Thinking about moving to a contract after 10yrs+ PAYG. Any tips?

Adahn

Heya all.

I've finally decided that now may be the right time for me to jump on the mobile contract wagon and hitch myself up to a smartphone with associated contract. I've read Martin's tips and hints, as well as some useful forum posts here.

Now, the majority of posts seem to concern moving providers or negotiating at the end of a current contract. Having been PAYG on Orange for the last 10+ years, I'm fairly certain I'm excluded from any of that fun! Instead, I was wondering if people could share their experiences and tips on moving from PAYG to contract and see if we can shave some £££ off quoted prices!

Essentially I don't need huge talk time or texts. My main reason for wanting to get a smartphone is the 2h in and 2h out commute I have for work, and I'd love a cheap way to play some throw away games as well as conduct basic net surfing (no streaming/high res heavy sites). I'm a bit of a Windows fanboy, and would want to jump on the Windows Phone 7 bandwagon, with the Samsung Omnia 7 being my smartphone of choice.

I appreciate that jumping into the new wave of technology is never supercheap

Looking around myself, the best deal I could find was on buymobilephones.net; they had an Omnia 7 for free on a £30 p/m 18 month contract with T-Mobile offering:

600 Cross network minutes
500 texts
Unlimited data
(5 months 1/2 price redemption)
(£30 Quidco)

All in, this would make it ~£435 for the phone and 18 months of a what seems to me to be a not bad contract. I've been told that the handset will cost from £350 alone, which to me makes this particular deal much sweeter than buying the handset and a sim only deal.

Anyway, I guess along with my above request, I'm just looking for feedback on whether I'd be able to use the above as a base to negotiate with other providers to see if I could a deal even cheaper. I'd be more than happy to lose minutes to facilitate this - I'm just unsure where I'll be standing with the operators with only PAYG in my mobile background!

Any tips, pointers, anecdotes will be appreciated

hamsterholly

My husband has just moved from orange payg over to contract in the last 2 weeks. He received what I think is a great deal as they treated him as an existing customer. He got

Free - Curve Blackberry
200 mins
Unlimited texts
Free Blackberry email
£15 a month

They even transferred over his remaining credit and also the £14 which had been in his phone fund. He said the service was excellent from them.

I have been with O2 payg for around 15 years and all they could offer me was a similar tariff with free blackberry for £25. So just this minute signed up to a new contract with orange going with quidco and getting £140 cashback. Tariff is Dolphin 20 and £20 a month but with cashback only £14.17 a month so well chuffed.

Bit scary going from payg but my new phone will make up for that.

Good luck getting a new deal from them.