Any way of getting out of the £10 airtime 'surcharge'?

pixwix

My wife is on Orange and needing a new mobile phone. There are 2 or 3 models she fancies at a price we can afford. But everywhere we go they insist on the addition of £10 airtime. She already has a payg sim and doesn't want to change her number or lose the airtime credit on that sim.

Every place we try insists that all it takes is a phone call to Orange and the new £10 will be transferred to her current payg account. But we were told this the last time we bought a mobile phone and it never happened despite repeated phone calls to Orange - we just gave up at the finish.

Any way of getting out of paying the extra £10 in the first place? It makes nonsense of 'sale' prices. Are such requirements legal?

jockettuk

The airtime doesnt work with the new sim.. you can keep your old sim and input the number on the card to your new phone old sim... as im on a month to month contract i also got new phone which had to pay for airtime, but just gave the airtime to a friend.

MissKeith

Carphone Warehouse can bypass the top up in store for existing Orange pay as you go customers. You just have to have a registered, active number for more than 6 months. Ask them for a pay as you go upgrade. Hope that helps.

Stuart_W

Have you tried directly with Orange?

Where £10 credit is sold with the phone at the Orange shop online, it will be applied directly to your existing account, and you can also get a discount based on your spend over the last 12 months (text "phone" to 450 for free to see how much is in your phone fund) - could mean a free phone, phones start from £5.

Orange Shop: http://shop.orange.co.uk/mobile-phones/pay-as-you-go
Phone Fund Info: http://shop.orange.co.uk/mobile-phones/upgrades/pay-as-you-go

ioscorpio

If you buy through Topcashback / Quidco you will get cashback and so offset part of the £10 top-up charge and still have the £10 credit to spend.

pixwix

Thanks for the info folks. I'll follow up some of those suggestions.

A bit annoying though to think just about everything I spoke to behind a counter told me it would be OK to transfer the balance. Be nice to get honest (or at least not thoughtless) answers in shops for a change though. Thank heavens for this forum.

I might just bite the bullet, buy at Argos, and just give the sim to a friend or neighbour. Argos have a Lisbon touch screen phone which my wife fancies (no - never heard of it either). It's £20 (i.e. £30 in reality). She doesn't want or need an expensive phone, so it seems too good to miss, even at the 'real' price.

Svenena

I went with my nan to buy a new PAYG phone from an Orange shop last week, and she did have to pay for the airtime, but they transferred over the credit she had on her old sim card, as well as the phone number, and she also got £10 off, from her 'phone fund'. Just means she won't have to top-up for ages!