End of Cashback deals?

zolablue25

Hi

I was just on the phone to T Mobile to get a PAC and the woman asked why I was leaving. I told her I had a better deal and that it was cashback, to which she responded by asking whether I had seen the news that cashbacks were ending because so many companies were ging bust owing people cashback. Is this true or was she telling me porkies?

Cheers

Alan

g33za

yes some companies are going bust (although forward cellular is the only one i remember), but for the likes of cpw and dialaphone so you think they will be going bust soon?

Its just a typical marketing tactic they use at retentions. Although as with cashback there are risks so before you take one up make sure you've researched the deal and company beforehand.

zolablue25

She implied that the cashbacks were going to be made illegal. I did suspect her motives though

Reestit_Mutton

zolablue25 wrote:

She implied that the cashbacks were going to be made illegal. I did suspect her motives though

You would be surprised at the size of the porkies that network operatives will tell their customers in order to keep their custom - scare tactics are not uncommon.

I've had to be quite blunt with some of these people at times when they have lied to me in order to try and flatter the pitiful offer that they are presenting me with. It really shakes them up when I tell them that I run my own contract mobile phone price comparison service and that I am fully aware of the terms of all the deals and have taken full advantage of such deals on a number of occasions in the past.

One operative even went as far as saying that companies that offer cashback "never" pay up. I hate it when people are so blatantly black and white with their choice of language.

As for what you have been told, to make the offer of a cash incentive for purchasing a mobile contract "illegal" would require government legislation. This is a blatant abuse of the English language and it is clearly designed to discredit ALL indirect sales channels (such as high street and online retailers) as they all offer some form of cashback these days.

Reestit Mutton

jedeye

I've just spent about 40 mins today talking to o2 to try to get a decent deal and the woman told me that 9 out of 10 people fail to get cashback so it is better to go with them with a new contract! I'm still looking - mainly if e2save bring out some new deals with decent amounts of minutes.

jedeye

Reestit_Mutton

jedeye wrote:

I've just spent about 40 mins today talking to o2 to try to get a decent deal and the woman told me that 9 out of 10 people fail to get cashback so it is better to go with them with a new contract! I'm still looking - mainly if e2save bring out some new deals with decent amounts of minutes.

jedeye

I agree that the levels of cashback on offer do assume a certain percentage of forgotten and failed claims and I would even go so far as to say (rather cynically) that some retailers devise their T&Cs with this in mind.

However, the claim that 9 out of 10 customers fail to claim their cashback is a blatant over-exaggeration. I would go so far as to say that, had it been applied to any particular retailer, it could be deemed libellous.

If you want to know what percentage of cashback is likely to go unclaimed for any given retailer all you have to do is compare their automatic cashback offers with the identical claimable cashback ones.

If you divide the automatic cashback on offer by the claimable cashback on offer that ought to give you a very good idea.

For instance...

E2Save currently offers an L6 on Virgin 20 (12 months) with 12 months free line rental via the claimable route - that's £240 cashback. If you select "automatic cashback" as an alternative gift, the offer changes to £120 cashback.

By my reckoning, that implies that E2Save expects NO MORE THAN 50% of the claimable cashback to go unclaimed for one reason or another. That's a far cry from the 90% implied by the network operative.

The same maths applies to any retailer that offers an automatic cashback option (which is a growing number these days) and the percentages will vary from retailer to retailer as the T&Cs that they choose to apply to their cashback deals can have a significant bearing on the claims failure rate.

Maths is your friend...

HtH
Reestit Mutton

rajinder

I'd say that one should take care with the term 'Automatic cashback' as I have 3 contracts with E2save, and they were well over due their auto CB by 2 months as i was promised that i should receive them after 2 months (60 days) and i am currently in my 4th month of contract.

I called to inquire why we still haven't received the Auto CB and was told that someone had forgotten to raise that CB and thus i'll have to wait another 30 days for the cheque to arrive!

I guess their plan was that if I forget then the claim would get forgotten about and they would be able to retain the money!

Either way, one's got to be careful and remmeber their dates correnctly!

rajinder

Deleted as double post....Sorry!

coolio_2

I get fed up of this rubbish. Surely if you're smart enough to know about cashback, you're smart enough to not be fooled. Had a conversation with Sky on Thursday - tried to cancel my contract;

Callcentre: Can I not interest you in broadband?
Me: No, sorry, I already have the internet.
CallCentre: But this is a very good offer. For £26 a month we can do a free & fast connection, not a slow one like all the others. Do you mind me asking who you are with at the moment?
Me: Be
CallCentre: I have never heard of them, they can't be very reliable.
Me: Very reliable thanks
CallCentre: Probably very slow download. I can give you a 8mb connection, so everything is very fast.
Me: I get upto 32mb ADSL2 connection with Be thanks
CallCentre: You don't need it that fast do you? You should choose Sky.
Me: I pay less, and get a faster connection, that has been 100% reliable, thank you very much.
CallCentre: You don't need something that fast though, you're better off with Sky.

skip2mylou

that's a pretty amusing conversation you had there...how quickly these guys change their tune