Contract up - new contract & laptop deal?

Nutty_Tart

Hello, I hope someone would be able to help me (first time on this board)

My T-mobile contract is now up (yesterday!) I have been paying £26/month for 120 mins & 100 txts + 500 free txts :eek: (shocking - I know having had a quick look around, but was tied in!!) Anyway, am now looking for a good deal, but also DS birthday is coming up and he has been on & on about a laptop for school etc etc. So, I thought I could combine the two & get a free laptop (very MSE :cool: ) and the best deal possible.

The best one I seem to have found is via e2save - Sony Ericsson W350i phone on Orange Dolphin £35/month (600 mins & unlimited txts) plus either a Dell Inspiron 1520 with 80Gb hard drive & Intel processor and £30 cashback (+ quidco obviously!), or the same tarrif with a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Li2727 laptop (I didn't find any further info for this on their website?), but no cashback on this one (except quidco).

The carphone warehouse ones are Acer, but the minimum monthly contract is £40, so I didn't look any further and there was another website, but I had never heard of them, so didn't go any further.

So, am I being a bit thick :rolleyes: - Is this a total no-brainer, or is there a better deal to be had???? I would be grateful for any response

Thanks in advance,

NTx

hotkee

I assume those deals are 18 months, which equates to £630 (before any cashback) for £35 a month.

The laptops are crap - why not do yourself a favour get a good phone deal for less than £200 and buy a decent laptop for about £500 separately - in fact you can buy decent laptops for less £400 (for generally all purpose usage).

bobbthefrog

Hey,

I know where your coming from. Was this the other site you were talking about? If not try this, both me and my girlfriend have bought from here and got a decent deal from Orange, a free phone and a free gift. Everything from iPod nano to 32" sony HDTV. Obviously the more expensive the item the higher the cost of the tarriff but if you want a TV or in your case laptop it pays to think of it in terms of hire purchase type thing. So your phone may be £20 A MONTH AND YOU PAY AN EXTRA £15 per month for the laptop.

However hotkee has a point.

the Mobile phone market is saturated so there is no such thing as a new customer as pretty much everyone who's gonna get a mobile already has one. The companies concentrate on keeping existing customers so here's my advice:

Call up your phone company ask them what deals they can offer you.

Say you've found better elsewhere and tell them about your laptop deal etc, ask to end your contract. They'll put you to disconnections which is another term for "KEEPING CUSTOMERS DEPARTMENT!" these guys have all the power and if you keep a smile on your face and negotiate you can get an amazing deal.

Last time I went from £35 a month//18 month contract//not too much mins and texts

to

£20 a month, free phone, unlimited texts, 600 x-network mins and I told him if he threw in a free bluetooth headset in for free (worth £50) it would seal the deal. Oh yeah I got all that on a 12 month contract too.

The only drawback is that they can't offer free gifts like laptops and PS3's etc. They can mainly just lower your monthly tarriff.

I'm upgrading again on the 14th and I'm going to try to get a free contract- a few of my friends have got these and it doesn't really matter if they're 12 or 18 months if your not paying for it. Also could try to get free insurance (not sure about this tho - never heard of anyone asking for that or getting it)

Like hotkee said - you could spend the money you'd save on a better laptop. I'd recommend a MacBook - Apple give school children/students 20% discount so you can get a £700 laptop for £550 and they rock! All i would say tho is if it's for school get microsoft office for macs with it, (this is also much cheaper for students/pupils) instead of iWorks so they can transfer documents more easily.

Sorry for blabbering...... hope some of this is usefull!

Bobb )

Nutty_Tart

Thank-you - I needed someone to point out the obvious to me - I knew it wasn't quite adding up but confess..... I was being seduced by expensive 'freebies'.

Will probably switch over to the virgin sim deal for a tenner/month (existing customer so get either 300 or 400 mins & texts) and look around for a laptop seperately.

Thanks again,
NTx