If like many thousands of other people in the UK, you may have, or be looking at cutting some costs by dropping some monthly subscriptions, and Netflix and Disney Plus may be on your hit list!
I was billed for a Disney Plus annual subscription renewal a few weeks ago, which I had forgotten about. So I spoke to Disney the same day and had them refund the payment back to me and cancelled the service, much to the dismay of my 5-year-old son and the several other people, whom it seems, were piggybacking off my subscription!
I simply couldn't justify the annual cost, at a time when we as a family are trying to tighten our purse strings, plus hadn't budgeted for the expense.
We did without the service for a couple of weeks, but possibly not having this entertainment option over a two week Easter school holiday, wasn't the best time to try and get my family through a Disney free, 'cold turkey' period, so l had a look to see what sort of deals might be available to re-instate the service, and surprisingly I found a few!
New subscribers, which sadly ruled me out, could get a £10 cashback deal via TopCashback and Quidco on an annual subscription, meaning that they can grab a year's subscription for £69.99 a year, taking into account the £10 cashback, which was already 15% cheaper when comparing the services monthly charge of £7.99, meaning if you pay monthly, you are going to be paying £95.88 a year.
Tesco is offering a really good deal via its Clubcard scheme. With £8 worth of points, Clubcard holders can redeem these for three months of free Disney Plus service, saving you £23.97 of cold hard cash over the three months. At the time, there was an even better deal running where for the same £8 of points, you could get an additional three months of Disney Plus service at no extra charge, so you get six months of entertainment, saving you the equivalent of £47.94 over the six months! This extended deal is due to end on the 29th of April 2022, at which point the deal will return to the 3-month offer, and this offer ends on the 1st of August 2022, and the voucher must be redeemed by the 10th of August 2023. Sadly I don't shop at Tesco that often, so I didn't have the £8 of Clubcard vouchers needed to grab this deal, so that ruled that out for me, which is shame as it's an amazing offer!
My mobile phone supplier, O2, is also offering an add on service to my mobile phone package at present, which is Disney Plus for the regular £7.99 a month service, but with £2 credited to my mobile phone bill, every month, as a bonus, meaning, in reality, I'm paying £5.99 a month, saving me £24 a year, and costing me £71.88 for a year's service. Now I regularly get a £10 payout to my mobile phone account bill from Airtime Rewards, which would be put towards my mobile bill. My monthly mobile bill is now only £9.99 after I recently downgraded my mobile package to a sim only deal. Hence, it means this Disney Plus add on is likely to cost me very little so long as I keep getting the Airtime Rewards bonus, so I decided to go with this deal as it will be the cheapest. I set up the offer and got a text to say it's all up and running. Then out of the blue, ten minutes later, I got another text from O2, offering me a free upgrade to the offer by giving me three months of Disney Plus free of charge, and then the previous deal applies after the three months are up, so needless to say I went with that deal, meaning, before taking into account any Airtime Rewards credit, I was paying £53.91 for a years Disney Plus service, which sounds pretty damn good to me, as it means I'm spending the equivalent of £4.49 a month, via O2, instead of £7.99 direct from Disney!
Santander is also offering some of its customers a 15% discount on the Disney Plus annual subscription service as well, so It just shows that by shopping about, you can generally grab a better deal, never assume going direct with the supplier is a better deal, just because you are going direct!
Another example is I'm currently paying half price for my Netflix Premium service through my tv supplier, Sky, rather than direct with Netflix, saving me 50% of my annual Netflix cost, meaning I can now, in my head, but possibly not my conscience, justify the cost of not cancelling Netflix, during these dark days of financial uncertainty...