Batter down your annual mobile costs article Discussion Area

sumosami

My partner had a contract with Orange since approx 2006, it was a sim only contract & we used it as a spare in a cheap handset as it was just a minutes & texts sim for £5.00 per month. We needed another phone with data so rang to cancel the Orange sim. We had a phonecall from the retentions deal asking why we were cancelling so we explained. She offered us 300 minutes, 300 texts & 500mb data for £5.50 per month. She said to think about it & she would ring back. She didnt, so we rang them. We were told they would get the right department to ring us, but they didnt. 3 times they said they would ring back but never did. Then the contract was cut off so we rang back again & were basically called liars as there was no record of the offer being made. As such a long time customer its not the way you expect to be treated. Extremely poor customer service by Orange, not the way to keep customers. We will definitely be taking our custom elsewhere. :mad:

netty061

About 18 months ago I was due for an upgrade from my Nokia E5 which was getting very slow and paying £25 per month. I didn't want to pay much more than that and the iPhone 4 had just come out. After a bit of haggling which 3 weren't biting, the man said "they have just refreshed their stock of iPhone 3s" and I could have one for £26 per month + £49 upfront with a good package of minutes, texts and data which I accepted. When the phone arrived, it was fairly scratched and it turned out the phone was refurbished, not brand new. I phoned and complained that I had been misled - I would never have taken a 2 year contract on a refurbished phone as you're in luck if a new one lasts that long. They said I could have a new one but it would be a lot more per month. I said no as if I'd paid £50 more, I could have got a brand new iPhone 4 for that, so he said which phone did I want. I said obviously I would prefer the 4 but I couldn't justify paying that much with my fairly minimal usage - they said they would listen to a recording of my call. They then came back and let me have exactly the same deal but with a brand new iPhone 4 and I didn't have to pay any more that the £49 I'd already paid. The only thing was, they said they would like to add on an extra 3 months to my contract. This contract should end in August this year but they always let you upgrade around 2 months earlier so I was thinking June - I've just had notification today, that I can upgrade!!!

Now I'm going to see what deal I can get for an iPhone 5:T

solarpvman

steve_cov wrote: »

Martin's approach doesn't seem to have worked for me.

Having been with Orange for about five years, they refused to match the 3 tariff of 500 minutes + 100 text messages and offered something with 300 minutes and 30 text messages instead for a similar cost. Contract has just expired.

I've been as pushy as I can be (which is quite pushy), yet no success. Anyone been luckier, esp with Orange and a similar level of loyalty?

Oh, and I meant to say that they admitted that they grade their offer based on how much profit they've made out of each customer in previous years. For example, my 200 minute tariff to date - with a typical call month of 300 minutes - meant that they would offer me a "special deal" on 300 minutes rather than what I asked for.

have been on orange business for more than 10 years. I too am very pushy and have tried several avenues >1 month prior to contract end. NO JOY AT ALL. I was even happy with my current contract, I just wanted a half-decent (but 3 year old) phone. I have not yet spoken to the specialist disconnections dept if that actually exists

solarpvman

As a PS; about a year ago when my son got a new phone (I bought it) from VODAPHONE they found lots of deals on the special 'computer system' that were not advertised. There were HUNDREDS of different tariff options on that - I saw them. I mean literally hundreds of options. I guess they wanted to snare him whilst young.

19donna82

as im due an upgrade i called three today to see what was on offer. iphone 5 for £41 a month for exact same tariff as im on now. (i have an iphone 4 and currently pay £37 a month)

i did some research and found that i could get the same tariff with t mobile for £36 a month. so i called three back and asked for a price match they said no so i asked to be put through to disconnections. once through to them i was offered the same tariff for £38 a month which is only £1 more a month than what im currently paying and considering there's no signal with t mobile at my house i couldn't go with them anyway...............i just didn't tell three that :rotfl:

so although not a huge amount i saved £72 over the 24month contract :j :T

thanks for the tips Martin :beer:

kittendothroar

I phoned up orange to cancel my contract yesterday, as the 24 months had finally expired, and tesco offering better deal for half the cost, and nothing comparable on the orange site...they put me through to retentions, and despite getting cut off once (well all of sudden it said thanks for phoning tmobile...!) and after negotiations they did 1gb data, 1000 mins and unlimited texts on 12 month sim for £16 a month, just over half of regular bill, so I am very happy! Also said they are going to sort out poor signal on 16th as doing something with the local antenna...we shall see!

Carper82

Maybe posting in wrong place, But i`m 12months into a 2 year contract and asked to downgrade my tariff they said i can only upgrade, they offered me a higher upgrade but was £6 a month cheaper.
When i asked why they said new tariffs for 2013.

Sigmar

Rang up Virgin Mobile to get my wife a good deal on her new phone as her contract runs out in a couple of weeks. Got not one but two better deals on the Samsung Galaxy S3 than what Virgin were offering (bearing in mind we already get a discount with them for being Broadband & Phone customers). Got through to the retention team and they absolutely refused to budge from their basic £24/mnth contract, saying that this was already a "good deal" comapred to what they normally do (i.e. £29/mnth for non-Virgin Media customers). I stated that Orange could do the same deal for £20.50 (through Phones4U) and Tesco for £21 and the best he could do was waive the £49.99 up-front handset cost. I ended the conversation with "Well, I guess I'll call Orange them and let them know the good news." and the guy quite happily gave me the number to call for contract cancellation. Didn't seem all that interested in retaining custom to be honest. Their loss.

st_owly

Called Vodafone the other day to see what they could offer me as my contract's about to expire. When I told them I'd found cheaper deals online, they offered me a free iPhone 4S and 500mb extra data for free. I'm paying £26 per month.

fulhamnonny

My contract is due to expire on the 15th April. I called them up on the 9th and just spoke to the upgrade team. The person was lovely and really helpful. We spent an hour looking at my options and it ended with her suggesting that I look at Sim only and looking at other netowrk providers.

I called again on the 11th April and spent over an hour on the phone to O2. This time I went through to retensions. They offered me a slightly better deal but couldn't match the deal with T-mobile for an 18 month contract with the new Nokia Lumia that I had discovered. It's £1 more expensive to stick with O2 for another 18 months.

I decided to actually leave O2 unless they could at least match the deal which they were not willing to do, so finally after 12/ 13 years of being O2. I'm leaving.

I am genuinely sad that they didn't try and make a better offer on the contract as I've been a loyal customer. All I wanted to do is cut the costs of my spending on my mobile, I'm also having a few issues with my current phone which is an iphone which was the reason I was looking to upgrade otherwise I would have gone with a sim only contract. When I moved to O2 all those years ago it was from T-mobile as I found the reception and customer service bad then. I just hope it's improved.

I'm worried I'm making a mistake.