Fone Forum

'3' have come up with a new marteting ploy:



See:-   https://www.three.co.uk/Products_Services/Big_Giveaway (https://www.three.co.uk/Products_Services/Big_Giveaway)

The first offer is now showing online.  It's a free draw for 1000 free mobile broadband dongles.  You can only enter this draw once.

The website doesn't say how often the offer will be changed.

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 (http://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 ) !        :o

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.        ???

The monthly charge is below £15 as they are quoting the price including the previous VAT of 17.5%.  However, VAT is scheduled to revert to 17.5%, from 15%, at the end of this year.  Given the state of the UK's finances I could well imagine that in the not so distant future VAT will increase from 17.5%.  Very high inflation is very probable in the UK, in the near term.

TopCashBack seem to have a better record of getting cashback from Three than QuidCo do...  If in doubt, read their forums.

A website is currently giving "free" 3 mobile dongles. This website appeared in the Sun and also on MSE and after going through various forums about the safety and legitimacy of the website, I took the risk and ordered a dongle for myself yesterday. Basically you need to register and they would send you a code. Use this code to purchase the dongle and you pay only for the postage. So effective the dongle is for £4.95

http://www.3dongle4free.co.uk/

Regards
Nik

Hi Nik,

Do you have received your free 3 mobile dongle?

Regards

Panda

Hi Panda

I did receive my 3 dongle on Monday. It comes with a 3 SIM card. The SIM card did not have any credit on it but i tried to use skype and it worked. I could even do a voice chat and had few minutes of video chat too. It was not as good as using your broadband but was very nice considering it was using the UMTS network. I get a decent 3 signal at my house.

The dongle is locked to 3 but I have read that the dongle can be unlocked through an online site for about 15 euros. This will allow you to use it for any network and even abroad. It seems to be a good buy- just to keep for a backup

Regards
Nik

Hi Panda. I have also received the 3 dongle but i did not try until now. But after reading reply of Nik i would worth considering to check for Skype.

Hi Nik

Thanks for reply, i have ordered on 15/05/09 still waiting for delivery.

Panda