What a Great Find!

Last week I was asked to help my local school fundraiser.  I really don't need another box of chocolates or donuts but I do like to help out if I can.  So what is the fundraising product this time?  I was pleasantly surprised, nothing for my waist and but something my hip pocket.  It is membership to an innovative little mobile web site.  For only $39.95 I got access to the site and with that I’m told more than 52000 offers from more than 3000 businesses across Australia.  I live in Perth and have family in Melbourne and both metro areas have more than 600 businesses providing exclusive offers to MyPhoneVouchers members.  

My second surprise was that the offers on the mobile site were well represented across a number of categories rather than being just restaurants.  Don’t get me wrong, I love food but to be honest my waist does not need it.  What was in there was tradesmen, car mechanics, and beauty services and yes some food places that sound like places I would like to go.  I have purchased a paper based voucher product called the Entertainment Book in the past however I found that I always forgot the book and also it was difficult to find discounts near me.  This is where the MyPhoneVouchers.com really excels.  Just click the “Use GPS Location” button at the top and when I then do searches it orders them by how far they are away from me.  Brilliant!   

The “Find Location” menu item also allows you to “Fake” where you are so you can tell the application where you are going to be latter today or next week to find places in that area that is going to give you a discount.  I was able to plan an outing for next week and best of all I’m getting it for half price…

I got in touch with MyPhoneVouchers to see if they could help our son’s football club, for wish I got roped into becoming the secretary, and I was beyond impressed.  While they were more than willing to help with the fundraising product they were also interesting in supporting us in other ways and all for free.  First we were given advertising in the community information section of the mobile site so members of MyPhoneVouchers.com that want to find a local football club will be able to find us.  Some groups like dance schools etc. actually offer a discount that would also appear but that’s not for us.  The second freebie that they gave us was free access for our volunteers, committee and staff.  We don’t have any haha and I had already paid at the school but I think the sentiment and idea is nice.  MPV want to help us reward those that are helping us and all for free.  The last thing that was for free is actually free accounts that we can give to anyone we like as prizes in other fundraising events, events or just give them as thank-you’s at our presentation night.  They also have a three step process to help us get our supporters to become MyPhoneVoucher members.  The first step is a free trial (obviously the school decided not to run this phase), the second phase just gives the club (or school) additional revenue for the first year which is $30 of the $39.95 (I’m sure the school did take account of this phase  ...smile…) and the final phase is the usual revenue splitting at $20 of the $39.95 which is more than fair when compared with other fundraising products.  We are in so if you would like to support us or other groups, charities or schools you can go and purchase it from their site. 

Great Discount Voucher Product

I’m a discount coupon tragic, I was always the first person to buy the new Entertainment Book® from my local school, Boy Scout club or football club even though my children have long left home and these organizations.  I also would use my shop-a-dockets® and fuel vouchers from Woolworths® and Coles® and the handles on my handbag would strain under the load.  Now I have found the solution to all of my problems.  

I was introduce to My Phone Vouchers by the nice lady at our local gymnastics club and WOW!  I have an Apple® iPhone® 5s and she helped me bookmark the mobile site to my phones home-screen so now it looks and feels just like a mobile application should.  The application is like the cross between Entertainment Book® and Google® Search.  First you put your email address and password into the settings screen and it also has how many kilometers I’m willing to travel for a discount, I put in 5km and started the searching.  I instantly found the first difference between most discount coupon systems.  Most discount systems like Entertainment Book® or Kidbiz® and targeted on a theme such as dining or children’s activities while MPV seems to be a much broader mix of discounts in categories such as automotive, Business and Office, Entertainment, Fashion & Beauty, Food and Catering, Health and Wellness, Home and Gardening, Shopping and Travel and Accommodation.  I’m told that these categories only show up if there is offers within my travel distance from where I’m currently located.  There is a little gotcha here that I found.  It’s doesn’t automatically find my current location.  There is a button on the main screen and called “Use GPS Location” which updates the current location using the built-in GPS.   At first I thought this was a bug however late decided it was a carefully thought out feature, as you can use the “Choose a Location” item from the front screen to set a location that you might be later.  I can say that tonight I’m going to the movies in Northbridge and would like a meal there; I can search for Northbridge in and set it as my location to the cinema.  Then when I search in “Food & Catering” it will show all of the restaurants and cafes within 5km of the cinema that are offering me a discount.  Cool Hey!  

The next thing I found since using this rather than the Entertainment book is that many of the vouchers come back after a day, week or month of me using them.  So if while the discount might be slightly smaller than on some voucher systems I can always get a discount at my favorite place.  I noticed that some places actually have two vouchers.  

The first voucher is a large discount that might attract me to try somewhere different and the second one was a smaller discount that is offered more often so it might keep me going to the same place.  Interesting but I’m not sure which side will work best.  I guess both vouchers have merit and I guess I’m a tragic so I might try and new place and if I like it will use the loyalty type discounts.  (Not sure if they uses that type of terminology but it seems to fit the few with two vouchers.)  So how many vouchers are there?  Too many to count and they keep adding new ones.  The stats on the web site says that if you take into account all of the vouchers that can be used more than once there is more than 52,000 vouchers available across Australia from around three thousand different businesses.   

One last benefit I can see is that I went to Melbourne to see my daughter for a holiday and I would usually buy a new Entertainment Book ® for Melbourne but with MPV I got off the plane, turned on my iPhone and pressed the “use GPS location” and there was all the businesses in Melbourne that wanted to give me a discount Bonus two books for the price of one and at only $39.95 it’s also cheaper than the alternatives and the gymnastics club I bought it from told me that they get $20 of the transactions for their fundraising..  I love my iPhone and I love it even more with My Phone Vouchers.