Is the OVP (Orange Value Promise) dead?

Stuart_W

DonnyDave wrote: »

I presume you meant to say "£24 a year".

Yes, well spotted. I meant £24/year, another way of looking at the £2/month charge.

I personally like the Phone Co-op £2/month deal, easy to think of it as 7p per day for 7p per minute, 7p per text and 7p per MB. Monthly billing works better for me as I will usually rarely use my phone, except the odd short call (confirming picking up/arrival times etc) but may occasionally need it a bit more for the odd weekend here and there and I don't want the faff of topping up or running out of credit. I also need call divert as a couple of locations I tend to be in occasionally have no mobile signal at all (any networks) but I do have access to a landline. Very few PAYG services offer this option (I think familymobile was the last one I knew of to offer this, but that may have changed, too).

If you end up needing more data, the £3/month 500MB data bundle is now available as an add-on the the £2/month deal, giving 500MB for £5/month in total, and calls and texts at 7p. I'm still a non-data user.

I been a big fan of the Phone Co-op for many years, so am still trying to get used to their new name The Co-operative Mobile! I feel I can trust them to provide a decent service and not rip me off as a low user.

DonnyDave

Stuart_W wrote: »

… I also need call divert as a couple of locations I tend to be in occasionally have no mobile signal at all (any networks) but I do have access to a landline. Very few PAYG services offer this option (I think familymobile was the last one I knew of to offer this, but that may have changed, too).

Ah, so Co-operative Mobile has call divert; I rang them the other day to ask and am awaiting an answer to this question. Call divert is available on OVP Virgin, as is call waiting and I am waiting to hear if Co-operative Mobile offers that as well.

I'm also interested to learn if Phone Co-op allows tethering to a computer, for connecting to the internet. I will post here when I get the answer.

Stuart_W

Call divert definitely works on phone co-op as I use it regularly. Tethering always used to be possible - but I'd wait for an up to date answer on this as this could have changed as it has with quite a few providers recently, and I've never used any data myself.

DonnyDave

Stuart_W wrote: »

Call divert definitely works on phone co-op as I use it regularly. Tethering always used to be possible - but I'd wait for an up to date answer on this as this could have changed as it has with quite a few providers recently, and I've never used any data myself.

Refer to Help and Support > Mobile > Mobile broadband under which there is the question If the service uses a SIM card, can I make calls too?

The answer is yes and that calls will be charged as Option One. The hyperlink for "Option One" is to the business Option One PDF, albeit that it doesn't work (I've raised this).

To me, this implies that it is a normal SIM as it allows calls. The two Options for business are the same as for personal, albeit that the former's are quoted exclusive of VAT.

The answer to the question What does it cost? says that there is a 12 month contract. I wonder if this bit is out-of-date.

This makes me wonder whether the mobile broadband and call SIMs are one and the same. The terms and conditions don't make a mention of "tethering".

Stuart_W

The mobile broadband pages may be a little out of date, or at least those prices have been overtaken by the recent changes to the mobile bundles since February. They offered mobile broadband several years ago before offering any data bundles on standard SIMs. (Mobile broadband used to be provided via 3, all new SIMs use EE so that may explain a price difference).

If you start on the main mobile page and click on the order button for The £2/month pay as you use option, on the order screen you can choose Option 1 or Option 2, and then add 500MB of data for £3/month extra or 1000MB of data for £5/month extra, which beats the previous prices for mobile broadband which don't seem to have changed. I'm pretty sure you can use the data how you like, but it is possible this could have changed recently and may explain the difference in price of the two otherwise identical services.

NFH

Has anyone spoken to Orange's retentions department and negotiated a better deal also with zero line rental?

My father is on Virgin OVP and I'm going to recommend that he switches to Giffgaff or even better to Toggle. I'm guessing that the majority of people on Virgin OVP don't use data, so Giffgaff's low data prices are largely irrelevant. Toggle charges 3p/min for outgoing calls, free incoming calls and 9p/text throughout Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.

Stuart_W

Toggle is powered by lycamobile. In the past some of their international SIMs have come with mobile numbers that are not inclusive from other mobiles. It's an international SIM that allows incoming calls from 20 different countries for free, but you are not necessarily calling a normal UK mobile number.

NFH

Stuart_W wrote: »

Toggle is powered by lycamobile. In the past some of their international SIMs have come with mobile numbers that are not inclusive from other mobiles. It's an international SIM that allows incoming calls from 20 different countries for free, but you are not necessarily calling a normal UK mobile number.

Lycamobile (and Toggle) do use normal UK mobile numbers. They used to run as a virtual network on T-Mobile, but I understand that when they switched to running on Vodafone, they took a huge block of phone numbers with them which caused a dispute with T-Mobile. Because of this historic dispute, EE customers on T-Mobile branded tariffs continue to be surcharged for calling this block of numbers.

DonnyDave

Stuart_W wrote: »

... In the past some of their international SIMs have come with mobile numbers that are not inclusive from other mobiles. ...

This point has been raised on SayNoTo0870. I made a posting recently in which I said that it appears that this may have been rectified.

Not sure whether Lycamobile numbers can be ported away, should a user wish to.

DonnyDave

NFH wrote: »

Lycamobile (and Toggle) do use normal UK mobile numbers. They used to run as a virtual network on T-Mobile, but I understand that when they switched to running on Vodafone, they took a huge block of phone numbers with them which caused a dispute with T-Mobile. Because of this historic dispute, EE customers on T-Mobile branded tariffs continue to be surcharged for calling this block of numbers.

Refer to this page on "EE Help" for T-Mobile Pay Monthly: The list of non-inclusive 07 mobile numbers after 1st February 2012 does not feature Lycamobile prefixes, but the one for before that date does.