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[stratford]

I read a PC Pro article last week, that showed that:

" Redten Internet is raising the stakes in the highly-competitive broadband market by offering a free PC with every connection.The company will offer a Pentium 4 based system to every customer who signs up for three years of 8Mb broadband, costing £19.99 per month. Redten - the sister company of Watford Electronics - promises to upgrade customers to a 24Mb line, when the BT exchanges are upgraded."

They are now taking orders and I've put it on the grabbit board as red ten are upgrading the 17" monitor to 19" for the first 10,000 customers who sign up.

More details at www.redteninternet.com Terms and conditions are here (pdf) and essentially the main requirement is that the PC only becomes yours after the 3 year broadband contract ends. If you end your contract early they can ask for you to send back the pc, in good condition, at your expense. There are various packages available and you should check out the small print, but otherwise it looks like a pretty good deal if you need a new computer!





FREE PC worth over £500
with any 8Mb* Broadband Package
- Intel Pentium 4 3GHz processor
- 512MB DDR2 Ram
- 160GB hard disk drive
- DVD player/rewriter


- 19” LG LCD monitor
- Microsoft Windows Vista
- 3-year warranty
- 365-day support

[Mandles]

i wonder if it will be like that deal that i nearly did a while ago for free computer? it allowed loads of adverts and you had to look at them all.Sounds good but theres always a catch isnt there...maybe me just being super negative. sorry.

[tr3mor]

Thats not a bad deal at the moment.

In 3 years time though the computer will be out of date and I would imagine broadband would be virtually free anyway.

[greyster]

and also broadband won't be near £20 a month in 12 months time, let alone 3 years. Still a good deal but thats where some of their profit will come from. Fixed price 3 years.

[stratford]

@ Mandles. That's a good point - the pc pro article mentions this:

"Redten Internet is raising the stakes in the highly-competitive broadband market by offering a free PC with every connection.
The company will offer a Pentium 4 based system to every customer who signs up for three years of 8Mb broadband, costing £19.99 per month. Redten - the sister company of Watford Electronics - promises to upgrade customers to a 24Mb line, when the BT exchanges are upgraded.
It's not the first time companies have attempted to give away free computers with internet connections. In the late 1990s companies such as US-based Free-PC gave systems to customers prepared to sit through a barrage of on-screen advertising, but the business model failed miserably when customers failed to click through on the adverts or even sold their free PCs. There are echoes of the Free-PC model with Redten's offer. "There will be a web portal which will have revenue streams - we'll be selling advertising space on the portal, and also emailing offers to people from selected companies and partners," said Nick Mounfield, marketing manager at Redten. The company insists that, unlike the American offer, customers won't be forced to watch adverts and that they can change their internet homepage from the Redten portal, should they choose to. Redten also hopes to cross-sell IT products from its Savastore.com brand and other electronics retailers. It claims to be partnering with BT, Intel and Microsoft on the deal. The free LG Redten Internet PC has a retail value of £500, according to Redten, and ships with a 17in LG LCD monitor (with a free 19in upgrade for the first 10,000 customers), 160GB hard disk, 512MB of RAM and Windows XP Media Center Edition. A voucher for a free upgrade to Windows Vista will be included in the package. More expensive monthly packages are available which include extra hardware such as printers and wireless routers. "

[philhuff]

Well, if you're in the market for a new PC and broadband, it's a pretty good deal. Total cost is going to be £719.64 so, assuming you can buy a similar spec PC for £500, you're paying about £6 a month for your broadband.

Apart from a few emails coming through, I don't see any hidden catch. The big bold catch is paying £20 a month for three years, but that should be pretty obvious.

I like to look through terms and conditions, and this particular one made me chuckle. I know it's only to cover themselves for anything that goes wrong, but considering the deal on offer, this clause is amusing...

5.5: However, we cannot guarantee that the equipment will work with our Broadband Service

:-)

[philhuff]

Just to add a valuable addition, there's a £49.99 connection fee, taking the total cost to £769.63. Taking out the £500 for a PC, that makes the broadband connection cost £7.50 a month.

[stratford]

Originally Posted by tr3mor

Thats not a bad deal at the moment.

In 3 years time though the computer will be out of date and I would imagine broadband would be virtually free anyway.

