When €49 a month works out CHEAPER than €25 a month...
...but be careful when you’re signing up for a TV, phone and broadband bundle, because this particular anomaly applies only in year one of the €49 contract. Yes, it’s a minef ield out there when you’re seeking the best deal
Are you shopping around for TV, phone and broadband? Comparison sites love to glamourise this combo as a ‘triple play’ bundle. And it’s rightly the mainstay of their business – often cheaper than getting them separately, or in ‘double play’ combinations. It’s easy to check out the best deals on Switcher.ie and Bonkers.ie. For triple play, the two cheapest deals at the moment are from Sky and Vodafone.
One is advertised at €25 a month and the other at €49. Both are good but one is cheaper than the other.
Guess which one? Yep, the sceptics among you probably got it right – Sky’s €49 a month is actually cheaper than Vodafone’s €25 bundle.
The marketing magicians work the maths to conjure up a monthly figure that’s not quite as cheap as it looks in the long run.
Savvy viewers will notice Sky’s €49 discount deal lasts twice as long – for 12 months – which is also the length of the Sky contract.
You are free to sign up for another cheap deal as soon as the attractive discount period is up.
And if you’re smart, that’s exactly what you’ll do, every time your contract runs out.
Vodafone’s eye-catching €25 offer lasts just six months. After that, your bill goes up to €75.
You’re also tied into an 18-month contract, so for a full 12 months after the ‘honeymoon’, your €25 bill triples to €75 a month. Here’s how it all works out. Sky’s discount deal may cost nearly twice as much to begin with, but it lasts twice as long. So Sky will cost you €588 in year one, versus €600 with Vodafone.
Over the next six months, Vodafone customers are still stuck in a contract and will have to pay €75 a month, or €450. That brings their 18-month total bill to €1,050. However, be careful! While Sky is cheaper in year one, it could end up costing you more in the long run if you don’t switch. After year one, Sky’s monthly bill nearly doubles to €84 a month. But the key point is that you don’t have to pay that. Sky viewers will no longer be under contract after a year.
By shopping around, they will probably end up paying way less than their Vodafone counterparts.
I suspect Sky has worked out that most people don’t switch, so people will still pay the €84 a month even when they don’t have to. And so they will make more profits in the long run.
There’s no point getting worked up about this ever-more-prevalent tactic across all consumer purchases.
Make sure you’re not one of the mugged majority by cashing in on the situation and snapping up what are, in fact, incredibly cheap offers funded by non-switchers.
Also worth considering is Virgin Media, which boasts the fastest broadband with download speeds of up to 240Mbps compared to 100Mbps with most providers.
Its latest ‘triple play’ deal for €59 has just expired. The monthly cost is now €69, rising to a pricey €89 after 12 months.
But the contract is for only 12 months, so you can always switch then.
Another plus is that Virgin customers qualify for a €10-a-month ‘all you can eat data’ mobile phone deal, which might swing the balance in its favour for some.
So what happens if you don’t want your broadband, TV and phone all bundled together?
Getting them all separately can work out as a pricey option.
Let’s say you combined the cheapest broadband and phone (Vodafone) with the cheapest TV with a decent number of channels (Sky’s €29.50 deal).
You’d end up paying €54.50 for six months and then €79.50 after that, which is pricier than some tripleplay options.
Triple play is probably the reason landlines still exist in many households.
It’s often as cheap to get a threeway deal with a landline included for free, and free calls to boot. However, many people don’t need all three services. They are ditching the TV and the landline and relying instead on their mobile phones and streaming broadband.
If they did that, and got a decent broadband speed, this deal could work out cheaper.
And if they sell their televisions, they won’t need a TV licence as things stand either.
Another option is to get a TV satellite box for a couple of hundred euro and avail of free-to-air satellite channels, while buying broadband separately.
But you’d need pretty good broadband to allow for constant streaming.