Upgrade virgin...How do I get the best deal!

One

One

One

Soldato
Joined
24 Aug 2011
Posts
6,162
Location
ABQ, NM
Hello. Firstly I'll tell you my current situation:
  • HTC Desire S
  • ~£23 a month
  • T-Mobile
  • 300 texts/300mins/unlimited internet
  • Was a 2 year plan, nearly 2 years ago

It might be in my interest to bump up from 300 texts to unlimited, however, I also want to maximise the bang-for-buck I get on the upgraded phone. (I don't know how feasible it would be to accomplish both.)

I'm hesitant about getting another android phone because I feel like it will be the same phone as before, just with a different casing (please correct me if I've got this wrong).

So in a nutshell what do I need/want? Ideally I want something as capable as my current phone with at least 32GB(iPhone) or just some sort of SD slot(like my current phone). Needs all the bluetooth/wifi/gps stuff (i'm sure it's probably hard to find a phone that doesn't have all this now). Battery life needs to be at least a day, i.e. I take it off charge at 8am and it'll still be running at midnight for me to put back on charge.

I don't want to pay any more monthly than I already do and it would be nice to keep the price of the new phone between £200-£300.

I really have no idea how to go about getting a good deal, although I know not to simply select what I want online and that I'll have to phone someone.

Also t-mobile are asking me to upgrade to EE4g, is this something I should do?
 
You can get a Nexus 4 with like unlimited texts/data for 24 quid a month.

Just look at sites like buymobilephones.net

You're running an older version of android, and much older hardware, the Nexus 4 will be so much more fluid.
 
Hmm, okay, so I'm no longer worried about staying with android. What about transferring over my mobile number though, how difficult is this with contract phones? Also, are there any other sites like those?
 
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You could sync them all to your Google account, so when you sign in with your new phone it'll all transfer when it syncs.

I've only ever used buymobilephones.net, but there are some others, I'm sure people will pip up soon enough.
 
No I mean my mobile number. I've had the same one since 2004 and I don't fancy changing it any time soon.
 
Oh.
Don't you need to ask them for the PAC code or whatever to get them to change it?

Could always just make sure you got another T-Mobile sim and just ask them to change over the numbers, my brother did that.
 
Just ring up T-Mobile and ask for your PAC code. They may even ask "Why are you leaving, we've seen you've been with us a while. We can probably better their deal!" This has happened to me before, managed to get a good deal because they didn't want to lose a customer and we had been with them a while.
If you do switch, just ring up your new network and ask to switch number, provide your PAC code and they do the rest. :)
 
Well I will be phoning them up tonight after work to see what they can offer me although I might hold of a few days before I can get to an actual phone shop and see what these things look like in real life. Ok pretty much against the iPhone now on account of it being rubbish cost to value. The HTC one looks pretty sexy in black but I have no idea whether it's a brick like the Samsung phone or not.
 
Ask for a PAC, wait a week and they will likely phone back with a last chance offer. This is at least the policy and EE/Ora/T-mo and Voda, likely the others too.
 
And this would be a better deal than simply trying to get through to retentions via the upgrade people?
 
So the guy on t-mobile can get me the HTC One Mini on my existing plan with a £0.50p price drop per month and a £50 up front fee for the phone. Ultimately I don't know if the One Mini is anygood though. I had a look at the One in a shop today and it was blinking enormous so I was kind of put off by that. I did however feel like i was being 'sold' the One Mini which makes me wonder if there are perhaps better alternatives...

I hate these damn smart phones, why can't we all just go back to Nokia 3310s and PAYG :(
 
Kind of set on the HTC One now, I'm pretty sure I'll get used to the size, loads of people get on just fine with the samsung and the One is widely regarded as the best phone on the market by lots of people.

On the web I can get it at 500mins, 5000 texts and unlimited data on 3 including free cost for the phone all for £31 a month, so unless t-mobile can offer me a deal close to that i.e. stay on my current £21 a month and less than £240 phone charge then I'll ask them for my PAC code. Wait a week before I do anything to see if t-mobile decide that actually they can match the offer before I swap.
 
