Orange Retention Offers

dellaclearing

This might be an odd question, or maybe someone has experience of this...

But can you haggle a contract from another network either in-store, online or over the phone?
Lets say I go into town tomorrow and head to carphone warehouse or T-Mobile or wherever, tell them my current contract is up and ask if they can match or even beat the offer Orange have made me? Am I likely to get laughed out of the shop? Do the stores or even customer services have the power to jig the prices for new customers as well as those they need to retain?

I'm not sure I've actually got the confidence to actually try this, I'm not really that confrontational and think it would take a lot of confidence and persuasive argument skills to pull this off!
Failing that I could always write a long letter of complaint to Orange CS for the hassle they gave me this week and see if they'd like to turn the deal up a notch to keep my custom.

sassy_one

Crazy_Jamie wrote: »

Haven't been in this thread in a while.

Anyway, to keep the barometer ticking over, I got the following retention deal for my fiancee this week:

200 minutes
400 texts
Unlimited landline calls
Unlimited internet
Nokia 6303i Classic

£10 a month for 24 months.

She was happy with that, as indeed was I. For information purposes, she had been on £10 a month with 100 minutes and unlimited texts for 24 months prior to that, so this is a significant step up.

Now I need to get something similar when I go back to retentions for me in October......

Not such a great deal though, she's lost unlimited free texts, which are only £5 on pay as you go!

sassy_one

dellaclearing wrote: »

This might be an odd question, or maybe someone has experience of this...

But can you haggle a contract from another network either in-store, online or over the phone?
Lets say I go into town tomorrow and head to carphone warehouse or T-Mobile or wherever, tell them my current contract is up and ask if they can match or even beat the offer Orange have made me? Am I likely to get laughed out of the shop? Do the stores or even customer services have the power to jig the prices for new customers as well as those they need to retain?

I'm not sure I've actually got the confidence to actually try this, I'm not really that confrontational and think it would take a lot of confidence and persuasive argument skills to pull this off!
Failing that I could always write a long letter of complaint to Orange CS for the hassle they gave me this week and see if they'd like to turn the deal up a notch to keep my custom.

Possible but avoid the Carphone Warehouse, please, no seriously, please and don't mention there vein name again :cool:

If you try Phones4u, they will get a you a good deal, don't take the first offer they give you, keep pushing for a better deal, if you can't walk away, I bet someone calls you by the end of the week and offers you a even better deal

sassy_one

dellaclearing wrote: »

The call I made today took just over 45 minutes! My neck was starting to hurt from holding the phone up to my ear with my shoulder because I was at work at the time and needed both hands free! I also had to dodge a few Boss-Attacks during the call as well!

Glad to hear you still did your work and weren't on Facebook

dellaclearing

sassy-one wrote: »

Possible but avoid the Carphone Warehouse, please, no seriously, please and don't mention there vein name again :cool:

Go on then, spill the beans! What happened with CPW that was so bad?!! I've never bought a phone /contract from a 3rd party provider before so don't really know what to expect. Always got my phones direct from the network.

sassy-one wrote: »

If you try Phones4u, they will get a you a good deal, don't take the first offer they give you, keep pushing for a better deal, if you can't walk away, I bet someone calls you by the end of the week and offers you a even better deal

Do you have actual experience of this? Sounds promising but do you have to give them all your details just to check what they're willing to offer? How else would they call you back? Also, is there any way they can verify what you've been offered? Cos else I could make up anything! "Orange offered me a free Desire with unlimited calls, texts and internet for a tenner a year. Can you beat that?"

sassy-one wrote: »

Glad to hear you still did your work and weren't on Facebook

No time to skive on Facebook during surgery I'm afraid!:D

adamnsu

Yet again

I have had a Corporate Staff 10% Disc on my bill, (out of contract and planning to upgrade 8GB 3GS iphone), do you think this will stay once I upgrade??

Many thanks

moo842

just got this deal from orange
600mins
unlimited l/line calls
1000texts
500mb data
for £15pm
and the vivaz for £100, we were offered the x10 mini for free but hubby really wanted this phone!!

naski666

Question (can't be found from searching unless I've made a made a mess of searching, and if this is the case I apologise).

I was in contract with orange, got an exceptionally good deal which expired. When I went to retentions they had nothing available to them to play with (expected) but I do like orange. Therefore I didn't take any deal and let the contract expire and the discounts (15 off a month and additional 10% discount) went.

Now I'm 'off-contract' and paying ~£20 a month with orange how long should I wait until the retention people will be able to offer me a good deal again?

Cheers

Nask

Aye_Up

adamnsu wrote: »

Yet again

I have had a Corporate Staff 10% Disc on my bill, (out of contract and planning to upgrade 8GB 3GS iphone), do you think this will stay once I upgrade??

Many thanks

In short no!

RandoMiser

naski666 wrote: »

Question (can't be found from searching unless I've made a made a mess of searching, and if this is the case I apologise).

I was in contract with orange, got an exceptionally good deal which expired. When I went to retentions they had nothing available to them to play with (expected) but I do like orange. Therefore I didn't take any deal and let the contract expire and the discounts (15 off a month and additional 10% discount) went.

Now I'm 'off-contract' and paying ~£20 a month with orange how long should I wait until the retention people will be able to offer me a good deal again?

Cheers

Nask

Hi Naski,

I'm with Orange and have been for about 8 years now. I always ask to speak to retentions too and have always been offered a good deal on the basis that I threaten to leave otherwise.

On a couple of occasions I hit a brick wall with an unhelpful rep so I refused to upgrade and then called back later or the following day. It really is down to who you get on the other end of the line.

If you're still not getting much luck with them, ask why. I did on one occasion a couple of upgrades ago and it helped me understand why they weren't offering me such a good deal. It all hangs on how much money you have spent with them above your monthly contract amount. If you rarely go over your monthly amount, you'll have a more difficult upgrade than if you've gone over. In addition, the months that they scrutnise closest, from what I was told, are the 3-4 months closest to your upgrade date.

An additional point: If you don't want/need a new phone, upgrade your tariff on that basis; you're likely to be offered a very good deal.

From my experience though, the best value deals are on the 18 month contracts - they give a decent trade off between length of contract and amount of minutes/texts/MB etc that you are offered.

My last upgrade was to an HTC Desire BTW. Does everything I need it to and more.


Hope you get what you want.