How Long before I can become a new customer of O2

OWT_FOR_NOWT

My contract with O2 is ending in June. I took it out with e2save where I get 11 months free line rental (through cashbacks) on a 12 month contract and since I went via quidco then its 12 months free. The problem is I would like to do the same thing again but most importantly keep my mobile phone number but it seems that only O2 are offering these deals where as before all the networks were and for the past 5 years i have ported my number from one network to another and always had a new phone and 12 months free.

Does anyone know if I can get around this? The only thing that I can think of is to join virgin which is not on a contract and keep my existing phone and number. Since I don't want to pay virgin for ever I was wondering how long must I wait before I can join O2 again as a new customer and port my number back from virgin.

Quentin

You can ask for a pac as soon as the first one has completed.

OWT_FOR_NOWT

So if I port my number from O2 to virgin i can then ask virgin for a pac and move back to O2 straight away. I thought there was someting in the t&c's that prevented you from doing this.

nellytheelephant

I think there is a minimum spend with Virgin for them to give you the PAC... Or I might be making that up! It was either the PAC or to unlock the phone when I did it! How helpful of me... xx

thor

Could you not port a number to a non O2 payg sim(there are plenty of free ones around) and then port back to the new O2 contract?

Anon

I understand that Virgin have a £30 minimum spend before letting you have a PAC (so not much use if you are using it as a stop off en-route to your new contract!). I have just recently used Orange to get my number off a 3 contract and just finished transferring the number back to 3 - it took slightly longer than planned as Orange insist on sending out the PAC by post (and 12 days later it hadn't arrived! When I followed up it appears someone hadn't processed it properly). Due to a recent change, it should take 2 business days to transfer from one network to another, therefore can be completed within a week rather than 2 weeks that it used to take.

As an aside, and definitely worth checking - but I think there has been a change at e2save - they used to be o2 CPW contracts (CPW managed the o2 contract). However, all their new contracts are now o2 direct - as a result, I understand that you could legitimately port your number from o2 CPW to o2. That said, e2save have been developing a poor reputation recently (see other threads) so read up before committing yourself ...

Good luck
Anon