Batter down your mobile contract cost

System

Hey don't want to out do you, but I did this a while ago while three were relatively new. I called Orange, and told them I would leavetoo. They matched the three deal exactly for me. I now pay £25 a month for 500, yes 500 cross network minutes plus 60 free texts a month. My bills rarely go over that.

Not sure if they are doing that anymore but have a go. Hold out for the best deal and say you want the special code to change your no. over to another network. That way they know you are being serious!

Good Luck

BTW https://www.chatterbox.com do some great mobile deals, especially on three if you a re thinking of changing. It really is hard to look at their prices and stay with the other newtorks!!! eg. 11.99 a month for 500 cross network minutes on three!!! (they give you the line rental money back after a certain period???!?!?!) Let me know if anyone uses them and what deal they get.

System

I got a good deal a couple of months ago off T-mobile. I phoned them up to take my package down because we were struggling a bit and they were great. I was on Everyone 150 before which was cross network for 150 mins a month with no free texts. this cost me about £25 a month unless i went over my free mins.Now I get 750 mins of calls to t-mobile and landlines after 7pm and all day friday, saturday and sunday plus 50 free texts for £5.99 a month! This is great for me as my mum and boyfriend are on T-mobile. It's definatly worth a go if your cost cutting. I've only been with them for 2 and 1/2 years and they've been great. They even replaced my 8310 with a sony T68i when i lost it and couldn't claim on the insurance.

lee__48

It appears that the disconnections department has a lot more flexibilty than the customer services advisors.

I was on a One Mobile tariff which cost me £15 for the year!! It was the equilvalent of the O2 Anytime 30 tariff. O2 took over management of my One Mobile account and started charging me line rental at £16 per month!! I phoned them up not best pleased. Got through to their disconnections department. I had a choice of either cancelling my contract that day and paying a bill for £100 or taking an upgrade and staying with O2 for the year. We went through lots of tariffs, pay upfront and pay monthly, but I insitied that all the tariffs were too expensive, especially as I was previously paying only £2 for itemised billing each month.

After haggling for nearly half an hour I ended the call with a refund for my second One Mobile contract (£52), a new Nokia 6100 (sold on eBay for £87) and three months free line rental on the Anytime 30 tariff (£48). A total of £4.75 per month. Much better than the original £16 per month I would have been paying if I hadn't phoned them

Lee

Ross_L_2

With O2 I have had little luck. They seem less willing to budge!

Jo-z

I tried this about a year ago with Vodaphone and would certainly recommend that you are all very careful with this.
I was on contract that was costing me about £12 per month and spotted that I could get an almost identical deal from OneTel. As my boyfriend lived in a Vodaphone blackout zone but OneTel use the O2 network, this seemed like a good idea.
Vodaphone's special secret department (that they only let you speak to when you utter those magic words "going to leave") offered me £11 per month + 60 minutes + 50 messages. How could I refuse?
Only when the bills started coming in did I notice the tarriff name included "6 months 50%" in it. I queried this and was told that they had signed me up to a deal that would cost me £11 for 6 months, then shoot up to £25 per month. What was worse, I was locked into it for 12 months. This was the first I had heard of this and certainly wouldn't have agreed - who would agree to pay more? Duh! But they insisted they remembered the conversation, that their staff member had definitely told me of this and that I had definitely agreed. Several angry letters later, I just gave up in frustration.
I will be leaving Vodaphone at the first possible opportunity.

System

I have been an orange contract customer for 8 years on their basic 15/month + VAT tariff that they no longer offer to new customers (60 minutes/month, no texts).

Having not had a new phone for a couple of years I phoned them up and told them I wanted an upgrade to the Nokia 6600 (nice phone), but didn't want to pay the 200 pounds that they wanted to charge on their web site. I had seen an offer where O2 were giving away the phone for free (OK you had to sign up to a 50/month tariff but I didn't tell Orange that :-)

After a couple of transfers I think I ended up at the disconnections department and I ended up getting the 200 pound phone for FREE. Bargain!

They look at your spend over the past 12 months to decide how worthwhile a customer you are to keep, I had had one month recently with a 100 pound bill thanks to some calls I made while roaming in the USA (my employer picked up the tab) and that bumped up my average monthly call spend a lot.

BTW on Orange when upgrading you're generally better off staying on one of their old "Talk" or "Everyday" tariffs if you still have it, their new tariffs are not such good value.

Mike

PaleScene

 Pale scene - £15 to move from 02 - as a PAYG user ? There is no cost bar cost of another SIM (£1-£2 upwards) and making sure your phone is unlocked to any network - what model of phone have you got ?

Perhaps that was the unlock charge they were quoting.

The phone is a Siemens SL45.

Thank you for your reply, I'll have to look into this more.

steve_wilson_3

I have a huge problem. 4 Yrs ago i started my own bussiness and tried to get a contract phone and was denied by all networks. Because of this my brother in law got one for me in his name and i pay the bill.
I need to have my own contract but they still wont give me one due to a ccj a couple of yrs ago.
I am on O2 400 (with 50 free txts) which costs £35/mth (with loyalty discount) + 400 txt bolt on.
My bills are usually £100-£150/mth.
I did try to transfere the phone into my name at the end of the last contract term but they wouldnt do that either.
The only thing i can think of is to cancell the contract in september and see what reaction i get from them and revert to a PAYG.
It will take me a year to tell everyone a new tel No.
I even asked if i could pay upfront like a PAYG but they said no.

nujjy

Martin,
You have saved me so much money.
But this trick will save me the most.

I currently pay in excess of £70 for Orange's 400 anytime any network plan.

I told Orange I wanted to leave. Not only did they match "Three's" price plan (£25 for 500 CROSS NETWORK MINUTES!), not only did they give me a free motorola v600 but a free bluetooth headset as well.

Thank you very much Martin! You will save me around £600 per year!

Norman-B

nujjy, I would say that you have had the "Deal of the Day"