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25th January 2006 - UK mobile firm 3 has come up with a novel
way of attracting customers, offering to pay them for all
the calls and texts they receive.
Its WePay scheme offers to reward pay-as-you-go customers
with a cash credit of 5p for every minute of a voice call
and 2p for every text.
There is a catch for anyone hoping to get rich quick via
the new scheme.
Any money made can only be redeemed via a voucher which has
to be used to purchase further services from 3.
The operator estimates customers could make up to £40
a year if they sign up for the loyalty scheme.
"There are loyalty schemes already in the mobile market
but they are about getting people to spend more in order to
get more, whereas this is awarding people for normal usage,"
said 3's marketing director Graeme Oxby.
New customers
The pay-as-you-go market is notoriously complex and has created
a new breed of bargain hunters, dubbed tariff-maticians.
Such users, often youngsters aged between 16 and 24 years
old, monitor the mobile market place to ensure they take advantage
of the best deals. People keen to exploit all the bargains
on offer from the various mobile firms are signing up to a
variety of networks and tariffs.
According to research from analyst firm Continental Research,
as many as 5.9 million UK customers carry more than one phone.
Mr Oxby hopes the plan will attract users to new services,
such as mobile TV as well as creating new customers.
"It is a way of acquiring new customers and encouraging
existing ones to use the full range of services available,"
he said.
According to Thomas Husson, a mobile analyst with Jupiter
Research, 3 launched a similar scheme in Italy last year.
"It has been pretty successful. It benefits the customer
and the company which gets inter-connection revenues,"
he said.
In November last year, 3 launched a money-making mobile TV
service, offering to pay customers 1p for every homemade video
they submitted that was downloaded by someone else.
With a million videos being created each month, Mr Oxby is
pleased by how the service is progressing.
"In some case, we have been writing cheques for several
hundred pounds," he said.
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