12 Months Free Line Rental: Too Good To Be True?

Have you ever heard of a free line rental mobile deal? Chances are you have not, as they are pretty obscure!

Ok, so what is a 12 Months Free Line Rental deal? A free line rental deal is one which offers you a free phone, free text messages and free calls for a full 12 months. In short, a cost free mobile phone!

Sound too good to be true, well, to a point it is, it is not easy to get a free line rental mobile phone, but, it is possible. There are people who do this year in year out and never pay a penny for their mobile!

Well, here is where it gets a little complicated. How it works is this. When taking out your free line rental mobile contract the retailer gives you an option to claim cash back from them at a later date. The idea is that this cashback covers the cost of the mobile phone, and the contract fees for the first 12 months, and thus the deal is described as bing 12 months free line rental. This means you have to pay for your phone as you would normally.

At a later date, often 9, 10 or 11 months into the contract, you have to submit a claim for cashback. Assuming you have done everything the retailer asked you to when you took out the mobile contract, the retailer will refund your money, via instant cash back which will cover the entire cost of your phone contract. Thus, the retailers are able to advertise these as free line rental deals.

The question you are asking now is probably how do these companies make money from giving away free mobile phones? The answer is they don’t! They have to avoid paying that cash back! So, a free line rental deal is actually a battle of wits, with customers trying to get the cashback for a free phone, and the retailers setting them up to fail!

To make a profit the mobile phone retailers have to make sure a lot of people on free line rental deals do not get their money back. So, the first thing they do is say that you must make the cashback claim on a particular date. They know that some people will miss this date. Then they ask for obscure pieces of documentation, knowing that some people will have lost this, and so it go’s on. By the end of the process they have tripped enough customers up to make their profit!

So, yes, 12 month free deals are too good to be true, but, they are also possible to exploit. It is possible to out smart the retailers and get that elusive 12 month free contract, but you have to be determined.

If you opt for a free line rental deal you would be well advised to organise yourself. Make sure you have the relevant dates and documentation to hand so that when you make your claim it all goes smoothly, and you get your free line rental deal!