Mobile Phone Cashback

anglojock

From experience which company is the least riskiest for paying out staged cashback payments?

mobilejunkie

People keep asking that question and there is no longer a simple or ready answer. Do a LOT of research and weigh up the relative risks etc. In the case of cpw (which has always been the safest) ignore the past because the future will be rather different. Make sure you know exactly what you're doing and the games they are playing before you go to ANY of the dealers now. If you do all that you should be ok - but it's a LOT of research and knowledge.

Gollom

I had no problem at all with mobileshop - in fact I got back more as I opted for Argos vouchers!

Recommended

(I went via Mark at Mobile Mole)

anglojock

Mobilejunkie with your reference to cpw, what do you mean the future will be different?

mobilejunkie

It's complicated. There have been a LOT of changes recently - not least in their attitude to customers. If you follow the t&c you signed up to you will find 4 months later that they aren't. But that's just the beginning. There general efficiency and clarity (relatively speaking - they still muddied the laters before) is a thing of the past.

anglojock

to be honest I have got to the stage where I do not trust any of these mobile phone sites. Think it is about time we all applied some consumer power to try and stop these dodgy cashback offers.

Old_Gold

To be honest it is amazing that any overseer of this industry allows the cashback industry to continue. In law how many companies can continue to trade openly in the knowledge that their contracts are deliberately ambiguous and difficult purely so that a large percentage of customers lose the money they thought they would get.

mobilejunkie

Hold on!!! I for one don't want them stopped. I'm getting loads of great free phones, free minutes and texts, picture messages, internet access and more thank you very much!! I no longer spend money on outgoing land line calls and previosuly only had a PAYT hand-me-down I never used because of the cost.

If you know what you're doing and research THOROUGHLY you can beat them at their own game. If you don't want to, don't play - but don't stop the rest of us please! I'm afraid most people go into these deals quite blindly; the dealers don't have to cheat to avoid paying because many are too stupid or lazy to find out what they're doing beforehand. It's not easy and does take a lot of research and experience and (at the end of the day) a risk-reward approach with open eyes. I have got plenty of deals for friends and family; most have never had a contract and were paying a lot on PAYT every month. One who did was forking out more than they'd pay now even IF they didn't get their cashback. As with other things, people who rush in and "tinker" with things they don't usually understand and based on a knee-jerk headline approach usually mess things up. No-one forces anyone into these contracts and there is PLENTY of information on here about all of them.

gtz101

I agree with mobilejunkie, only thing to add is that its not just about the research and knowledge. Like with anything else you have to take that risk and even with the best of knowledge and research, things don't always work out as planned, i.e. the company could just go bankrupt and you get nothing back.

mobilejunkie

Hence the risk-reward approach as I mentioned! By now I could lose ALL the cashback on at least one deal and still break even. It's a bit like investment; spread your risk, know your particular niche and work out the cash-flow and profit as a percentage over time. Lol! Also like investing; a lot of people get sucked in by the glossy brochures (in this context web sites) but don't really understand what they're doing or have the information to make a balanced assessment. Hence they get fleeced!! I will confess though; I'm more successful at this myself than I am at investing!

gtz101

Absolutely especially if you purchase more than 1 contract. If you purchase only just 1 contract in a year or 18 months which many people do, then the risk as such can't be spread but at least you know who to aviod next time. But yes, I do agree with the message that you tend to get across to many people here and 90% of the time it is the customer who make some mistakes along the line somewhere or failing to take the correct measures when it comes to cashbacks.