[News] Go Direct with Skinny

Skinny Mobile have launched a new service called Skinny Direct. This new mobile service is only available online on their website, and is what makes its plans/combos pretty cheap. Everything is done online, ranging from top ups to downloading your own monthly invoices. It is very similar to BigPipe Broadband where everything to their customer service, is all done online. The only difference between these companies? The brand name. Otherwise they were all started by the same parent company: Spark Ventures!

Spark Mobile is considered to be the main, premium mobile offering/service within Spark. Because of the premium prices and the need for a market for budget customers, Skinny came alive hoping to be competitive in that market. Now it’s gone a step further to undercut itself again, and out comes Skinny Direct. Isn’t competition good? Even if it’s with yourself?

Skinny Direct will only be available online and cannot be found in stores or anywhere else in a physical location. By cutting out the middlemen they are able to pass on these savings to its users.

A good thing about Skinny Direct is that it is pretty simple to use and understand so far; it only has two combos. The only difference between the $30 and $50 monthly combo pack is that the latter has 6GB of data instead of 3GB. Everything else stays the same in the combo with unlimited NZ calling and texts, free voicemail and SIM card, and both combos lasts 30 days.

Skinny Direct will automatically bill your credit or debit card every 30 days to top up your chosen plan, therefore I am not surprised if people get it mixed up between if this is a prepay or pay-monthly offering. These days I hardly see the difference between the two. If you already renew your prepay plan after every month it expires, it can essentially be considered a pay-monthly plan too. It was only back in the days when pay-monthly customers had to be over a certain age because of credit card limitations, but kids as young as 13 years old these days can get their hands on a debit card.

Even though Skinny Direct has got the Skinny brand attached to it, it has got its own mobile app. Well, not really much of an app but a mobile wrapper in an app. There have been quite some confusion over the two brands (yes they are considered two separate brands) because when you switch over to Skinny Direct from Skinny, you can keep the same SIM card, but you will lose your credit balance. Therefore it pays to keep an extra eye on the details when you’re “checking out” on their website.

Overall, $30 for 3GB of data and unlimited NZ texts and minutes and $50 for 6GB of data and unlimited NZ texts and minutes is a pretty good deal especially if you use a lot of data. Also note there is no carryover data on these plans. However, I still like my free Spotify Premium account on my $19 Spark prepay plan (currently 1GB data, 50 NZ minutes (plus unlimited Spark Mobile and NZ Landline calling), and 500 NZ texts).

To find out more about Skinny Direct, take a look at: https://www.skinnydirect.co.nz/

Comments