Just wondering how strict kogan is and how tiresome it is to do 12 times in a year.
Is Anyone Abusing The $5 Kogan Starter Pack?
Plusultra556 on 31/08/2024 - 09:43
Last edited 31/08/2024 - 09:43
Last edited 31/08/2024 - 09:43
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I know a couple of kids who do. Yeah, it's a pain and I wouldn't bother myself but Kogan seem to be fine with it. You have to change numbers each time, so it's best if you only want it for data, or have a dual sim phone and a separate sim with a long expiry plan for your main number, and use Kogan for all your data.
Did it in the past but i think they have blacklisted me. Stopped sending the sim cards.
Purchased one from TM and same thing happened.
Ordered to a different addr and it arrived.
If you do it every month then you will very likely get blacklisted.
I have been doing it for years almost every month for my 4g security camera buying it from kogan and using a different email each time I activate it
Hi, are you able to tell me what 4G camera you have, got one from trade me but it useless. Thanks
Have an arlo go and its ok for detecting motion, have another one that bricked itself and wont detect motion and arlo support are useless.
I have one on the side ready to go but havent needed it yet, got it pretty much for free with credit from my purchases when i had the kogan first trial.
What we actually have at the moment is the cheapest prepaid options which gives us a consistent phone number for calls and texts, then paired in a dual sim phone with whatever provider is offering a three month trial in some way. The prepaid cards accumulate data on their rollover or data stack pools so when we run out of trials we still have a load of data. Been doing this since black friday last year, had back to back $1 a month for three months with mighty mobile (6 months total), jumped to contact and have just ported over to electric kiwi which will round us out to a full year. All up that has cost $11 for 12 months of full speed unlimited data.
Another one for you.
https://www.novaenergy.co.nz/mobile/plans$39 credit back when you sign up using code BONUS39. Open term plans.
After you run out of cheap trial offers, if your phone supports esim, you could get an annual plan for data from Three HK - https://www.three.com.hk/prepaid/DIY/en/offer/travel
268HKD = 55 NZD per year.
35GB in total, so almost 3GB per month.
Would pair well with a Warehouse Mobile sim to make and take cheap NZ calls. Heard about it on reddit.
Interesting they're offering a 365 day plan. I've heard various people who've tried to use foreign (IIRC US and UK) SIMs with cheap roaming data packs on a semi-permanent basis have received warnings after a while that they're not allowed to do this and/or been told they need to pay more. But since Three HK offer a 365 day plan don't see how they could complain if you're in NZ 365 unless you can only spend a limited time in each country but don't see any mention of that in their T&C or FAQ. Wonder if they'll even be fine with you buying a new pack after 365 days? (Assuming pricing hasn't gotten bad.)
I think they’ll be fine with it, as you say the offering of an annual plan says a lot. No need for ID or anything to sign up.
This appears to route data via china so couls expect higher pings and latency.
Has anyone done this in nz as a local sim? How has it been?
Wow thats amazing. Will give this a go. Thank you for the post
My mate used to do it, but with Mighty, Contact etc hasn't done it in a while. They never seemed to get blacklisted. However they only did it for one most of the time, and also their data usage wasn't very high (often under 5GiB I think) and call and phone call usage was virtually non-existent. They also didn't start as soon as Kogan offered the 32 later 15GB promotion, and when they had those 90 day deals for existing customers they also did that as an existing customer (although they did do like 3 of them at a time). And especially early on, there was sometimes they waited to activate mostly because they felt they didn't need it.
Still I think they did like 20-30 SIMs total, to the same address, same device etc.
While you do need to use a new email and account when activating the SIM, one thing I would recommend is IMO it's probably a bad idea to put different contact details or use a different account each time you buy the SIM. IMO, if you're going to do it, it's better to be "honest" about it, if they want to block you or they ask you to stop, so be it.
More significantly, it seems to me you risk triggering some sort of anti-fraud or anti-burner SIM protection in their system. E.g. if they keep seeing different accounts going to the same address, this could trigger some sort of fraud automatic red flag. If the person investigating looks into it, even if they figure oh you're just abusing their $5 price, they might not remove the any block. Likewise, if you keep activating it with a different name, it could be something in their system which will notice this whether because of tying it to the phone IMEI or the card you use and trigger a red flag of some sort, but again even if someone investigates and realises you're just abusing their $5 price they might not remove any block.
(I don't know how much effort NZ telcos put into stopping burner SIM use, but I was asked once are Warehouse Stationery why I was buying the 5 or whatever SIMs I was buying. I sort of said the truth, because it was cheap rather than explaining that of the effectively free 500MB you get because it was easier and the person just accepted it. I'm guessing if they had queried more and I'd said it was because of the 500MB they'd have been fine with that since I suspect their concern was burner SIMs rather than arguably abusing their 500MB /SIM. A little different from Kogan since what they offer is a lot less, but it did make me consider that abusing promotions might not be what concerns telcos the most about someone who keeps replacing their SIM hence my advice to my mate.)