Yep, the computer will be out of date, but I bet a fair few MSErs are quite happily using computers that are 3 years old now! As for the price of broadband - that's going to more tricky to identify as more and more providers bundle services together. Personally, I don't see broadband as 'free' if you have to pay for a service plan for 'free calls' or other services. Also, worth bearing in mind that many of the current free or cheap broadband deals have limitations in speed or usage which this offer seems to be free from (subject to a fair usage policy). That said, I do agree a good quality broadband service is unlikely to be £20 / month in 3 years time, though looking at the overall term cost this could be a very good deal, if you need a new computer now!

[sambo31]

You also need to have a bt line to apply.

[jakemuk]

well you do for any adsl service so your post is errm useless

[greyster]

You may find the PC is not worth £500 but it doesn't look bad.

[icecoolbabe]

See

http://www.redteninternet.com/index.html

They will also give a free upgrade to 24mgps when it becomes available.

They say -

Sign up to our 8Mb broadband service and we’ll give you a brand-new Intel Pentium 4 computer, with 19” LG LCD monitor and Microsoft Windows Vista-ready operating system, completely free of charge. We’ll also configure the PC so it arrives ready to connect to the internet; install it with anti-virus, anti-spam and parental control software; and cover it with a comprehensive 3-year warranty and 365-day telephone technical support.

You get -

* Up to 8Mb broadband (powered by BT)
* Unlimited * internet downloads
* FREE LG Redten PC and 19” LG LCD monitor
* FREE ADSL2+ modem
* FREE upgrade to Microsoft Windows Vista
* 365-day telephone support
* Anti-virus/anti-spyware software
* Parental control software
* Three-year hardware warranty
* Free software worth up to £20 each month
* Optional home-installation and static IP
* Costs as little as £19.99 per month

The PC has

Intel Pentium 4 3GHz processor with
Hyper Threading Technology
- 512MB DDR2 Fast Ram
- 160GB Ultra-IDE 7200RPM hard disk drive
- All-format LG DVD-RW rewriter
- LG keyboard and optical mouse
- Microsoft Media Center 2005 operating system
- Free upgrade to Microsoft Windows Vista



Can anyone pick holes in this offer?

[wonderfullife]

Hi
A 3yr contract, enough said.

From the website
How do I pay?
Each package and upgrade option can be paid for in one of two ways: either in simple monthly payments over three years, or if you prefer, as an upfront lump sum. If you choose the latter option, we'll even knock 10% off the total cost to make things a little easier for you. Business users also have two options: to pay upfront, or via a monthly leasing arrangement.

[bargainbarmy]

Not that good a deal if you have to pay for your BT line rental as well. With TalkTalk its all included for £20 a month, broadband, line rental and free international calls. Depends whether you think the free computer is a good deal.

[lyns]

Good for those who cant afford a new pc you would pay a lot more buying it from a catalouge or credit card and paying £20 a month.
Then you would have to pay for broadband and then pay for a upgrade from xp if you wanted it and extra for 3 year cover.
It took me 3 years to pay for my pc and £650 ended up being £1000

[chunter]

3 years is a bit of a commitment.
Do marriages last that long these days ???

[withabix]

I've just come back from Canada and this type of offer is pretty much standard there:

Free full PC package for $0
$1000 (UK equiv) laptop for $200 (they were £500 UK-Tesco-price Acers)
Free 19" Dell TFT monitor and $300 rebate etc etc
($= Canadian $ = 50p)

You have to sign up for 3 years with broadband providers there anyway, as you do with mobile phone contracts over there.

Cost levels aren't easily comparable however, as you change your telecoms provider and your broadband provider as a package. Landline calls are a lot cheaper - eg free local calls 24/7, International to UK $0.05/min etc..

Also, for mobile phone calls, you pay to make AND receive calls, however call charges are a fraction of what they are here.

[A Nice Englishman]

Doesn't sound like a sound business plan to me.

If you're willing to take a gamble on losing your Internet access and perhaps having your leased PC reposessed if they go bust and don't think the cost of Internet access will come down over the next three years it's probably worth a go.

[Browntoa]

running already in this thread here

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/....html?t=296709

[Avallon]

I've registered but having 2nd thoughts.

The arrangement seems to be as follows:

You take out an Interest Free loan with v12 for £769 which you then repay over three years. As this is a separate company I wonder what would happen if the Broadband Service goes belly up...

Also, if you end your contract early you have to pay a hefty £150 restocking fee, or you have to pay a substantial part of the pc's value back.

And finally, if you move you have to pay £49.99...