The 99p mobile phone: What's the catch?
Umm...err...
Carphone Warehouse started selling a mobile phone for 99p on Friday.
The handset is basic and ugly - an Alcatel 0T-209 - and you have to buy £10 Virgin Mobile PAYG credit.
And that's it? Yes, that's it: there is no catch. It really is the cheapest PAYG on the market - about £4 less than the nearest rival, according to the consumer group Which.
Who will buy this phone? One could imagine plenty of people buying the handset as a back-up, or frugal older people who "just want a phone", which they carry only when driving - in case they break down.
But no child or teenager would thank their parents if an Alcatel OT-209 arrived in the Christmas stocking.
In a press call last week, CPW boss Charles Dunston forecast booming PAYG smartphone sales for Christmas.
Entry-level smartphones start at around £60 - and in the absence of an iPhone or a BlackBerry - might pass muster with The Youth of Today.
COMMENTS
ever met an honest salesman?
only 99p*
*as long as you hand over £10.99 for it
unlimited*
*as long as you stay under the limit
how come sales tossers are allowed to get away with such blatant lies?
It's a phone innit?
I had no idea my phone had to LOOK good as well as, well, make phone calls.
Who knew?
Oh, of course...
So you buy your 99p phone (with mandatory £10 credit), sling it in your glovebox for emergencies.
Six months down the line, your £10 credit will have miraculously evaporated and your phone's number will go MIA.
Unless your account has a billed event within a period of six months, the network swipes your wonga and scrubs your account. They bleat something about credit holding / banking regulations when you protest. That's how they'll make their money on this ice-lolly.
Best phone EVER
Nokia 6310i? Absolutely the best phone ever. By comparison everything since has been a terrible combination of rubbish phone and feeble, pathetic and pointless PDA. Especially the iPhone.
I still mourne mine.
My sixty-three ten i
At last began to die
No signal was found
Interred in the ground
For my Noki I sometimes still cry.
Seriously Nokia - just make the bloody thing again. You'd sell milions of them! Maybe a colour screen, but just that OK? Nothing else different. Same software, exactement le meme, savi?
It's about time
That we finally got another cheap, functional, useful, PHONE.....
Todays generation of kids are morons quite frankly.. My generation has tried to go from 7" super-low res to 50+ inch HD quality displays. Todays generation wants a 4" screen that they can watch a 3d film on with 7.1 audio (WTF)...
This college kid came to train with us once, and his biggest complaint was that he didnt have enough money to live off of.. He was spending more on his phone than most people spend on a mortgage, and only having 1 pack of non-branded pot noodle every day to fund the habbit... sad...
