** HELP NEEDED with Christmas gift mobile! **

jem16

Well I bought the Samsung C120 for my dad for his Christmas from CPW. It's unlocked and the cheapest way to but it was to credit it with £10 from Talk 5 so that was £29.95.

He will use the £10 credit then chuck the sim away and put in his Tesco sim.

Road_Hog

codger wrote:

Just had an email to say we can't have the phone anyway.

They want me to ring and discuss alternative "amazing offers".

Hmmmm.

Probably the best thing for you. If you're a light user then use a PAYG phone. These companies use sharp practice, they have to. How do you (general rhetorical sense) think they can keep offering free handsets and free calls? Simple, because so many people don't get their money back.

Before anyone says, always works for me. How many people are going to come forward and say I ballsed it up, I'm a numpty loser who paid over the odds, not many I'll wager. And if the majority were successful, why do you think the companies would keep offering it, none is the answer.

Codger, what are your requirements other than it can hold a battery charge for a decent length of time?

jobits

Apologies if this question has been asked before but Im at my wits end with all the different pay as you go mobile phone deals at the moment.

Im after a phone for my 11 year old son for Xmas. It needs to have games and of course, a camera! OH reckons the clam style phones would last about 5 minutes so that cuts out loads of deals. Also, want to be able to unlock the phone as already have pay as you go sim card for t-mobile.
Dont wanna spend a fortune as son has a nasty habit of loosing everything!!

Can anyone put an end to my misery...suggestions please!

Oh - someone at work reckons I would be better off getting a really cheap contract phone (using a cashback offer)as you get better phones this way. There is one on at the mo with Virgin Mobile. I could use the SIM in my phone -unlock the free phone and give to my son - apparently saving a fortune....is this too good to be true???

codger

Thanks jem, I'll have a look at that before ringing e2save.com. . . oh dear!

Mornin' roadhog: yes you're absolutely right, the essence of all these contract deals is a marketing gamble using industry data that's also the basis of everything from building society saving account interest rates to credit card offers, energy pricing and Internet bargain offers.

At root is consumer predictive behaviour, viz: what're the odds of the punter failing to look after his / her own best interests?

Answer: pretty darn good.

They'll take a mobile phone on free contract and lose the bill or their payment will be late or they'll be on holiday and forget to mail in the required copy or they won't have access to a photo-copier anyway or they'll forget to send the stuff Signed For and Royal Mail will lose the paperwork in transit.

Elsewhere, they'll open a savings account with a high-rate introductory period then be too inert to close it when the rate plummets or they'll obtain a credit card on advantageous terms but two or three times a year will fail to pay off the entire balance and may even on a couple of occasions forget to pay anything at all.

As British Gas continues to demonstrate, they'll pay the highest fuel bills in the UK for arguably the worst service in the UK because somehow they can't quite get around to all that bothersome business of switching.

Or in the hunt for a bargain, they'll eventually fall into the well-we'd-better-get-something trap and pay out more than they intended for something they never wanted -- a consumer failing which Argos in particular is adroit at exploiting: its online 'special offers' (sic) are never available for home delivery and never checkable via the national stock database which Argos has but takes great pains not to divulge: instead, the bargain hunter must "check availability" in store after store after store until exhaustion sets in and a substitute gets ordered instead. . .

We are our own worst enemy.

If we weren't, every financial institution would have to offer the same rate otherwise it would fail in the marketplace. No phone could ever be offered free because the provider would go bankrupt. British Gas would be exactly where it deserves to be: out of business.

And Argos wouldn't be able to get away with nationwide Internet promotions of products that may well not even be stocked in the overwhelming majority of its stores.

So I do blame us for our weaknesses rather than those savvy enough to exploit 'em, and I do know (crystal ball time!) that I'm very likely going to have an interesting conversation with the phone people which won't involve any kind of free contract at all.

Like yourself and Martini and others here though, thankfully we're wise to the ways of the number crunchers who calculate the odds for and against the success of any consumer deal. I guess none of us would be on these forums if we weren't.

So had the Motorola freebie been available, it would've been a point of principle with us to adhere strictly to the terms and conditions, not only to protect our own financial position but also to demonstrate to psychologists, profilers and predatory manipulators everywhere that hey: not all consumers are exploitable -- so stick that in your stats sheet and smoke it (in an open space not used for the purposes of public gatherings nor when the wind is blowing from the southwest ).

End of rant!!!!!!!!!!

As to the damned phone, well yes: battery life is a major consideration, and the aesthetics / functionality balance another (the Motorola genuinely appealed because of its slim profile).

Bluetooth, WAP, cameras, MP3 players etc are actually of minimal interest: we have decent 8mp cameras for photography and a couple of very humble iAudio players that even after several years' use continue to upstage every Apple iPod we've ever encountered: function wins, style doesn't.

So maybe after all this. . . we'd best stay with what we've got and our mundane but cheap Vodafone PAYG! :beer:

codger

Quickie update. Just had a look on eBay for Motorola L6 silver from a reliable specialist seller with good FB, £65 on Vodafone PAYG (so no contract) there's also a £10 Vodafone top-up voucher included with the phone so the effective price is £55.

Hmmm.

Road_Hog

jobits wrote:

Im after a phone for my 11 year old son for Xmas. It needs to have games and of course, a camera! OH reckons the clam style phones would last about 5 minutes so that cuts out loads of deals. Also, want to be able to unlock the phone as already have pay as you go sim card for t-mobile.
Dont wanna spend a fortune as son has a nasty habit of loosing everything!!

Can anyone put an end to my misery...suggestions please!

Oh - someone at work reckons I would be better off getting a really cheap contract phone (using a cashback offer)as you get better phones this way. There is one on at the mo with Virgin Mobile. I could use the SIM in my phone -unlock the free phone and give to my son - apparently saving a fortune....is this too good to be true???

Stay away from contract phones with cashback unless you are very organised, diligent and tenacious, there are a lot of obstacles and even then they don't always play fair and pay up.

Here is a threas where somebody else asked about camera PAYG phones on another board.

http://www.rpoints.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1089517&start=0

Road_Hog

codger wrote:

Quickie update. Just had a look on eBay for Motorola L6 silver from a reliable specialist seller with good FB, £65 on Vodafone PAYG (so no contract) there's also a £10 Vodafone top-up voucher included with the phone so the effective price is £55.

Hmmm.

I know people tend to shy away from buying phones on ebay, but to be honest there are a number of good buys to be had and if you are buying off of a seller with good feedback you should be okay, and as the L6 is a pain in the !!!! to unlock you would be better off buying one on the network it will be used on.

Shame though as the Orange ones can be had for next to nothing,

http://www.phones4u.co.uk/special-offers/clearance.asp

Plus £5 back from Quidco.

This phone is probably similar in size and shape to her current phone,

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nokia-1600-Virgin-Prepay-Airtime/dp/B000JDUZ12/sr=8-1/qid=1164904358/ref=sr_1_1/026-7854750-7283630?ie=UTF8&s=electronics

And this is a very good phone on Vodafone, used to have one of these myself,

http://www.play.com/Mobiles/Mobile/RGNEC/3-/1121270/Sony_Ericsson_K750i_On_Vodafone_Prepay/Product.html?P36=4JY9L7#

Plus 2% back from Quidco

codger

Roadhog -- you're a star! :beer: