging about I've come across a couple of offers from mobiles.co.uk on O2 or Vodafone: 12 month contracts, unlimited texts, 1 GB data, 1000 mins (O2), unlimited mins (Vodafone) for effectively £3.99/month.

I say effectively as the contracts are actually £16.00/month (O2) or £15.30/month (Vodafone) by sending the bills (snail mail or electronic) to mobiles.co.uk at months 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 they'll send a cheque for around £28.

My "to good to be true" alarm is sounding.

Has anyone any experience of this company and the reliabilty (or not!) of these redemption cashback schemes? I will be porting my number to the new contract but that doesn't appear to be a problem provided you tell them before submitting a bill with the "wrong" number on it.

The cheapest, direct, non-cashback, 1 GB deals I can find are all about £10/month. I'm not a mobile phone junky so even the really cheap and limited deals provide ample mins and texts, but I am starting to find my current 100 MB data limit a bit tight. The cheapest 500 MB I've found is £7.50 from Tesco or cheapest 250 MB £5.00 from Vodafone.

[mcp]

I had a coupe of Orange cashback deals from mobiles.co.uk and they worked fine. It's much easier now you can upload a pdf of your bill, just stick a reminder in your calendar.

[GMM]

These are 'kosher' deals, and look very attractive but, of course, most people fail to get around to sending the bills in for the refunds. Some of the time windows can be pretty short, just to make it a smaller/higher hoop to jump through. If you're a well organised person, I'm sure they would be great value. Rubbish for someone like me, of course....;-)

[fred]

In article , Dave Liquorice writes

For a minute I thought you meant just one £28 cheque!

Yes, that's going back to the good old days of cashback. Best if they are a subsidiary of a larger outfit, less likely to go bust leaving you with nothing.

Long ago I was lucky enough to get paid a huge wedge of cashback from a small outfit only days before the VAT man moved in and shut them down for misinterpretation of the cashback vs VAT rules, leaving them owing a bucket.

Bottom line, don't rely on getting the money, treat it as a bonus.

[Chris French]

In message , Dave Liquorice writes

Be aware that if the company goes bust, you almost certainly won't get the cashback - as you would be an unscured creditor.

This happened to Phones4U customers who had cashback deals, when they went bust last year.

[Mike Barnes]

Three PAYG is cheaper at 1p/MB and it lasts forever so you only pay for what you use each month.

So with your current usage you'd be looking at about £1.00 per month.

[Dave Liquorice]

mobiles.co.uk are part of Dixons Carphone PLC so in the UK that is the same group as Currys/PCWorld, Carphone Warehouse (retail and business arms of each), Geek Squad, Knowkow, e2save mobiles and Dixons Travel.

Possibly depends how much the arm is heamoraging and if it's better just to hack it off.

Yers, the underlying real contract price (£16 ish) is more than I wish to pay. Especially as 1000 mins is 1/2 an hour a day, if I make

15 mins of calls a month that's a lot of calls for me, similar with texts a few tens/month.

Being organised enough to claim isn't a problem but them going bust or otherwise ceasing to trade is a risk.

[fred]

But Dave does live in the middle of butt f'ck nowhere so 3 coverage may be problematic.

[Chris French]

In message , fred writes

I imagine any network may well be problematical where Dave lives....

But I imagine the mobile is more for use when he is away from from home anyway

[Chris French]

Yes, Three PAYG is good for lower/variable data useage but does also depend on how many phone calls/texts her might use, and how much more data than 100MB he might use.

[Dave Liquorice]

But that's Three, coverage of Three is a bit thin around here. B-)

EE, O2 and Voda are all much of muchness, though Voda has a couple of fill in cells but a bad reputation of fixing 'em quickly. So servce can be seriously degraded for months...

Just did a network scan EE, O2, Voda showed up. Repeated the scan and Three appeared.

I've also found The Peoples Operator who use EE, PAYG, 1p/MB, 3p/txt,

5p/min or SIM Only 30 day rolling contract £9.99 1.5 GB and 750 txts/mins or £4.99 250 MB 250 txts/mins.

[Ronnie]

THREE has the best coverage in the UK.

[Lobster]

On 26 Apr 2015, "Dave Liquorice" grunted:

Sorry, late to the party having only just spotted this thread.

I'm a seasoned mobile cashbacker, and in my family hardly anyone has every had anything but a cashback contract as long as we've had mobiles (10-15 years?). We've saved literally thousands using them. As someone else mentioned, it used to be common to get 100% cashback deals, and by the time you'd flogged the new unwanted handset they sent you, you actually made a profit on the deal.

The business model relies on attracting lots of extra customers, of whom a good propertion fail to collect, either by simply forgetting to claim (do that just once and you forfeit all the remaining payments) or cocking up the prescribed procedure (correct paperwork, dates etc) - you have to follow that to the nth degree.

I've missed out twice in maybe 20-30-odd contracts; once was when the company went bust (Phones2Udirect in 2007), and the other time I simply missed a deadline (spit). I've used mobiles.co.uk many times over the years with no problems.

[Dave Liquorice]

Ta, decided a redemption cashback was just too much hassle in the end.

Orange/EE's best offer to retain me was 500 min, Unlimted Txts, 1 GB for either £10.13 or £10.30, either way a weird amount. Oh it's 4G data, no extra cost, 4G much better service. I'm not sure how many times I said my phone isn't 4G and there isn't 4G coverage and that

4G is not a selling point. Amount of data and price is a selling point.

So I've got me PAC code and SIM Only from ordered from TPO

750/750/1.5GB £9.99 (£8 cashback from Quidco) and GNAAS getting a quid a month. Will wait until SIM arrives before initiating unlocking of phone as I'm not sure it is locked and don't have another networks SIM to shove in it.

The *#1973blah blah# Service Menu indicates it might not be but need to do a bit more googling about what the things are/mean in the Service Menu.