Affordable Mobile: Increasing contract price?

Sponge

My wife has just had an interesting coversation with Three regarding extending her contract and getting a new phone. I found a deal for her from AM for a Lumia 920, on Orange for £26pm and [STRIKE]£39.99 for the[/STRIKE] a free handset (sorry, I got my deals mixed up: AM is free, buymobilephones is £39.99).

Three couldn't get anywhere near this price and then started to really slag AM off. The main thrust of their winge was that AM will not be able to provide the 920 for that price and soon after taking our order, they would increase the monthly price and we will not be able to do anything about it. Three said AM don't provide any contract (it's all done online) and therefore there'll be nothing we can do to combat this price hike. :huh:

Three said we should check out the internet forums, especially the Which? forum.

Anyway, I came here first. :money:

It all sounds like BS to me. I'm sure there are people out there that have had bad experiences; every company suffers bad cs at some point. But to suggest AM lie with low prices to get a sale and then increase those prices afterwards is quite a serious accusation in my book.

ZhugeEX

Three's call centres have been known to say things like this to their customers.

Basically they're trying to get you to sign up with Three again (naturally) and so are going to tell you anything to stop you from leaving.

Affordable mobiles are a third party. They sell you the phone and contract. But all your airtime is with Orange and so the actual contract is with them. Now Orange can rise your price once in a 12 month period (just like any mobile company can and have done in the past) but this will only be around 3%.

So yes, they can raise the price, as can three.

If anything goes wrong with the handset in the first 28 days then you have to deal with affordable mobile which aren't the best company in the world but basically as long as you don't get a faulty phone you'll have no problems with them.

All in all the deal from AM is better and it works out cheaper to go with them anyway. Just check Orange signal in your area first.