Kogan doesn't care. The in-store staff might if you buy 10+ SIM cards, because it looks unusual.
I buy a new SIM starter deal from Kogan every month, shipped to the same address. Because of the lengthy shipping time I have an extra Kogan SIM in my house so when I get the voucher code via Email 15 minutes after purchase I immediately activate it. I use a disposable Email address from a "Traditional big tech" Email provider (I can make them for free, but new users now require a paid subscription) and that never gets blacklisted. I put in my Wise card, which is subsequently frozen after the card check.
They can't really blacklist addresses. People routinely buy SIM cards shipped to business addresses, hostels and AirBNBs etc.
And they're not going to track the IMEI stuff (unless the NZ government forces them to) because it's an Australian-based operator with minimal NZ staff, piggybacking on an NZ network run by 3rd-party operator. Same for credit card info as they use a 3rd-party payment processor, and they generally do not store credit card info themselves in case of a security breach.
People claim they've been banned though.
Also fraud checks for the card would likely be largely implemented by their payment processor. Although Kogan/Dick Smith might have them on their store side too, they're not exactly a small business. Remember although they're using a third party to ship them out, you're still buying the plan from the store so there's a fair chance whatever their store does will also catch out anyone buying the plans (and SIM cards).
A big issue with being caught by fraud checks is it's quite difficult to actually get anyone who can help. Low level staff are generally intentionally only allowed to see limited info on what the problem is. Higher level staff might be able to see more, and if you can convince them to help great. But they're not likely to tell you much other than they did something since for obvious reasons, they don't want to give away what may trigger their system other than in very general terms. And the problem is, if you trigger their fraud system when buying general stuff from their website, that's something they might be interested in helping with. If you have this problem when continually buying the $5 plan, although they might not care enough to actively stop you doing it, they also might not care to help you when you managed to trigger their anti fraud system. I've had problems with Humble Bundle before when somehow they decided I was up to no good and believe me it's a mess to deal with.
For all those reason, personally, I still think it's a bad idea to mess around with different names etc especially on the same card. IMO you're just asking for trouble since it's the sort of thing which could trigger some sort of anti fraud system. And your experience (and my mate's more limited experience) if anything adds to that, why bother with it when you can just use the same name and card all the time?
And I strongly suspect if One NZ does have any sort of burner SIM system in place, they will apply it to their MVNOs. Especially those like Kogan etc, where it's almost entirely managed by One NZ. (I.E. I'm fairly sure One NZ knows your details.) I'm not saying they do, but the fact that Kogan doesn't care is irrelevant if One NZ does care. I don't think it's that likely One NZ does have something but it's always possible they would have. For such a large company, their are various reputational and other risks in place if you get associated with helping criminals. Plus NZ has always had a fairly "we won't regulate unless we have to" environment, so companies do have to do the bare minimum or risk more stringent regulation they might not like.
Edit: For clarity, by banned I mean people have reported various problems. E.g. mdsl32 above. But also upbest here: https://www.cheapies.nz/comment/117917/redir and jiajiusi and G4mbito here: https://www.cheapies.nz/comment/85183/redir (It's possible there are more, I remembered I'd read a few reports and just skimmed through threads I participated that related to Kogan. There are too many Kogan threads for me to bother to skim them all. I don't think I ever bothered to search and in any case it's possibly quite difficult so I dunno if there are also other reports in Reddit, Geekzone etc.)
I mean most of those except mdsl32 above seem old but it does seem a bit strange if they used to block people but stopped. So it's fairly confusing to me what exactly has gone wrong for those people. It's possible some of them were caught out by something like meridian's problem here https://www.cheapies.nz/comment/71745/redir or other problems which weren't really an intentional block.
However it seems to me going by what people said that various people have possibly somehow been restricted by Kogan from doing $5 packs. My earlier post was largely based on my mates experience who seemed to have no problem for years like avantime. Not quite as much but still enough that I was surprised by all the other people being restricted. The only thing I could guess which also concurred with some of the stuff said was perhaps they'd been doing weird stuff like trying different names etc before they got restricted. Hence why I suggested people just be honest about what they're doing. Use the same account to buy the SIMs. Use the same card unless you need to change card for some other reason. Don't mess with names etc at least on the same card. I have no idea whether this will avoid blocks, but I will say my mate never had problems with maybe 20-30 SIMs just being transparent with what they were doing.
