Like thousands of other twitter users, I waited with great anticipation this morning for the “secret” email to come through from @groupola announcing when the unbeatable  SIM-free iPhone 4s for the knockdown price of £99 – as opposed to its normal retail price of £499 would be available.

Armed with aforementioned URL I, like so many disgruntled and angry potential customers waited and waited and waited to get through. The result was the same whatever one tried – FAILURE with a capital “F” !! no hablo ingles, no bloody chance more like – was it ever going to happen? Probably not!

The rule of thumb should always be – if it sounds too good to be true then it usually isn’t! You have to call into question what Groupola were thinking about with this. If they had bought 300 phones at £499 to sell on to the lucky few that managed to get through they would have suffered a huge financial kick up the backside:

300 *£499 = -£149,700 + £29,700 (300 *£99) = LOSS of £120,000

(UPDATE) – now led to believe only 200 phones were available to buy therefore figures now lead to a Loss of £80,000.

I think I’ve worked out the math correctly!

So with such a huge hit, are we to really believe that there were 300 available at all? The Groupola website crashed under the inevitable strain of traffic and twitter was rife with suggestions that the whole exercise was nothing more than a con. I’m not suggesting this is the case for one minute but questions will be asked and for sure Groupola will have taken a huge hit on the negative publicity that is sure to circulate twitter and blogs around the web over the next 48 hours.

Groupola’s public face will have taken a huge hammering today, twitter followers have already started to un-follow them, myself included. Irish author and dramatist Brendan Behan once wrote “There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary” – one has to wonder if a company died today, certainly in the minds of thousands eager to capitalise on an offer too good to be true.

To be fair to Groupola I wanted to include a statement issued by the company – it’s only fair that they should have a say, it’s up to the thousands of disappointed readers if they believe the spin:-

“Groupola is currently experiencing a number of website issues which means that it appears down to a high number of users. This is because of the sheer volume of people that are trying to access the website to take advantage of the iPhone4 deal.

“Between 9 and 9.30am this morning more than five million people have attempted to log on to the site, far more than was anticipated. We can confirm that a number of people have already bought iPhones for £99. We are working hard to get the site back to its optimum and the iPhone4 deal will continue to run until stocks run out.”

So to end this blog, I was very disappointed not to have managed to grab this “amazing” deal – let’s be real, we all want a cheap iphone4 don’t we? I’ll leave you with this parting thought as to whether you believe the spin or angry and disappointed at the no show deal. Sidney Carlton, a character from Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” once said

“The undisputed scientific facts are against her(Grouploa).” If you vote to acquit, “may you feel,” said Sidney Carlton, “in the words of Charles Dickens that It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”

Further reading http://realbusiness.co.uk/sales_and_marketing/groupola_iphone_deal_backfires

I have been a member of the Quidco family for over a year now and been very happy with the savings I’ve made on purchases, £254.92 so far – not bad is it!

With this in mind, and always keen to save money and get the best deal possible, (who isn’t?!!) I came across a new site today called Top Cashback – apparently it has been the best kept secret for four years now. I can’t believe I haven’t come across it before now!

The site appears to have a lot more relationships with retailers than quidco and one thing it has right from the offset – no annual fees (ever). Quidco takes £5 from your account every year and given that Top Cashback don’t, I think I’ll give these guys a go – nothing to lose right ?!!!

So there you have it, sounds and looks like a great deal so why not sign up and try it out for yourself – remember no costs involved and you can only save money on your purchases! I was sceptical about quidco before I tried it but I am glad I jumped on the bandwagon, it has given me a lot more confidence to try this new site out now!

To give you an idea, if you took out car insurance with AVIVA – you’d be rewarded with £70 cashback – and given that the average annual fee is around £200 – £300 – that’s a great saving!