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Friday, July 13, 2007

Carphone Swap.It deal

Carphone Warehouse has just announced a new type of deal whereby you get two handsets during an 18-month contract. Basically, you get an handset upfront and a new one after 9-months of the contract.

The example here is for a £35/month contract with o2 and a D600 handset from Samsung. I’m assuming that the swapper handset is an equivalent handset. A brand new U600 retail costs £210 from Expansys. So actually the offer is effectively in the eyes of the consumer a £210 discount.

However, if they take the same bundle from the OneStopPhoneShop which is a Carphone online brand, there is a £340 cashback offer with the first 10-months of the contract being at £1/month. Therefore the discount is better for the end user in a cashback deal rather than a swap.it deal if they can be bothered with all the bureaucracy that a cashback deal entails.

Given that Carphone works on a wholesale price for the handsets and not the retail price quoted by Expansys, it illustrates that the whole concept of cashback is that not everyone reclaims the money. There must be a lot of dissatisfied customers who took cashback deals out there.