@Anonymous wrote:
I wonder how it works with resellers. I see they also say Chatr sold out and "Limited stock" of Freedom. How do you run out of something virtual like online vouchers? How do you carry stock?
@darlicious wrote:
I had considered it a loss leader driving traffic to the site to sell other stuff at full price but they don't seem to sell anything else online....? Are they declaring bankruptcy soon....so sell at fire sale prices? How do sell Sims for $0.11 when it costs $1 for the stamp?
I have absolutely no idea how things work with partners/resellers, but it looks like Canadian Cell Supplies operates out of the same address as Wireless Depot in North York (2489 Finch Avenue West -- you can see by Googling or checking out Google Streetview), and there is overlap in some of the offerings and carriers they deal with.
I'm speculating that they have access to cheap/free/courtesy $5 or $10 top-ups, perhaps from the Wireless Depot side of things, as an authorized dealer, for demos, testing, promos, consolation, starter-credit, etc., and they are offering these up on the CCS spin-off side to bring in visitors (whether at a profit or loss -- who knows?!). The list of discount codes that's displayed when you click on CCS's red discount code banner seems to suggest they have limited "stock" of top-ups daily, but unless they just release 1 per day or something, the PM top-ups have always been "Sold out" whenever I've checked, regardless of whether it's midnight EDT, MDT, PDT, or just random times of day. So, I really think it's just "creative marketing" (to spin it politely) to keep people coming back regularly to check. I do see "stock" more often for Freedom and Chatr, but those are $5, and maybe more plentiful.
I'm not quite sure how/why they're selling SIM cards for less than postage, but they're probably just expensing this as "advertising" or "marketing", and they get your e-mail onto a mailing list as their benefit. I came to know of CCS because they were a reseller for PM SIM cards on Amazon.ca, and while Amazon had PM SIMs for $10, CCS had them for something like $7 at the time, but then I found my way to the CCS site directly and bought them for $6 (again, at the time, it was a great deal...).
This is all speculation on my part, and I could be way off, but it's the only model that sort of makes sense to me!
