By
Ernest Doku
closeAuthor: Ernest Doku
Name: Ernest Doku
Email: ernest.doku@omio.com
Site: http://www.omio.com
About: See Authors Posts (1391)
6 months ago, Omio ran a survey to see exactly how much could be saved by shopping for a mobile phone online as opposed to on the high street – and the details were startling.
We found that a regular contract for a popular handset (the Nokia N96 at that time) could cost as much as £360 more than the equivalent mobile deal from an online retailer.
Well, it’s about time we checked up on the current state of mobile phone deals, so we decided to run another high street survey, comparing the offers found against the 400,000+ currently on our site for the most recession-friendly offers…but it seems like online is still king when it comes to saving those pennies.
Since our last survey, the networks have become a lot more savvy to the virtue of online-only offers, with most of the major carriers offering more texts, minutes and cheaper monthly line rental in exchange for avoiding their high street outlets and signing-up by surfing the web.
O2 offers double the number of free texts on many of their online deals as well as special web-only tariffs which are particularly easy on the pocket, whilst Orange and T-Mobile both shave a few quid off a number of their tariffs in exchange for shoppers going digital.
Vodafone have even gone as far as to one-up the online retailers, offering genuine half price line rental deals where customers can save 50% for a large part of their contract’s duration before it jumps back up to full price.
However, our biggest finding was still that the smart shopper could save even more by visiting independent online retailers, in some cases as much as 40% on an 18 month contract.
Using a few phones as case studies, the disparities in price of the ever-popular Nokia 5800 XpressMusic were quite surprising in particular.
Looking for an 18-month, £25 deal on a Nokia 5800, the closest available in an O2 retail outlet was a package which would include 200 minutes and 200 texts for £24.48 per month. However, the handset itself would cost us £48.93.
An online Mobiles.co.uk deal charges nothing for the handset – an instant saving of just under £50 – as well as offering more minutes (600) and unlimited texts, as well as half price line rental for 15 months of the contract – the equivalent of paying only £12.50 per month.
That is a saving of £178 over the course of an 18 month contract, going up to £226.93 when including the cost of the handset itself.
Much the same was found when looking at similarly priced tariffs from other retailers, where an equivalent monthly cost of £25 could stretch much further with greater minutes and texts, free gifts ranging from laptops and iPods to games consoles, as well as discounted line rental and cashback offers.
A standard 18-month 5800XM deal on BuyMobilePhones.net offers 700 minutes and unlimited texts each month, as well as a free Acer laptop (worth over £200) for £25 per month and a handset cost of £19.99.
A more pricey mobile like the Blackberry Curve 8900 – a messaging smart phone with multimedia functionality – still gleaned a number of better offers when checking the online retailers…
Whilst a contract over a longer duration offered equivalent reductions in monthly line rental, the 24 month deals offered by the networks paled in comparison to the best that the web had to offer.
Whilst the cheapest we had to plump for was a 24 month, £25 Combi tariff to get the handset for free at a T-Mobile store (which rose to £30 with a compulsory e-mail booster), Dial-A-Phone offers the Curve on an 18-month tariff for the same price, with 100 less free minutes but half price line rental for 6 months, making it £12.50 for 1/3 of the duration.
So not only is the consumer saving on monthly fees, they are tied into a contract for a shorter length of time than with the networks.
Cashback offers might seem great, although shoppers need to be savvy about exactly how to redeem these discounts from the retailers. Many make the cashback redemption easy, but others have a number of hoops to jump through before you reap the savings. Ofcom has recently weighed in to make the process more transparent, which is great news, but the onus is also on the networks to make their deals on the high street a little more appealing.
Whilst using sites like Omio can help cut through the mobile maze with like-for-like comparison, the first port of call for many is their local outlet and they are currently not giving the whole story on deals that are available.
Whilst some store staff admitted there were better deals to be had on their websites, many were content to offer us packages which we knew to have far less minutes and texts than their own online counterparts, for the same price.
We are more than a little surprised that even in the face of a recession and increasingly savvy shoppers, the high street is not trying hard enough to draw attention away from the online indie retailer.
Whilst their web sites now promise deals galore, the combination of a lack of information and a vested interest towards steering uninformed consumers towards pricier monthly tariffs seem to make buying a phone on the high street confusing, expensive, and often a waste of good shoe leather.
We have found that the wealth of information at one’s fingertips and the ability to directly comapre the full range of tariffs and deals on offer at a glance makes shopping online still the best way to buy the latest mobile phones, at the right price.
Mobile phones might have been considered a necessity immune to the recession, but the truth is that consumers are cutting back on every aspect of their lives, scrutinising their outgoings to save at every opportunity.
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