PC World withdraws free notebooks

 

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By Tim Danton/Computer Shopper

Posted on 17 Aug 2007 at 15:28

A free notebook with a broadband connection sounded too good to be true - and, according to our sister title Computer Shopper, it is: PC World has withdrawn its highly publicised deal.

As we revealed last month, the promotion was very tempting: sign up for a two-year broadband deal with Orange, and you'd get a brand-new laptop free of charge.

However, the offer is no longer valid. Instead, the original offer's webpage now says, "We're Sorry. This deal has now ended. You can still take advantage of our great laptop deals at PC World..."

When the company launched the offer it did not indicate that it was time-limited. Spokesman Hamish Thompson told Computer Shopper that the deal was a "victim of its own success". He claimed that PC World had allocated "tens of thousands" of notebooks to be given away, but that they had all been used up within weeks.

Subscribers had to sign up to a two-year 2Mb/sec Orange broadband service, costing £14.99 per month, in a PC World store. Following a ten-day period, during which the subscriber's bank details would be checked, a voucher for a fairly low-powered notebook PC worth £300 would then be sent in the post. This could be exchanged for a PC in the store.

The offer is very similar to one being provided by Carphone Warehouse, where people could sign up to a two-year deal with AOL and receive a free Dell laptop.

Industry experts told PC Pro they felt the AOL deal was better than Orange's anyway: "As for the actual value of the deal, Carphone Warehouse is the stronger. The spec of the base PC is higher," said Jonathan Coham, analyst at Ovum.

Coham also feared Orange's limited data cap could cause problems. "I worry it could be shooting itself in the foot - what happens when people use more than [the monthly limit of] 2GB?"

Perhaps Orange took a similar view.