Month: June 2014

Unlimited broadband for £2.50 a month, including line rental!

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eeI’ve recently come to the end of my free Sky TV and Broadband subscription (a special offer when Sky bought O2’s home broadband division), so I’ve been on the look out for some great deals for a new plan. I don’t live in a Fibre area (apparently we’re too close to the exchange), so this plan is ADSL.

You’ll need to be an Orange, T-Mobile or EE customer, but you’ll probably already have an Orange SIM card somewhere for all of those 241 Wednesday cinema offers. If not, just pick up a free SIM card online, or from your local supermarket (it’s usually about £1). You’ll need to use this SIM card every 90 days to qualify, so you’ll probably have to top it up with £10.

How to sign up:

  1. Get an EE sim card – you’ll need the mobile number to complete your order
  2. Go to the Quidco site, sign up (if you haven’t already, we get to split a £2.50 sign up bonus…), and go to the EE Broadband page
  3. Make sure your Adblock is disabled, and click through to the EE site. Make sure to select to pay your line rental in advance, complete your order and wait for your new router to be delivered

How good is it?

EE broadband download speeds seem slightly slower than Sky – I was getting 19Mbps, and am now getting 17Mbps. Although, I’m not really complaining, since there’s a pretty big price difference between the two. Upload speeds seem fairly stable between the two.

There is traffic management on EE broadband for P2P and usenet at peak hours (16:30 – 01:00), so if you’re a heavy downloader, you’ll need to switch to off-peak times or get a VPN.

They also didn’t seem to put through my line rental saver on my first bill – I called up and they’re giving me a refund for the price paid so far though.

Seen this elsewhere?

They’ve written about this on Money Saving Expert, but give you a link through their own cashback site – they’re offering a £100 Amazon.co.uk voucher, but you can get £130 cash through Quidco (with a 7% bonus for Amazon vouchers if you are a premium member) – as there’s an asterisk next to their deal, you can see they’re getting paid – and judging from the cashback available elsewhere, you can see where £30 is going…

More cashback?

Note that this offer seems to be flipping between Quidco and TopCashback – when it’s on TCB, you get £136.50 cash (£143.32 in Amazon.co.uk vouchers) if you are a premium member (£5 a year). It seems like it should be back on TCB in a week, but it’s up to you to decide whether you want to risk it coming back.

How it’s calculated:

The headline £2.50 price is based on taking out the £132 annual line rental, which should be wiped out by that £130 cashback. Don’t forget that this is eligible for 3% cashback with the Santander 123 current account too.

Note that cashback isn’t 100% guaranteed – but I’ve never had an issue before.

£5 off £10 in Tesco and more with 4sq Amex deals

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foursquare logoFoursquare Amex deals are back – whilst they’re not as good as they’ve been in the past (especially that infamous £5 off £5 deal back in November 2012 which got me writing this blog), £5 off a £10 spend at Tesco is still a pretty good deal.

Here’s the deals that are available:

  • Tesco: Spend £10, get £5 back
  • Argos: Spend £30, get £10 back – remember, a lot of Argos stores stock gift cards – you’ll therefore be able to use this offer on more than what’s in the catalogue!
  • Primark: Spend £30, get £10 back
  • Ask, Pizza Express, Zizzi: Spend £30, get £10 back – you can use this with any other offer, such as vouchers, Taste Card or Orange (EE) Wednesdays at Pizza Express, as long as you charge £30 to your Amex – you could end up getting £60 of pizza for £20 (hopefully not all for yourself!). Alternatively, most of these restaurants sell gift cards, so you can just come back another time.

You’ve got until 31st July to claim these.

How do I sign up?

  • To use the foursquare offers, you need to register an account with foursquare, then sync your foursquare account with Amex,
  • Open the app on your smartphone and sign in. Either search for the shop by name, or hit the search bar, and select specialsspecials
  • Pick the shop you want to redeem the offer for. Don’t tap the ‘Special’ link yet!specials
  • Scroll down on the checkin screen, then tap the ‘Special’ linkspecials
  • Hit ‘Add to Card’. You’ll be notified that your offer has been addedspecials
  • All UK issued Amex cards are valid for this offer, including those from MBNA and Lloyds. You won’t get an instant notification about the credit if you’re not using an Amex issued card though, but it should still show up on your statement.

Tips and tricks

  • If you’ve already signed up but can’t remember which card is linked to each account, search for “Your card is synced” in your email
  • If you’re signing up for multiple foursquare accounts with gmail, try adding a ‘+amex1’ after your username, such as [email protected]. Gmail treats the +amex1 as a label, and delivers it all to your inbox!
  • There’s a limit on the number of cards that can claim these offers. Make sure you grab the offers you want to use quickly – once loaded they should stay on your account (try to leave the ones you know you won’t use for other people…)
  • You can use this offer on each supplementary card you have too (unless its an MBNA one which has the same number…)

via David Lyness