02 Retentions thread 2

mike_the_bike_2

Was with o2 for a number of years..In fact the whole family was and we had their home phone and broadband too at a couple of properties.

When I bought a smart phone I asked them to give me a little bit of data for internet use as part of my sim card deal. They would not and so I started looking elsewhere.

We eventually moved the lot to Tesco Sim card only and the home phone and broadband went to Plusnet saving a few hundred quid overall

Customer service at o2 is pretty good but they are not at all competitive on price

My experience of customer retentions was they are obviously very limited by the powers above at what they can offer.

rabialiones

hi, from past experience 02 dont usually give retention deals , so i thought of giving them one last try before using my pac.
they offered me htc desire c, with 300 m, unlim texts and 250mg data. for £12 month oh and unlimited landlines.
this was previouisly sim only without data for £10 month

please advise if this is ok deal , or are there better ones out there

jb66

no its crap, that same phone is cheaper at tesco mobile and talkmobile

adamc260

mike_the_bike wrote: »

Customer service at o2 is pretty good but they are not at all competitive on price

o2 are very expensive indeed, makes no sense really when you can go to Tesco/Giffgaff and get the same 'coverage' but for far less. I guess they just make lots of money out of the people who stay with them directly.

phillw

starving_artist wrote: »

I've been paying £5.50 a month for the last 12 months (£10.50 simplicity + £5 discount) which was due to end this month. Called this morning and was offered 24 months on simplicity £11.00 contract BUT with minutes upped to 250 a month, unlimited txts and 100mb data. Best of all I ALSO get £150 credited to my account so over 2 years I'm paying the equivalent of £4.75 a month!!! Fantastic! :money:

I was on the 10.50 simplicity deal with £5 a month "loyalty discount". However I was getting 300 any-network mins & unlimited texts & the discount was actually a credit for taking off the free o2 to o2 & landline calls. I was also paying an extra £3 a month for the basic data (100mb), making the total £8.50.

I was not only hit by the price rise, but also by the loyalty discount running out. Because it ran out part way through last month, instead of only giving me the pro-rata discount last month they gave me the full discount and then charged me for the extra discount I wasn't supposed to get. So my bill rocketed this month. After checking out what was going on with customer services I then started looking around at some deals.

I didn't bother going through to upgrades first, I dialled 202 and pressed the numbers to say I was thinking of leaving. I had to wait ages on hold, they probably have a lot of people leaving right now. I didn't mind, I put it on speaker phone and listened to the free music while I was doing other things.

I told them I was thinking of moving to giffgaff or vodaphone, so wanted to know what they could do to beat their deal or what I would need to do to port my number.

They told me about the £11 a month deal, but I told them that this was more than the price the other two were offering. So he said he'd try to do it as a re-sign for 24 months & he'd have a look at what he could offer me.

Deal 1 was 250 minutes, unlimited texts, 100mb of data + £150 of accessories for £10 a month (inc vat). I asked what they were and it was things like car phone chargers or speakers etc. I said I didn't need those and would rather have the cash. He suggested ebaying them & I told him I have plenty to sell on ebay already as I'm a recovering hoarder. I said as it was the same price as giff gaff and they offer more data and no tie in, that if they couldn't do anything to drop the price then I would think about it and call back.

Deal 2 was the same mins/data/text but with some cheap nokia for £8 a month. I can't remember what I said at this point to make him offer me Deal 3, I didn't jump on the offer but I didn't just say no or say I'd phone back either. He did mention that I could sell it as well, I said I'd probably just give it away.

Deal 3 was again the same mins/data/text with the £150 credit on the bill plus unlimited land line calls for £10 a month. I could have tried for more at this point, but I felt this was a better deal than I'd get by switching. It was also basically the same as the original deal with my suggestion of "I'd rather have the money". He did explain that I wouldn't get the money, but it would just credit my account, but I'm more than ok with that.

So if this actually comes off (and they don't raise their prices) I will be paying the equivalent of 3.75 a month for the next two years. On an o2 PAYG tariff this would only buy me 600 minutes, no texts and no data.

