orange call charges

calmgirl

Hi Sorry if this has been asked already, my husband has gone 42 mins over on an orange monthly contract. Could someone please tell me how much they charge per minute over your monthly allowance, I have tried looking online but must be looking in the wrong place! Thanks for your help.

Rusty!

Depends on the numbers he called.

20.4p per minute to land lines and mobiles.
12.3p per minute to voicemail

grumbler

http://shop.orange.co.uk/mobile-phones/price-plans/pay-monthly?cmsPageId=AKQA1300

It's about 20p I think. Don't know if this depends on the plan.
Just click "find out more", then see "out of plan costs" tab.

Stuart_W

The increasingly high cost of run-on rates (when you run out of inclusive minutes) is a total con. These have been rocketing recently and show that if you have erratic usage you can end up paying a fortune.

The main operators are a rip-off on monthly billed out-of-bundle minutes.

I put this table together for someone else recently -

Out-of-bundle per minute charges of main contract/SIM only deals, April 2011
Operator/Landline Calls/Same Network/Other UK mobile/Voicemail
Orange 25 25 25 25
T-mobile 30.6 30.6 30.6 12.3
Virgin 31 31 31 13
O2 36 36 36 12
Vodafone 21 21 36 21
TalkMobile 31 31 31 0

In some cases there are add-ons/bolt ons/extras available, but if you suddenly need to use your phone more heavily in one month, you can pay through the nose - significantly more than basic PAYG deals in some cases!

Orange PAYG even offer a run-on rate of just 4p per minute if you buy a £1 daily minute extra - which pays for 25 minutes there and then from your credit, and you only pay 4p per minute for the rest of the day. There is a monthly version with a 5p run on rate, too.

The moral is that if you regularly go over your bundle you will probably save money by upgrading to the next bundle up - even if you only use a few minutes extra. This is, of course, exactly what they want to do.

My friend, who needed a monthly billed account rather than PAYG, actually ended up looking at The Phone Co-op's pay as you use account, and whilst £2 per month for absolutely no minutes doesn't sound great, the flat 7p per minute for all calls isn't anything to jump up and down about either, whilst 100 minutes at £9/month can be beaten by various sim-only deals, using 200 minutes on a 100 minute bundle can cost an extra £36 on the wrong deal! Interestingly, even The Phone Co-op's own "bundle" deals actually have a 20p run on rate, too, so erratic users may be best to stick to Pay As You Use.

simax

The reason run-on rates are higher is because they subsidise the inclusive minutes.

For example, if there was a sim only package at £10 that gives 500 mins (Tesco mobile is a classic example), and the MTR is 2.6p/min, then if all the 500 mins are used to call mobiles, then it'll cost Tesco Mobile £13, so they lose £3. That's not even factoring in the cost of texts etc.

So the run-on cost is higher to recoup the costs. Either that, or operators will give less minutes for the monthly fee.

Stuart_W

This is true, but it is the phone operators' choice to offer loss-leading bundles which rely on either significant under-use or significant over-limit use. If everyone used every single inclusive minute to call another network and not use a minute more then that network would be in big trouble, but the operators know that this won't ever happen.

Given that termination rates are actually going down, and at the same time contract run-on rates are going up, PAYG has become a much more attractive proposition for anyone with a varying call pattern.

Orange offer 100 minutes and unlimited texts ( via extras ) for a £10 top up on PAYG with just a 5p/min run-on rate. Their £10 SIM-only offering gives exactly the same but a 25p/min run on rate.

calmgirl

Thanks very much for the replies, took me a while to log in again for some reason