My mobile phone is currently with the Three mobile network here in Ireland. I have a pay-as-you-go sim card as the name suggests — I pay as I go. This usually means topping my phone up with €20, once a month.
Prepay
All You Can Eat Data*
Unlimited Music Free
Free Texts & Weekend Calls
on Three Prepay when you top up by €20
Keep your credit
This is a really great deal and more importantly, this plan suits my needs. I rarely need to eat into my €20 phone credit. I use WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to message friends and family. Free calls on the Weekend is enough for me. And did you see “unlimited data”? Yup, unlimited 4G data!
At the end of my 30 days, I would no longer be covered by this promotion. I would be paying for texts, calls and data from my previously untouched €20. It turns out that Three will happily let you blow through €20 of credit very, very quickly. The reason, mobile data. Here is Three’s pricing structure:
€1.01 per MB. 20MB of data would cost you €20.20. This is outrageous! As I always had my mobile data turned on (it’s unlimited after all), my €20 would vanish. Here are some fun ways I can think up of using 20MB of data:
- Load this 17MB image file (almost 20MB)
- Stream 28 minutes of normal quality Spotify (source)
- Watch 10 minutes worth of YouTube videos at 480p (source)
- A 7 minute Skype video call (source)
I decided to take a stand — I no longer let Three drain my €20 phone credit. I make sure to top up before the promotion runs out each and every month (I top up with €20 every 28 days). But now I had €20 of credit every month just sitting there. Surely I could do something with it?
This is when I stumbled across ‘LIKECHARITY’.
LIKECHARITY is an award winning technology platform that enables charities to significantly reduce their cost of fundraising from the public.
Well to be more specific, I stumbled across this LIKECHARITY webpage — https://api.likecharity.com/charities/
LIKECHARITY simply allows you to text a donation to a charity of your choosing. Donations range from €2 to €6 and they currently facilitate 293 charities! LIKECHARITY operates in the background for many popular campaigns run by different charities throughout Ireland. One of the more famous examples include the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge:
In Ireland alone, the Ice Bucket Challenge raised over €1 million through LIKECHARITY’s Collect platform, which let shivering participants donate €2 to IMNDA via a simple text.
What I really like is that LIKECHARITY list every single charity on the platform here. This will give you a picture of what is possible. Simply browse for a charity that you support and see the donation options. I love this.
So, €20 excess phone credit per month and a text-to-donate charity platform… Can you see where this is going? Yes, I donate €20 (of phone credit) to charity each and every month. And I encourage you to do the very same.
