I’ve just earned £55 and reduced my mobile phone bill by over £300 a year!

A little over 2 years ago I moved to EE from Vodafone. My Galaxy Note 3 had annoyed me so much I just wanted to go back to the comforting embrace of Apple and its lovely infrastructure. I had my eyes on the iPhone 6s Plus  so I’d be keeping the larger form factor that I’d got used to and I’d be able to enjoy the Apple podcast app that for some reason I could not find a (free) suitable android replacement.

EE were offering £90 cashback at the time, which was a healthy encouragement to join them, however, to get the iPhone 6sPlus with the amount of data I wanted (8gb), was going to cost me £55 a month! oucho! Luckily a friend of mine was working for EE at the time and after chatting he agreed to add me to his Friends & Family list so I could get 30% off the price and I’d be paying £38 a month. I’ve been paying about £40 a month for my mobile phone for as long as I can remember so I was more than happy paying this. I would need to pay some money up front for the phone but as I was going to be on one of the more expensive tariffs, it was going to be a couple of hundred quid less than if I was on a £20 a month one!

****wavy time lines****

Fast forward to this week, 2 years later. I’m out of contract and I’ve recently had the battery replaced in my iPhone for £29. I’m happy with the phone and feel I could keep it for another year, easily. Based on this I didn’t need to pay so much money for line rental as I’d be no longer subsidising the handset in my monthly cost. Having just got back from the US, where I found the call/text costs exorbitant and the data charges ridiculous, I wanted to see if anyone offered a great deal with non-European countries included in the minutes/text/data allowance.

A quick google pointed me to Three. They have a ‘feel at home’ offering that allows you to use your inclusive minutes/text/data for no additional charge. For the grand price of £14 a month I would get unlimited minutes/texts and 12gb data. It would be for a 12 month contract. If I felt the need to get a new handset then I might just buy one out-right rather than pay for it as part of my monthly line rental.

Based with this price/deal information I dial 150 from my mobile to speak to EE. After navigating their automated switchboard I got through to a very happy lady in retentions. Asking for my PAC (Port Authorisation Code) initiated the ‘Im leaving you’ dance with her asking why. I explained the high costs being in the US and explained the Three mobile deal which included the US. Immediately she told me about a package from EE that matched that deal but was actually only £13.99 a month! Over the year that would save me 12p compared to the Three contract. To put that into perspective, while I was in the USA that would allow me 6 SECONDS of talk time or 1/5th of a text message.

It was at this point I told her about the £55 cashback from Three and her reply was ‘We don’t offer cashback’ and the conversation screeched to a halt. The PAC was given and soon the call was over. My PAC arrived by text a moment later and I could then go about ordering my new sim card from Three.

TopCashBack makes getting cashback so easy. Log into your account, find the merchant and then click the link. Within seconds I was on the Three website and able to order the package. It is a 12 month contract so I had to sign a direct debit so that they could take the payments, but seeing as it is such a good deal, I very much doubt I will be paying anything more than the £14 line rental. I was advised that the Sim card will arrive within 3 days and I already have the instructions on how to port my number over to Three.

So that’s it. I’ve got £55 coming to me from TopCashBack and I’m saving £500 a year on my line rental. When you factor in the £55 Cashback then my line rental is £9.42 a month. Which is a saving of nearly £45 a month from the standard rate I should have been paying at EE and over £30 a month saving on what I was paying EE.

It should come into force for February so starts my cost reduction/income increasing plan for 2018!