Yesterday, there was a deal where Google Fi would give you a travel gift card for the price of the phone. I had heard about the deal around 7:45AM PST and DoC posted about it at 10:08AM. It didn’t die until around 7:00PM. The math worked out to something like this:
- Buy a phone for say $1,000 and let’s say your tax rate was 10% like yours truly, you’re paying $1100
- Then you had to sign up for 4 months of service with a $20 minimum per month fee. That’s an extra $80+tax.
- After 4 months, you’ll get a $1,000 gift card for Delta, Airbnb, Hotels, and SW. If you’ll use the GC, then it’s worth $1K. Worst case you sell AirBnb at 90% and so you get $900 cash.
- Total cost – $1100 + $80 – $900 = ~$280
- However, if you had the $100 off $500 advertising AO, then you’ll know that works and so now your net would be $180 (if you don’t use the travel GC) or $80 if you use the travel GC. THAT’S A RIDICULOUSLY GOOD DEAL!
However, not everyone was able to partake in the deal because they couldn’t fulfill the port-in requirement. So here are a few lessons learned:
- While the deal was supposed to last the entire day, if you waited until 7:00PM, then you would have missed out. You should have known how great this deal was when reading about it and your Spidey sense should have told you that it may not last until the end of day.
- Did you even try the $100 off $500 AO? The risk was worth it over trying to use say the ATT to get 3X TYP. Or maybe you should have asked around to see if anyone had tried it yet.
- Open a Google Voice account now! Even if you don’t use it, you never know when it’ll come in handy. I’m not sure if it works to fulfill port in promos from the big carriers, but it doesn’t hurt to try. Only have 1 Gmail account? Maybe spin up a few more of those too.
- Maybe get a T-Mobile $3/month PAYGO plan. Remember how your TM account stopped receiving verified fan tickets?
- Even better than the Tmo $3/PAYGO is Tello. They are a Sprint MVNO and I was shocked I still had service after a year of not using it or loading money onto it. This is the number I’m going to port out with. When that’s done, I’ll get a new phone number from Tello.
- I just signed up for some Xfinity Mobile sim cards (up to 5) that gets you free calls and texts. These can be ported out.
While it sucks to have to juggle so many phones and phone numbers, if you want to take advantage of deals like these, you have to have things locked and loaded.