Dumping Sky, should I dump Lebara too - MSE Offer should have mentioned this

BadDebtor

Sky stopped competing last year, i.e they would not price match on top of that their support has been off-shored and very rude, then both sims lost service for 2 days.  All they could do was tell me to wipe my phone which I was not going to do.  It is so lazy for them to just ask people to reset and wipe all their settings, like asking people to reboot their computer and reinstall windows, total sledgehammer to crack a nut approach.

To add insult to injury they wrote to me to say my subscription is increasing to £8 a month, that was the last straw, so I went online and got a PAC code, I will delight in telling them on monday when new Lebara SIM arrives.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cheap-mobile-finder/sim-only/lebara-12gb-sim/

However, now I am wondering if I should pull out of Lebara?

After signing up I got an email from GiftCloud saying

"Once your purchase has been verified by Lebara you will receive your gift card within 180 days days."

SIX MONTHS of paying more than I am paying now and many people on here saying they have not been paid.  

 
At the very least I think I should pull out and re-sign for the 99p for months 1-6 and £7.90 thereafter, it is a one month sim so I can just dump it if necessary.

I figure if I transfer one number away from Sky they will get serious about price matching on the other, if not then I will dump them completely.  I have hundreds of megabytes of data I never use and none of their offsets offer value for money.

Should I dump Lebara completely or go for that 15gb offer at 99p a month?

oldernonethewiser

Go for the best offer that suits you.  Is the gift card something you need/want or is the 99p deal a better option?

I had a rolling one month Lebara deal from MSE and when I decided to ditch it was very easy. 

Mark_d

Is it really worth the effort, to keep negotiating/switching, for the little money you save?

I signed up at lebara.co.uk.  I pay £4.50 for 5GB (12 month contract).  For me that's ample calls/texts/data and I don't think anyone could say that the cost is unreasonable.

BadDebtor

Yes that is reasonable, previously Sky would haggle and match deals if you signed up for a further 12 months, I have been doing that for around 5 years, hence I have hundreds of gigabytes in my piggybank.

I followed the advice of MSE which said it was the "hottest deal" 

1. MOBILE BILL: Many overpay four-fold. Scale of Saving: £150/yr. Time Taken: 5 mins. Key Action: Quickly find cheapest Sim. Hottest Deal: 12GB/mth for '£3.57/mth'.

It says 

"You'll receive an email from Giftcloud within six months explaining how to claim it."

But actually you can't even claim for 180 days and you can't complain for 210 days.

I think it would be better if the MSE offer clearly said 

"You'll receive an email from Giftcloud in six to seven months explaining how to claim it, if the cookies were registered."

I also think the email from Giftcloud should say whether the offer was properly registered.

So I cancelled my Lebara deal, they were quite pleasant about it and if the refund comes through in the promised time of 3 to 4 working days I will order a different Lebara offer.

To be fair, MSE offer page does say

"You can get an extra 3GB of data for an average of 88p/month more with the deal below"

However, the reason I did not consider that was because there is no way I will even use 1gb a month never mind 12gb, so I figured I do not need it, but 15gb deal is hotter because it removes all the hassle of did my cookie land and some promised gift card which many others have complained never arrives. 

Also it is a monthly sim at 99p a month, so I am guaranteed to save £7 a month from Sky's new price and if a better offer comes along I am free to jump to it.

It is clear what Sky Mobile are doing.

First they write to me saying they are increasing my plan from £6 a month to £8 a month for 2gb, that came after them refusing to price match, so much for haggling, before Sky would reduce by 20% if you renewed for a year, but 20% off £8 is of no interest to me, I was paying £4.50, if they had matched that I might have stayed with them.

Then when I went to their website yesterday £8 a month buys you 4gb not 2gb and the 2gb deal no longer exists, instead there is a deal of £5 which buys a paltry 100mb of data a month.



My guess is that they expect this to push customers to call them and demand the 4gb plan as in the email they are paying £8 for 2gb, I was not interested in that extra data which is why I signed up for the Lebara 12gb deal. 

Then today when I went back to the Sky site the £8 for 4gb deal was gone, clearly they want me to contact them and say "what about that deal £8 deal you had on yesterday" and they want me to think that if I do not act I will lose the 4gb deal, never mind the 2gb for £6 deal and forget about £4-50.



That is a fake scarcity tactic, the idea is to make me even more desperate to get that £8 for 4gb deal.

So I did a little test, I cleared all cookies and miracle of miracles the 4gb plan for £8 is back. 

MSE has warned us of how insurance companies do this fake scarcity stuff, especially if we are close to renewal, well sorry Sky, I am not biting, in fact this has just made me more determined to leave.  I know I will lose all my piggy bank but I do not need it.

It seems to me that Sky is not interested in the price point, it appears they would rather fool people into paying more with this fake scarcity and  if they get enough people to fall for this then I guess it makes financial sense for them.

So now having cancelled the Lebara Gift Cloud offer I went back to MSE mobile offers and selected ANY DATA because I do not really NEED 15gb or 12gb, I have 2gb a month now and a piggy bank of hundreds of gigabytes.

Selecting any data brought in a new offer of 5gb a month, so comparing this to the 15gb Lebara offer, the 99p a month draws you in but I was fine with 2gb and so 5gb will be more than adequate.  So instead of £4.45 a month I will pay £3.40, this beats the £4-50 I was paying Sky previously for 2gb, it beats Sky current price of £6 for 2gb and obviously way better than £8 for 2gb or £8 for 4gb. 

So £3-40 x 12 is £40.80 for the year and for my second sim where I don't use data I might use the 1p mobile £36 a year deal for unlimited texts and calls with 250mb (not gb) of data or I just get a second sim at £3.40.

You really have to be a Money Saving Expert to get your head around these offers. 

What I have learnt is forget gift cards you can't get paid for until 7 months have passed and always select show all deals and any data on the MSE mobile tool.