In the early 1990s, giving away free flights with its vacuum cleaners cost Hoover £50m and lost the board its jobs, but Carphone Warehouse isn’t letting that stop it. It’s giving away two free return flights to Europe to everyone who buys a Palm Pre between 26 December 2009 and the end of January.
You can choose to take your city break in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Budapest, Dublin, Frankfurt, Geneva, Madrid, Munich, Nice, Paris, Prague or Warsaw, and you can fly from most major UK airports.
The Palm Pre is free on a £30-a-month, two-year contract on the O2 network — but you have to buy through Carphone Warehouse to get the free flights. The phone is available in stores or on the Carphone Web site.
Once you’ve got the Pre in hand, you’ll have to fill out an online form with your top three choices for travel dates, and sit tight for at least 28 days after purchase before you can take off. The deadline for applications is 1 April 2010, when we’re sure Carphone won’t reveal it all to be a cruel April Fool’s joke.
We loved the Palm Pre in our review, but its sales haven’t matched competitors’ such as the iPhone, especially now that the iPhone is no longer exclusively sold by O2. If a wild weekend in Warsaw or a biking break in Brussels swings you towards the Pre, we don’t think you’ll be disappointed, especially now that its app store is picking up paid apps.
Full details of the Palm Pre flight offer are available online.