I mean besides fraud, using multiple accounts for the same person on Kogan's webstore might trigger some sort of general anti-abuse system. Sure Kogan might not care if you buy multiple $5 deals. But if they do ever have website store deals that are limited per account they might have implemented a system to try and reduce the use of multiple accounts to get around such limits. Even if they never do such deals, I could imagine it might be something some stores will have implemented just in case they do. Kogan is clearly a far cry from Amazon. But I know from what I've read before Amazon definitely has a system for a while where they automatically link any multiple accounts you may use so at least high level staff can see them together and take action against them together etc. (Being Amazon it's quite sophisticated, far more sophisticated than anything Kogan has I'm sure. Still pooling stuff like addresses especially residential address, IPs, cookies and cards is I suspect something even Kogan can do.)
I think this was before Amazon Prime, which of course with the free trial did provide a clear incentive for Amazon to link accounts e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonprime/comments/amk4wa/i_can_n… and https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/74kxql/tw… Actually thinking about it Kogan also have their own Prime thing, Kogan First evidently and it has a short but still 14 day free trial. So they too definitely have a reason why they might want a system to link multiple accounts. They might only stop you abusing their free First trial, but they might do more. And IMO there is a risk their might just flag it for review even if their system doesn't see an obvious problem after you sign up for X accounts.
In fact thinking about it more, manual review, whether with this or something else could easily be a reason why some people were banned and some people weren't despite possibly doing even more $5 plans. It goes to manual review, some reviewers see you buying a lot of the $5 deal and go whatever and pass it. Others restrict you somehow. Per the old post issue, it's possible they ended up officially allowing it although this probably only helps those who missed out being banned earlier.
Of course another possibility is people were triggering fraud or whatever checks etc and they've modified them over time, perhaps in part because of this. While they might not care to help on an individual level, considering dealing with this stuff takes unnecessary high level staff time they might have adjusted the system to avoid it. Ultimately fraud checks are intended to stop fraud, not stop people buying lots of $5 deals and they're likely to recognise if they did want to stop that they should implement a separate system.
Given that we have no idea, IMO it still makes sense to avoid anything which might be more likely to trigger any sort of fraud system, abuse system or manual review. And IMO using multiple Kogan or DSE accounts to buy the plans or SIMs, especially using the same payment method; but also even with just the same delivery address is more likely to trigger such things since there are various reasons why doing so might trigger them, than just buying lots of $5 plans on the same account.
One thing I do agree is having at least one extra SIM so you don't need the annoying wait. My mate did that too, actually for various reasons they had more than one extra. So far they haven't had problems with the SIMs expiring although some of them were somewhat past the date given what they did.
First of all I used the same Kogan account and the same (not Wise) CC to buy the $5 starter pack every month. 4+ years later and no problems. I do put in a different name and disposable Email address every time when signing up to Kogan mobile, because otherwise it would be easily flagged.
Second is I think the payment processor doesn't pass on the cardholder's name and CC number to Kogan Mobile for the signup card check for obvious security reasons. All Kogan Mobile sees is whether or not the card is valid. Again with any debit card you can have a valid card check, but it will get declined at the end of the month if the balance is too low.
As for anti-fraud, the initiator of such measures is usually the issuing bank, not the payment processor or retailer. The bank do this when they see unusual behaviours or patterns, especially with overseas purchases. I've made many purchases on Kogan and Dick Smith so this is not an issue, all the bank sees is a monthly $5 spend on Kogan, along with one or two bigger purchases a year. Note anti-fraud is considered a criminal matter, whereas abusing $5 sims is more like a violation of the ToS (if any, I don't think there's a specific rule against it), similar to how Cheapies here & on Ozbargain try to buy Netflix Türkiye subscriptions or Steam Argentina games. Kogan can ban me, but I don't care as it's a nice run nonetheless.
In NZ we still don't have stringent rules with regards to ID verification and burner SIMs like they have in Europe and China (IIRC You need to do a biometric face scan as part of signing up to mobile in China), so using a fake name isn't important. But if Luxon and Co. somehow changes their minds then obviously I'll have to stop. I'd doubt that however because mobile charges in NZ are still far too expensive vs. the rest of the world, and putting in such measures would be politically unpopular as it forces people to commit to a relatively expensive minimum monthly spend to maintain minimum services and a number, which is essential for everyday life. In many places around the world you can get by with $1-2 a month for minimum calls and SMS, but not here in NZ. Even Warehouse Mobile, which I use to maintain my main number, is turning to sh*t.
I'm on my 52nd month. They don't care.
$260 for over 4 years of data is pretty good!
Seams like a great price, but a fair bit of effort every month.
https://www.kogan.com/nz/buy/kogan-mobile-prepay-mobile-star…