I received an email from '3' today, cheekily entitled "Everyone's a Winner", telling me that: "Unfortunately, you haven't won this time....", doubtless with countless of others !
The email goes on to say: "....but all is not lost. We're giving you an exclusive £10 discount on a Pay As You Go dongle when you buy online. Just type in the code ‘DONGLEDEAL’ when prompted. But hurry, this offer is only available until 23rd March."
It then goes on to show a special offer for a high end mobile broadband package. The offer is a
ZTE MF627 USB Modem,
15GB of data allowance per month, for just £15 per month over a 24 month contract.
Close examination of this offer shows it to be even better than it looks at first sight. For starters, the monthly cost is just £14.68 a month, not £15 as shown, thanks to the VAT reduction. But in addition to this benefit, one can obtain a £100 cashback for signing up through
www.quidco.com So the final maths is that you will pay 24*£14-68 = £352-32, less £100 cashback through quidco, making just £252-32 for 24 months of 15 GB / month allowance.
If you divide the £252-32 by 24 you find that the effective monthly cost is just £10-51, for 15 GB allowance, which is well under £1 per GB ( in fact a whisker over 70p / GB ) !
There may need to be some small adjustments to these figures, as attempting to sign up online there is an unspecified £1-95 registration fee that gets taken from your credit card ( but which is returned if you are unsuccessful ). It does not say whether you eventually get this small sum back if your purchase goes through alas.
Tempted as I am by these figures, I shall personally pass up this rare offer. The only reason is that I am simply fed up with the amount of 'down time' that I experience using their mobile broadband offer on a '3' pre-pay SIM.