Mobile Phone Free Gift Con
April 29th, 2012 | Posted by in FeaturesOK, time for another rant!
How do these websites get away with this con?
Take a look at this photo, it is a screenshot of buymobile.net taken today, Sunday 29th April 2012, and shows a One S phone on O2′s £41 On and On contract, at £41 a month. The deal is unimportant here, but its an OK deal, you get the phone for free and get £140 cashback.
Now, take a look at this photo, taken seconds after the last one.
Looking at the same plan, £41, O2 On & On, but this time I selected a “Free” Acer Laptop.
Free? Well, now you have to pay £279.99 for the phone, and you don’t get the £140 cashback. Making that “Free” laptop actually £419.99
Surely this must be illegal?
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Not sure I’d class this as a con. They’re not hiding the fact you then have to pay for the phone, or offering something which they don’t give you.
Suppose they’re being creative with the term “Free Gift”. Considering you then have to pay out for the phone.
Huh? The Free gift is costing you £420? How on gods earth is that not a con? Please come to my dealership next time you want to buy a car……..
Depending on the true value of the laptop, it may be a bit of a con, it may be immoral, but I don’t think it can be classed as illegal. You are not buying the laptop directly, it’s just part of the deal; I suspect it’s similar to the ASA rulings that allowed the use of unlimited for tariffs that were anything but!
Well, if something is called “Free” how can it be legal to charge £420 for it? I am confused by this. At work, if we offer 0% APR finance, and then say the car is £500 less if you don’t want the 0% that is completely illegal. I can not see how this differs?
This is two separate offers though, one gives you a free phone and cash back, the other none of those two but a free lap top, just happens one offer is a lot better value than the other.
By the way, where is Dodgy Kev’s Dealership? Couldn’t find it in the yellow pages?
All of these redemption and free gift offers rely on ignorance or the apathy of customers to make money. Many people will never redeem their cashback for example because they will forget or do something wrong. That’s how these sort of deals make money. Also the free gift deals make them extra money because the some total of the handset and the free gift is far lower in price at cost. A friend of mine got a crappy Blackberry 8520 with a FREE PS3. Bearing in mind that for the cost of his contract he could have got a phone worth £500 instead of two items worth a total of about £270 I think we can see why these offers are regularly banded about. Unfortunately there aren’t many laws to protect people against their own stupidity. On the flip side, people’s poor mobile phone bill budgeting and generally frivolous activities help subsidize us sensible buyers.
I have viewed the site in question and cannot for the life of me see what “con” you are talking about.
The £140 cashback is the default “free gift” for your chosen tariff and clearly alters dependant on your choice.
Don’t think of the phone as being like a car for sale. It’s the tarrif that is constant for sale. The phone and free gift are mere variable incentives.
The tarrif is the constant or car – while the phone/gift is variable such as finance rate.
Ah. So in fact the default free gift is £140 and if I want a better “free” gift like the laptop I have to pay an extra £279.99 for it?
Still struggling to see how that in anyway makes it a Free laptop.
Thanks for looking though.
I do see your point – when you select the “free laptop” the deal, if examined, isn’t as appealing – but cannot be defined as a “con” for two reasons
1. The deal is clearly stated each time
2. The actual service you are buying never changes……
…… Remember as tradition dating back to the first carphones – your purchasing a “airtime agreemen”t ( this must be constant) while the phone and other items are variable extras/incentives to lure you in.
I have to add a comment on this as it has been a pet rant of mine for some time. They use the word ‘free’ to sell a deal and product that clearly isn’t free. If I go to a supermarket and see a pack of tea bags that are marked 50% extra free, then I can reasonably expect to get 50% more tea bags for no extra charge over the standard product. I think that everyone has the right to expect that to apply for everything. So why does it not apply to phone deals. I know it is very obvious to most people that the so-called ‘free gift’ with these phones are not free, but that doesn’t make it ok. Ofcom, or whoever has the power in these cases really needs to do something about it (IMHO).
On both cases the “tariff/airtime agreement” never changes so the example of tea bags 50% free at the supermarket cannot be applied.
Of course it applies. If example a was exactly the same as example b except that in example b you also got a laptop given to you for no extra charge at all, then you can say that the laptop is free. It isn’t, so it’s not free. If example a=100 tea bags @ £1 with 50p cash back. Example b=150 teabags @ £1 with 50p cashback. that means that the extra 50 teabags are free. If example b was, however, 150 teabags @ £2.50, no cash back, my guess is that you have been charged for the extra 50 tea bags so they can’t be described as free. Hth.
The airtime agreement has THREE elements – the actual tariff (primary purchase), subsidised handset and free gift.
Your tea bag analogy has only TWO elements – the box of tea bags (primary purchase) and a free gift.
Therefore if the change the only secondary element of the tea bag deal this will impact on the value of the primary purchase item and yes, as Suds750 states, would be unfair as the value/cost of the primary item would be altered.
Look again at the ‘phone deal’ in question -REMEMBER – its NOT PHONE DEAL – its an AIRTIME AGREEMENT – this is the primary purchase. When the secondary items are altered the primary purchase does not alter in value – you still get the same number of minutes, text and data for the same monthly amount.
In fact the two airtime deals could also be classed as two separate offers – only comparable by catalogue/page design!
I sort of see the point several posters are getting at but I fail to see, even for a layman, how the site/deals could be construed as misleading or a con. Both tariff and other costs are clearly listed!