So the Indian guy couldn't do anything close to the deal above, asked for PAC code, apparently my contract runs out in 4 days :eek I didn't realise it was that close lol

Got put through to some guy in the UK, or at least a guy with a genuinely good British accent somewhere in the world :p

He asked me what the deal was, I said I would be happy if he could match it, he apparently couldn't come anywhere close, said it was a genuinly good deal, I said I might be swayed by a similar deal if it saves all the faff and hassle, closest he could get was either £42 keeping everything the same (that's £264 more overall) or a similar price however there would be a restriction on the internet (something I don't want) and I'd have to chip in close to £200 for the phone.

He said on the phone it's a genuinely good deal from the buymobiles.net website, he said that apparently they can only do these deals because they will pay three directly for any loss and this cash comes from profit they make on other phone deals. Apparently being able to do deals on all networks gives them greater flexibility which is why t-mobile wouldn't be able to get anywhere close to the deal.

The phone is £500 sim free or near enough so as doesn't matter, I'll be paying £31 a month for 24 months or £744 include any price inflation rise, call it £760, take away the £500 phone, that's £260, or about £11 a month for unlimited internet, 8.3 hours of minutes (i'm not a woman, that's a lifetime to me lol) and 5000 texts (according to t-mobile I average 200.

It's a shame there isn't a more cost effective way to match my usage but I guess that's how it goes with the top range phones. Short of buying the phone outright I suppose (i couldn't afford to do that though).

Now i'm going to stop double posting and leave this thread alone.
 
You got a decent deal and your story will help others so it's all good.

He's unfortunately telling a bit of a porky about the way 3rd parties work though :) Three pay the third parties, not they pay three. This is part of the SAC, the subscriber acquisition cost. the amount it costs three to recruit a customer (other parts to the SAC are marketing, offers etc...). The third parties will also be given extra incentives to shift certain models of phone (Samsung gave the best back in the day) or offer rebates to the phones4u of the world if they shift a certain amount.

So, let's pretend you are buymobilephones - three gives you £150 for a new customer so you're rich but if you offer part of that £150 back by making the contract cheaper, or perhaps throw in a console/cashback or negotiate a lower cost per customer but in return you get preferential contracts to sell... well you get the picture. Selling phones is extremely lucrative, cpw didn't become the monster they are by chance :(
 
Myshra said:
You got a decent deal and your story will help others so it's all good.

He's unfortunately telling a bit of a porky about the way 3rd parties work though :) Three pay the third parties, not they pay three. This is part of the SAC, the subscriber acquisition cost. the amount it costs three to recruit a customer (other parts to the SAC are marketing, offers etc...). The third parties will also be given extra incentives to shift certain models of phone (Samsung gave the best back in the day) or offer rebates to the phones4u of the world if they shift a certain amount.

So, let's pretend you are buymobilephones - three gives you £150 for a new customer so you're rich but if you offer part of that £150 back by making the contract cheaper, or perhaps throw in a console/cashback or negotiate a lower cost per customer but in return you get preferential contracts to sell... well you get the picture. Selling phones is extremely lucrative, cpw didn't become the monster they are by chance :(
Click to expand...

+1
 
Just a wee update. I got the phone at half 9 this morning although I was at work until 5. Once i got it in opened the package and the phone is simply awesome. I had t-mobile try and phone me at several points throughout the day, although not lunch time for whatever reason. The guy at the other end said he would try and get the cost down further. He did succeed in doing this but it was still no way near what I wanted. The closest he could do was £32 a month (£24 more already), the mins was 5000 (overkill for me) and unlimited texts (although good, I still don't see me doing more than 5000 {i average <300}) but the bad bits were 1Gb data limit and a £80 charge for the phone so ultimately I got the best deal. In hindsight I probably should have waited for this call rather than jumping in on the online deal but it worked out in the end and I'm over £100 better off by starting a brand new contract than trying to haggle my existing provider.

I've given three my PAC code so that should cross over in the next few days. When I thought the one might be a little big, it makes up for it by have a bloody excel screen that is huge. Contradictory I know, but it makes sense to me :p
 
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