Batter down your annual mobile costs article Discussion Area

bye_bye_band_G

Thanks grumbler, the deal is with talkmobile, not t-mobile, is this what you meant?
Do talkmobile use vodafone's customer service too, or just their coverage?
Yes, she can get £35 cashback from TCB so just over £6 /mth effectively. If talkmobile are not a definite no-no, I think we'll go with it.

grumbler

It was a typo. Supposed to be Talkmobile=Vodafone.
The CS is separate AFAIK. If so, it is not bad as it would be difficult for any CS to be worse than Voda's.

BenO_2

I was on a 30day rolling contract with 3, £25 a month for their all you can eat tarriff. I wanted the £110 cashback deal on a new 3 contract with the Samsung Galaxy S3. Didn't mind being locked in for 2 years as the phone is so advanced it will last more than that, but didn't fancy my line rental going up from £25p/m to £34p/m. Phoned up 3 and asked for my Pac code, they enquired why and I told them the above. 10mins later, I get a new SGS3 for free, 2year contract, all you can eat package, £28p/m line rental down from £34p/m, a £10 international call allowance per month and a bundle of extra free minutes.

Not a bad deal for me.

Haggle away, they wont to keep us more as the market is highly saturated.

ThatKernowBoy

Had a fairly good deal today. Was on a £26 per month tariff over 18 months for a pitiful amount (200 minutes (which I regularly went way over), unlimited texts, 500mb of internet) with Orange. My contract has ended and I didn't want to lose my magic numbers and loyalty - after speaking to 5 sales advisers, I hadn't been offered a deal I liked the sound of (the closest was £31 per month for the same contract but with a new HTC One X).

Eventually, retentions kept me at £26 with 800 minutes, unlimited texts and 1Gb of data with a new phone for free (over 18 months instead of 24).

I didn't save myself any money in terms of monthly price, but the same contract without a phone was offered to me at £21 per month. So, £5 per month for 18 months for a new phone - I'm happy!

TKB

TaintedAce

Hi All,

Some feedback from me in regards to O2 not budging due to the market hype of a phone.

I have been with them for 8 years now, mainly due to them having the upper hand with me wanting the latest Iphone on release date. This resulting in me being on a £40 contract for the past few years but times must change! (I hoped)

This time Apple will be cast aside and I want the Samsung Galaxy S 3, unfortunately so does everyone else. I called O2 and explained I have found more suitable deals elsewhere, cheaper line rental and the phone for free. I am quite surprised to say they would not budge at all; it was one deal for all (£36pm and phone for £99). I kind of got the feeling with this phone I am easily replaced by the next person in the queue? – Certainly the case with the Iphone.

I give the line about customer retention, 8 years with you etc but not an ounce of movement from the agent. I asked about the PAC code and agent was ready to give me it before I informed her I will call back for it.

Quite shocked at how the agent had no room to maneuver over this phone, I guess they are willing to lose customers over much hyped handsets.

I am in the process of looking into a Vodafone contract now which offers £25 pm and the phone for free. However I am considering complaining to O2 to see if this works, main reason I want to stay is the reliable service from O2 – It seems I have to pay a premium for this! :mad:

grumbler

I see £26 on T-mobile, but I don't see £25 on Vodafone.
For O2 the best I see is £50+24*£27 from Tesco Phone Shop.

And I don't see anything to complain about. They want money, not loyal customers.

bigash87

TaintedAce wrote: »

Hi All,

Some feedback from me in regards to O2 not budging due to the market hype of a phone.

I have been with them for 8 years now, mainly due to them having the upper hand with me wanting the latest Iphone on release date. This resulting in me being on a £40 contract for the past few years but times must change! (I hoped)

This time Apple will be cast aside and I want the Samsung Galaxy S 3, unfortunately so does everyone else. I called O2 and explained I have found more suitable deals elsewhere, cheaper line rental and the phone for free. I am quite surprised to say they would not budge at all; it was one deal for all (£36pm and phone for £99). I kind of got the feeling with this phone I am easily replaced by the next person in the queue? – Certainly the case with the Iphone.

