Some mobile-phone retailers are offering freebies as alternatives to cashback. Here's our analysis of these deals.
I've written about cashback mobile phone deals before, but more frequently now I see that we can swap the cashback for gifts. These gifts are clearly aimed at a specific audience, as they tend to be miniature music players and computer consoles. I'd like to see them offer violins and tennis rackets, just for the hell of it, but that's the way it is.
Here's my take on these deals, using a typical example from a website called Mobiles.co.uk.
Get a Wii with your phone deal
Right now, I'm looking at a deal offering 500 anytime/any network minutes and 3,000 texts. (Not unlimited texts like it claims, but who needs to send more than 100 text messages a day?) You pay £35pm for 18 months, which is £420 per year, or £630 for the length of the contract.
If you took the cashback option you'd get £263 cashback, making the deal £245 per year and £367 for the whole contract. Put another way, it's £20 a month. You also get what appears to be a great new phone, although I don't know phones; I'm a financial analyst.
Alternatively, you can pay the full £630 for 18 months and get a Nintendo Wii. You need to send off your second bill to get the free gift, so it could be a couple of months before you receive it, or maybe longer if stocks are still low.
Checking a few sites online, I see that you can get a Nintendo Wii with a sports game for around £180, so you'd save £80 more if you took the cashback and bought the console separately.
Get a 4GB Nano with your phone deal
With the same deal, you can choose to get a 4GB iPod Nano instead, but these are much cheaper than Wiis. I have seen the 4 gig Nano online for around £90, which means you'd save £170 more if you took the cashback and bought the Nano separately (but before you do this, read Is An Ipod Worth The Money?). It also means that if you took the cashback you could buy both the Wii and the Nano, and only pay £10 more than the full-price phone deal.
Do your research
My preference is to avoid the hassle and gimmicks of cashback or freebie deals. I pay just £15pm for the very basics and use Rebtel for my calls to foreign numbers.
However, if I was going to go through the hassle of one of these deals, I'd look for one that is ultimately free. I might even make a profit on the transaction. Read Get A Free Mobile, Free Contract, Plus £35! for more on how to do that.
Then, if I wanted a Wii or an iPod (or a violin or tennis racket), I'd buy them with the money I saved.
I can't vouch for any cashback websites, including Mobiles.co.uk, so do your research before getting a cashback mobile phone deal. Don't just go straight to Mobiles.co.uk: ask your friends, search Google for 'cashback mobile phone deals', ask our discussion-board users for their opinions, and look at reviews on the Web.
> Be careful of the small print in cashback deals. Read Cashback Mobile Phone Deals Are Unlawful.