I am a very low user of mins, texts & data at the moment though. I'm probably using a 1/3 of my mins and data, which does seem to make a difference to the deals they offer. They might calculate how much you paid in the previous year minus how much you cost them, to work out what deals they can give you in the next year (at least what he said when he looked at my bills gave me that impression).

p.s. I wish I'd told him about the Tesco tariff, I know he probably knows about it already but they will be told to wait for the customer to bring up deals before trying to match them. I'm not convinced it would have given me a better deal in the end but I'll never know now.

p.p.s Bringing up other deals in a Virgin Media store definitely makes a difference, as I'd been haggling for a while when I brought an online deal up and he blatantly said "oh, now you said that I can offer you this deal". Up until that point I think he saw his commission floating away because I wasn't biting, it made him really excited that I'd mentioned it.

edit: The upgrade has come through. It is O2 50 24 months for £11 a month with the following boltons: unlimited land line calls, 200 extra minutes, 100mb uk data and £-1 loyalty bonus. The £150 credit hasn't appeared yet, but I've had confirmation for an order for "1 50M 24M 100MB L1 handset BILL CREDIT" & they say they will let me know when it's processed.

One thing I've noticed is that O2 seem to have stopped offering unlimited O2 to O2 calls on simplicity, I didn't have them last year because they allowed me to be paid to take them off because I was loyal :-). So be careful if you upgrade to one of the new tariffs, it may seem like a better deal because of the headline totals but you may get less minutes for free than you did before.

edit again: "Upgrade bill credit -125.00" has appeared on my "other bills & credits" page. This would appear to be vat exclusive, it hasn't shown up in my balance yet, so if it doesn't get put through as 150 pounds then I'll have to complain.

edit no 3: Also due to me changing my tarrif the day before my next billing period, they removed the minutes I had left from last month and for today I was given 1/30th of my 250 minute allowance. I complained for being charged for calls when I haven't gone anywhere near my last month allowance and they've said they are going to credit me for the two calls.

onesteptoofar

after being with o2 for years i finally went for an upgrade (have been due an upgrade since 2008 but for one reason or another never went for one)
was on £24pm with an old ericcson 600mins, 600texts after the price hike.

after 4-5 calls i have accepted:
iphone4, no handset cost, 600mins any network, unlimited o2 to o2 calls, unlimited texts, 750mg data, £24 credit to account. £22pm (split £10 and £12 on refresh deal), 24months

not brilliant but ok considering my credit rating is non-existent. £504 total cost is acceptable to save hassle to change network (other networks coverage is awful where i am)

minislim

get out while you still can! O2 have joined the band of sneaky networks with mid price rises which when you challenge them under their own terms and conditions they still reject your claim.

if they cannot even stick to their own rules then they like orange and vodaphone cannot be trusted.

if you're on O2 currently the best alternative options are Giffgaff or tesco.
both run on the O2 network. O2 say that these companys play second fiddle to their main network. this is a blatant lie as when the O2 network crashed last year tesco mobile actually didnt have as many problems.

antw23uk

Hi guys and girls,

I am currently paying £36.88 per month for unlimited calls/ Text and 1GB of Data for my old iPhone and need to get this down and hopefully with an upgrade at the same time.

I chatted to O2 and the long and short of it is they offered me a iPhone 4 free with 600 minutes, Unlimited texts and 750 mb of data (apparently my average used is 114 minutes + 296 text + 54 mb of data) for £27 per month.

Does this sound a good deal? I've been with o2 since they were called Cellnet (= a very long time!!) but don't really mind dropping them and going elsewhere but I'm just not very good at finding decent deals without worrying there are hidden extras I'm going to get stung with!

Ideally I want to stay with an iPhone and go to the iPhone4 but really could do with bringing my monthly bill down to £25 ... which he was having none of, lol :mad:

Any help and advice for this phone tarrif phobic would be much appreciated

I_luv_cats

Have you looked around at other networks / network resellers?

@ my last renewal I found a deal on the Tesco Mobile website for Tmobile, managed to get retentions to match it after requesting my pac code.

19lottie82

No.

Try mobiles . co . uk for the best deals.

They are offering a 8gb iphone 4 with 600 mins / 750 mb dad and texts for £15.58 a month

However, the iphone 4 is old hat now, it is 2 models behind the current iphone, and this will soon be 3 models when the 5s is released.
By the time you near the end of your 24 month contract, you may find your phone is incompatible with a lot of apple updates and apps.

I’d look for an iphone 4s or 5. If you search the site above or affordable mobiles dot co dot uk, you should find something within your budget.