I give the line about customer retention, 8 years with you etc but not an ounce of movement from the agent. I asked about the PAC code and agent was ready to give me it before I informed her I will call back for it.

Quite shocked at how the agent had no room to maneuver over this phone, I guess they are willing to lose customers over much hyped handsets.

I am in the process of looking into a Vodafone contract now which offers £25 pm and the phone for free. However I am considering complaining to O2 to see if this works, main reason I want to stay is the reliable service from O2 – It seems I have to pay a premium for this! :mad:

I am in a similar situation with 3. I am after the HTC One X. Through Carphone warehouse I can get the phone for free on a £26 month contract with T-Mobile, but when I ring and explain to 3 that I am thinking of moving because of the better deal, the best they can offer me is exactly what is on their website. I said to the rep that its not the best offer because I can cancel sign up again and get nearly £40 cashback.

jasonwatkins

philipmag wrote: »

I am looking for mobile phones for my son &daughter (teenagers).

Are there any networks that cap/limit the usage of the phones; I.E. if i have a £15p/m plan, the bill cannot exceed this.

Tesco let you cap the phone usage.

I signed up to Tesco in January with 1,500 minutes, 5000 texts and 1gb of Data on a 12 month SIM only deal for £17.50 a month. I've recently bought a second hand Samsung Galaxy S2 so it makes it a rather nice deal all round

xadina

There are a few other options when it comes to the end of your contractual period with all the network providers.

The option of staying with your current network but not taking a new handset is commonly know in the trade as a "no hardware upgrade". This is when you commit for another period but do not get a new handset hence the term "no hardware", if you are happy with your existing mobile and tariff then negotiate a new contract with some discount on your monthy cost, in my experience a discount of £10 a month is the minimum along with additional minutes, texts or data or if you are lucky all three.

No hardware upgrades can be for 12 months and basically mean your account converts to a "sim only" type of account.

You do not have to commit for 18 or 24 months, the standard or default seems to be 24 months so make sure you clarify this.

I always calculate the total cost of ownership over the length of the contract, this is the cost of the phone (if any) added to the cost over 24 months, for example an iPhone 4s 16gb today costs £59 up front then 24 payments of £36 = a total cost of ownership of £923.

I much prefer to save up for the handset and buy it myself sim free, this then gives me the power to negotiate a much lower monthly fee over 12 months, this also means the handset will be unlocked.

Leyfy

I have been with 3 mobile around 7/8 years now, and found a much better deal online. I basically asked them to meet the deal, or I would leave when my contract was up (which it is on the 8th of July) for either Orange or O2. I have thousands of minutes and texts that I don't use and wanted a smaller contract, and this particular offer gave me a really phone for £20.50 a month. However, the bloke on the phone refused to give anything other than the prices on the website.

I was perfectly polite to him, but very insistant that I felt that as a loyal customer of 7/8 years, surely they could match or beat the offer I was given? The fact that they seemed to pay no attention to the fact that I have been a loyal three customer for all of these years and wasn't particularly interested in keeping my business really surprised me. He kept going on about how there were things on the 'bbc website and watchdog' (obviously reading from a script) and that the deal I was offered online was obviously a fake and I should 'watch out'. (The website in question is buymobilephones.net, by the way, which I understand from my research is totally legit and I am not looking at one of their contracts with a free gift, which is where most of the complaints seem to come from)

He didn't seem to understand that I was signing a contract with O2 or Orange, not with this particular website! The only time I managed to silence him was when I pointed out Three themselves were on this particular website and read out the identical terms and conditions on the website that were on Three's own official website!!

I just can't believe Three are not interested in customer retention, as like I said, they did not offer me anything better than their current online offers to keep me.