Spend smart. Get more out of mobile recharging

Squeezing out the maximum from your budget involves being thrifty. And one of the ways you can save money is by taking advantage of the benefits of the freebies that come your way.

One such opportunity is the free coupons that are being offered by websites such as rechargeitnow.com , freecharge.in and PayTM.com .

Online recharge of a mobile phone or your DTH connection is the most convenient way to avoid queuing up at a store or finding a drop box to make your payments. But instead of using the website of your regular cellular phone service provider, go to the websites mentioned. They have coupons and cash-back offers on mobile recharges, helping you wrangle a little benefit from your spending.

Depending on the value of your recharge, an assortment of coupons is on offer. You could, for example, get ₹100 off on a pizza, or a buy-one-get-one-free deal at Café Coffee Day outlets or coupons for McDonald’s and Big Cinemas. In some cases, you could even snag a discount on flight tickets. Then there are coupons from e-shopping websites such as Jabong and Lenskart and discounts on mobile phones. If fortune smiles on you, there’s the chance of snapping up a great mobile recharge offer, such as one offer for 24 GB of 3G data from Reliance.

Another form of incentive is cash-backs or a guaranteed cash addition to your ‘wallet’ on the site with every transaction. It may not appeal to some, but these cash-backs can eventually add up to quite a bit, especially since you recharge your DTH or mobile connections frequently.

But you could be wary that this sounds like a deal too good to be true.

That’s perfectly valid, since it throws up the question of how these sites can afford such offers. Well, they earn a 0.5-3 per cent commission from the telcos for driving traffic.

Using these websites is actually a simple affair. You have to enter your mobile number and your operator. Following this, enter your recharge amount.

Alternately, you can select from the range of top-ups or special plans or recharge amounts that are displayed. Once done, click the recharge button.

This should direct you to a page that displays a range of coupons for you to choose from.

But make note, while a number of coupons are free, some are only available for a further fee, such as a ₹1 token for an 8 per cent discount on a bus booking on yatra.com . The second thing to remember is that while freecharge and PayTM offer you a choice of coupons, rechargeitnow gives you only a randomised selection. The third point to note here is that, though many coupons are sent directly to your email address, some may require delivering physical coupons.

In such cases, the websites may charge you for this, but the amount is usually nominal. While the benefits are many, there are some hurdles to using the sites.

For example, freecharge and rechargeitnow allow you only a maximum transaction amount of ₹1,000 and ₹1,100 respectively on their homepages, which could be inconvenient if you have a large bill to pay off quickly. Users must also keep in mind the fact that in case they have crossed the deadlines on a payment or they have to urgently recharge, they should preferably use the authorised website of the service provider instead, since the payment is likely to be processed faster.