New Info On Mobile Rainbow (merged)

thomthom_3

SaverSarah wrote:

What's a shill? Sorry for being dense.

how bored am i tonight...lol...

a shill...'One who poses as a satisfied customer or an enthusiastic gambler to dupe bystanders into participating in a swindle'

or

n : a decoy who acts as an enthusiastic customer in order to stimulate the participation of others v : act as a shill; "The shill bid for the expensive carpet during the auction in order to drive the price up"

juliakill

Hi me again,

Never heard of a shill before All I can say is that I am definitely not a shill. I have always looked on here for advice before purchasing items. But when I got my mobile phone through mobilerainbow I did not do my homework first and after I purchased I then did some research - I know, foolish. Anyway, after reading some posts after the purchase I had been worried for the whole six months as to whether I would get payment. So when I did, I immediately let this forum know so people could feel a bit easier.

Not sure how I could prove I am not a shill, I have a website with my children's life story on it - if anyone is bored and wants to get some background on me http://www.hi-fund.org/ellietate3.html

regvardy

Hello,

I bought a '3' phone from '3mobileshop' part of MSOLS (owner of rainbow), deal was seemingly 'brilliant' '12 month contract 12 free rental'.

Was concerned that '3mobileshop/ MSOLS' may disappear and the cash back hard to come by. Did some limited research and managed to satisfy myself that it was worth the risk.

Went thru quidco and got £33 (paid and received) (was quoted as £20, must have been a good month)

Anyway, 3mobileshop website seems to have disappeared. A little bit worrying. I hope rainbow doesn't go the sameway as MSOLS would certainly go under.

My contract is with MSOLS which stills seems to be in existence. My 6 month cashback isn't due till 1st August.

Hoping MSOLS stays solvent till at least that date.

Thanks for the COMPANIES HOUSE INFO, Trading standards and SMALL CLAIMS COURT threats look as though they will be necessary.

MSOLS please stay solvent.

PS. I exchanged e-mails (when taking out contract)with MSOLS regarding CASHBACK and change of address and was assured that as long as the current address of the customer and the bill address matched (ie you've changed them after you've moved) there was no problem with cashback.

skip2mylou

hi regvardy

u may wanna look at:

http://www.rpoints.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1053826&highlight=mobile+rainbow&sid=92dd74f64b3d702364b650768d2f636d

ominous sounding...but if its any consolation the dude got paid in the end?

regvardy

Skip2mylou

So long as MSOLS is still solvent when I make my first claim, I'll use all avenues to get my money.

You have to remember MSOLS is also receiving 5.99 a month insurance from all the buyers who haven't cancelled their insurance, so they definitely still have an income.

Reestit_Mutton

regvardy wrote:

Skip2mylou

So long as MSOLS is still solvent when I make my first claim, I'll use all avenues to get my money.

You have to remember MSOLS is also receiving 5.99 a month insurance from all the buyers who haven't cancelled their insurance, so they definitely still have an income.

WARNING!!!...

The affiliate service that 3MobileShop and Mobile Rainbow uses has suspended their affiliation because sales weren't being tracked. If they've now stopped paying their affiliates I would say that it's beginning to look a little more than ominous.

Please Note: The above info is not borne out of bitterness over unpaid commissions as I made a decision early on not to include their offers on the Reestit Mutton site. As they were a relatively new outlet (appearing on the horizon only last Summer), I decided to sit it out until sufficient evidence of payout existed...sadly this has never materialised in any significant volume, despite my recent cashback poll (I suspect that there may be a great many MSE members sitting on their hands waiting for their cashback to materialise...or not...before casting their vote).

I do hope that not too many MSE members were seduced by Mobile Rainbow's early market-beating offers on the Three network as I fear their cashback promises may come to nowt.

regards,
Reestit Mutton

MobileRainbow

Dear forum members,

We’ve seen some posts here on Mobile Rainbow and would like to put certain issues in perspective.

Mobile Rainbow is one of the brands owned by MSols Ltd., a company incorporated in March’2001. MSols also owns other brands (3mobileshop, Orangemobileshop etc). As the company trades only online, different brand names and different websites help in promoting the products.

There has been some scepticism regarding Mobile Rainbow’s ability and willingness to pay cash-backs. We’d like to point out that all customers who have fulfilled the T&C at the time of their purchase have been paid. Off late we’ve introduced the process of intimating the customers, through text messages, once the cash-back has been paid into their accounts.

