Do not want to pay to upgrade my phone

bellaboo86

Hi,
I'm a Orange mobile customer who is looking to upgrade my mobile phone. My old phone has broken and Orange wanted to charge £125 to fix. Pfft! No way am I paying that. Anyway I rang to enquire about an early upgrade and they want to charge me either £93 if I stay on Orange or £81 if I transfer to EE. Naturally as a money saver I don't want to pay this. Does anybody know of anyways round this?
Thanks!

OriolaW

Do you not have insurance?

My Samsung 3 developed a fault not due to myself and my £25 fee to fix was waived by Orange. How is your phone 'broken'?

I however have insurance.

Dogger69

Plus how early an upgrade is it, and what phone/ tariff do you want?

NFH

bellaboo86 wrote: »

My old phone has broken

Did you break it or has it developed a fault? If it's the latter, you could require Orange to replace or repair it free of charge under Section 11N of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982.

reehsetin

sounds they've advised an "Early Upgrade" which is 33% discount of the remaining line rental when moving to ee or 25% staying on orange, then upgrading to get a new handset (potentially 'free' handset depending on the phone.

Other option is buy a cheap orange phone to put your sim in until the end of your contract and then upgrade for free

I'm in the same position at the mo, £130 to repair my phone via samsung or £140 to Early Upgrade.

reehsetin

OriolaW wrote: »

Do you not have insurance?

My Samsung 3 developed a fault not due to myself and my £25 fee to fix was waived by Orange. How is your phone 'broken'?

I however have insurance.

Assuming Orange Care (insurance) - Minimum £6 per month, times 24 months still is £144, still would be cheaper to pay to have the phone repaired or Early Upgrade.
Unless you make use of it regularly, I can't see why it would be useful

ZhugeEX

As NFH said, If you broke it then the charge is fair but if not then you could try a claim to get Orange to fix it for free.

Also i'm not familiar with what Orange can do in their early upgrade dept. How much time do you have left till the end of your contract? If say in the last 2 months it may be possible to get the fee waived through goodwill but you'll have to be really lucky there.

For when you do upgrade it might be worth looking into getting insurance for the phone. It can be cheap if you already have a premium account through your bank. Or even doing away with long term contracts and going on a sim only by buying the phone outright. Therefore you can upgrade onto a contract any time you want if you break/lose the phone/can't get a replacement.

oopsadaisydoddle

NFH wrote: »

Did you break it or has it developed a fault? If it's the latter, you could require Orange to replace or repair it free of charge under Section 11N of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982.

But under the Sale of Goods Act 1979, section 48 states:

Section 48 of the Sales of Goods Act 1979 (SOGA) clearly explains that should a device or purchase be deemed as faulty within 6 months of purchase the assumption is that it was inherently faulty and therefore must be remedied by the seller by way of repair, replacement, refund or partial. After six months, the burden of proof switches to the buyer and it is they who must then show a fault is due to some inherent problem. OP would need to get an independent report to prove it before he could pursue this.

Also, did the phone come directy from Orange in the first place? Because if it came from for e.g. P4U or CPW, this would need to be directed at them.

Also, the early upgrade fee is there because you haven't completed the original minimum term contract you agreed to. There is no way of getting around this. As PP said, the early upgrade fee is reduced in comparison to the line rental to pay.

bellaboo86

The charging component on the phone wouldn't charge. They said I was out of warranty as I have had the phone for 16 months. However this is not the case my original phone stopped working after two months and so they replaced it with a new one. the upgrade fee is for the line rental and I have approximately 4 months to go until the end of my contract. I have a phone I can use but like most people I use it for more than just calls and texts.

ZhugeEX

bellaboo86 wrote: »

The charging component on the phone wouldn't charge. They said I was out of warranty as I have had the phone for 16 months. However this is not the case my original phone stopped working after two months and so they replaced it with a new one. the upgrade fee is for the line rental and I have approximately 4 months to go until the end of my contract. I have a phone I can use but like most people I use it for more than just calls and texts.

What phone was it? You say your original phone got a replacement? So is this the replacement phone you're talking about?

As far as i'm aware you should have a 24 month warranty if the phone was purchased from Orange on contract and was not an iPhone/LG phone(probably others)

But i need a bit more information on your exact purchase date (or month) and how long you've had that exact handset for.

bellaboo86

It was a blackberry torch purchased from Orange. It was replaced like for like. I would say that I've had the second phone 14/ 15 months.