Start your Christmas shopping now and let it pay your phone bill
Most of us start thinking about Christmas somewhere around half term, buy the first few things in November and then panic in the second week of December. That last part is where the money goes.
Starting now does two useful things. It spreads the cost across three paydays instead of one, and, if you buy through Kill Your Bill, it turns three months of ordinary gift shopping into credit against your phone bill. Not points. Not a voucher for next time. Money off your phone bill.
How it works, in three steps
The thing people get stuck on is thinking this is a cashback app that pays out weeks later. It isn’t. You buy a gift card for the shop you were about to use, you pay with it, and the reward lands on your phone bill.
Kill Your Bill, start to finish
First
Get a Kill Your Bill enabled plan
Unlimited calls and texts, uncapped 5G and free EU roaming, activate your SIM or eSIM. The full brand list opens up in the Mozillion Kill Your Bill app once you are on a plan.
Before you pay
Buy the gift card in the app
10 seconds, standing in the aisle or sitting on the sofa with a basket open. Buy it for the amount you are about to spend.
Then
Pay with it, and the reward hits your phone bill
Scan the QR code at the till or paste the code into the checkout box. The cash reward is credited to your Mozillion phone bill straight away, and the app keeps a running total.
The bit worth repeating
You do not change where you shop, what you buy, or how much you spend. The only new step is buying the gift card first. If that step does not fit a particular purchase, skip it and pay normally.
A real Christmas list, run through the app
Here is the honest version of most people’s December: a couple of big presents, a pile of small ones, something for the people you had forgotten, and then the food. Nearly all of it has a brand in the app behind it.
| The kids | The Entertainer, Argos, Roblox, Nintendo eShop, Xbox, PlayStation Store, GAME, Kids Pass for the days out in the holidays |
| Teenagers | JD Sports, Nike, adidas, GYMSHARK, ASOS, River Island, New Look, Superdry, Zalando |
| Partner | John Lewis, Swarovski, Ernest Jones, Lush, Rituals, Sephora, Not on The High Street |
| Parents and in-laws | M&S, Waterstones, National Book Tokens, Bloom & Wild, Laithwaite’s Wine, Virgin Wines, The Body Shop |
| The hard ones | Virgin Experience Days, Red Letter Days, Buyagift, Theatre Tokens, Hobbycraft, Decathlon |
| Secret Santa and stockings | Primark, Matalan, Boots, Cadbury Gifts Direct, Costa, Caffè Nero, Starbucks, Greggs |
| The food shop | Aldi, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Iceland, Waitrose, M&S |
| The December you forgot to budget for | Deliveroo, Just Eat, Uber, ODEON, Cineworld, Pizza Express, Nando’s, Toby Carvery |
That last row is the one that surprises people. The takeaways, the cinema trip between Christmas and New Year, the meal out with friends you have not seen since summer: all of it is ordinary December spending, and all of it counts the same way the presents do.
Different brands pay different rates, and they move from time to time, so the app is the place to check before you buy. You can see the current brands and rates there if you want a look before you commit.
Why October beats December
The obvious reason to start now is cash flow. Spreading a Christmas list over October, November and December is simply easier than paying for it in one go, and you get first pick rather than whatever is left.
The less obvious reason is that rewards only count once you have earned them. Shopping in October earns against your October bill, November against November, and so on. Leave the whole list until the third week of December, and you have compressed three months of rewards into one, which is lovely for that single bill and does nothing for the two before it.
There is also the quiet advantage of not shopping in a hurry. Panic buying is expensive. Buying the same gift three weeks earlier, from the same shop, with the gift card bought first, costs less twice over.
What happens to the credit
Rewards go straight onto your monthly bill rather than into a separate pot you must remember to spend. When the rewards you have earned cover the plan, the bill for that month is zero. Most Kill Your Bill members completely wipe their phone bill inside their first month.
What makes Christmas interesting is the overshoot. A December list is far bigger than a monthly phone bill, so the rewards from it will almost certainly be worth more than the bill they are paying. That extra does not vanish at the end of the month, and it does not expire. It rolls forward.
Shop your Christmas list through the app in the autumn and you can walk into January with the next month or two already covered.
January is the month people least enjoy paying for things. Arriving at it with credit already banked, earned from presents you were buying anyway, is the whole point of starting in October.
Before you start
A few things worth knowing so the first purchase goes smoothly:
Worth knowing
- Buy the gift card before you pay, not after. There is no way to claim a reward retrospectively.
- Buy it for roughly what you are about to spend, so you are not left carrying a balance you have to use up.
- It works online and in store. Scan the QR code at the till, or paste the code into the gift card box at checkout.
- Check the brand in the app first. The list is long and it changes frequently.
- Already on a Mozillion plan? You can move onto Kill Your Bill from Your Dashboard, mid-contract included.
Start with one purchase rather than the whole list. Buy a gift card for whatever you were going to order this week, pay with it, and watch the reward land. Once you have seen it happen once, the rest of the list takes care of itself.