So far as the ability to pay is concerned, MSols has very sound financials. The company posted a turnover of £1.66 m with a profit of about £48,000 for the year ending 31st March’ 06. The paid-up share capital of the company is £116,300. These figures can be verified from the Companies house site.

Our first cycle of cashback started in Feb-March’ 06 so we do understand the apprehension that some customers might have had. We hope that these have been put to rest now and wish that more people come forward to share their positive experiences also.

Reestit_Mutton

Hi MobileRainbow,

Good to see you being proactive in communicating with your current/prospective customers. I do hope that this is more than just a face-saving exercise on your part.

MobileRainbow wrote:

Dear forum members,

We’ve seen some posts here on Mobile Rainbow and would like to put certain issues in perspective.

Mobile Rainbow is one of the brands owned by MSols Ltd., a company incorporated in March’2001.

Can you clarify this statement further? - You have only been actively trading under the Mobile Rainbow, 3 Mobileshop, Orange Mobileshop banners for about a year now (although you regsitered the domains about 6-12 months prior to your websites going live). What were you doing prior to this?

MobileRainbow wrote:

So far as the ability to pay is concerned, MSols has very sound financials. The company posted a turnover of £1.66 m with a profit of about £48,000 for the year ending 31st March’ 06. The paid-up share capital of the company is £116,300. These figures can be verified from the Companies house site.

£48,000 isn't a large profit by any means. It's barely enough to pay the annual salary for 2 people (assuming they are paid the national average). Alternatively, it's only enough to pay the cashback for, say, 150-200 customers (how big is your cashback creditors book on average at any given time?).

To be fair though, I can appreciate that small companies have to start somewhere - they don't just appear on the horizon and suddenly earn profits of hundreds of thousands or millions from day one. However, in the cashback contract business, customers like to know that the companies that they deal with have a healthy reserve of cash to fall back on should they experience a particularly lean period.

MobileRainbow wrote:

Our first cycle of cashback started in Feb-March’ 06 so we do understand the apprehension that some customers might have had. We hope that these have been put to rest now and wish that more people come forward to share their positive experiences also.

Yes...let's hope for more feedback. Given
(a) the amount of talk on here about Mobile Rainbow and
(b) the fact that your first tranche of cashbacks was about 3 months ago
I'm a little concerned that more people haven't yet come forward with votes for the polls that exist.

I see that you've also copied this response to the poll that I set up a while ago (HERE). Let's see if we can't gather more votes for this poll to make the results more statistically significant (a data set of only 5 respondents isn't really sufficient as a reliable indicator).

regards,
Reestit Mutton

MobileRainbow

Hi Reestit Mutton,

Reestit_Mutton wrote:

You have only been actively trading under the Mobile Rainbow, 3 Mobileshop, Orange Mobileshop banners for about a year now (although you regsitered the domains about 6-12 months prior to your websites going live). What were you doing prior to this?

You’ll appreciate that if one comes across a good domain name, s/he needs to grab it before someone else does. This is what we did too. Once we had the domain names, we spent time getting the backend in place before launching the online trading business.
On a different note, seeing some of our trading names mentioned above and having seen speculations about our being connected to Mobileshop, we’d like to clarify that we’re not connected to Mobileshop in any way.

Reestit_Mutton wrote:

£48,000 isn't a large profit by any means. It's barely enough to pay the annual salary for 2 people (assuming they are paid the national average). Alternatively, it's only enough to pay the cashback for, say, 150-200 customers (how big is your cashback creditors book on average at any given time?).

The profits of course are calculated after taking all the expenses (including cashbacks) into account. For obvious reasons we can’t disclose the figures in the creditors book but we assure you that its sufficient to honour all genuine cashback claims. As the number of customers grow so does the turnover.

Reestit_Mutton wrote:

To be fair though, I can appreciate that small companies have to start somewhere - they don't just appear on the horizon and suddenly earn profits of hundreds of thousands or millions from day one.

Thanks for this. We do intend to become one of the bigger names of the industry. It’ll take us some time to reach there but we will.

Reestit_Mutton wrote:

Yes...let's hope for more feedback.

We request people who’ve had good experiences with Mobile Rainbow to also post their experiences on the forums.

Regards,
Mobile Rainbow

unmissable

I am glad that Mobile Rainbow has posted in the last few days. It shows to me that they must still be in business.

At the moment I am waiting for my cashback (sent by special delivery on 12 Jun). The delivery was recieved (post office web site proves this) yet I have heard nothing from MSols. All e-mails go unanswererd and the customer service numbers given to me are out of commission.

Could mobile rainbow please tell me how to get in touch with Msols so that I can chase up my cashback?