02 Refresh

Saw this last week, looking at this only if my 30% discount applies to it as well as the 'normal' pay monthly tariffs.

Good idea, as I would have done this with my ip4 ages ago.
 
I'm not sure o2 get decent internet speeds where I live though, well going by my girlfriends speed compared to Orange.

This could definitely sway me when my contract finishes with Orange though, finally something to look forward to!
 
djcj said:
Vodafone started doing this recently too, called Vodafone red hot
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That's a leasing agreememt and is a pretty rubbish way of borrowing a phone for 12 months :p.

I'm quite interested in O2 Refresh, it looks to be the equivalent of buying a phone sim free and whacking it on an interest free credit card. Although like I mentioned earlier you can currently find bargain "traditional" deals that only just cover the sim free price of the phone, essentially making the tariff free or really cheap and I guess these will eventually die off.

Another thing I've thought of, with O2 Refresh are you not also relying on your phone being worth a fair amount via recycling or selling it used? I wonder if more people selling their phones earlier might have an effect on used phone prices? Probably won't but still makes you wonder how this might change everything :p

Myshra, do you think Vodafone would do something similar?
 
I had a proper look into this yesterday, and it actually looks pretty good.

Usually if you wanted to upgrade early, you'd have to pay off the whole contract first. Now, you can pay off a percentage that covers the cost of the phone, and carry on with your existing contract. Even if they decide to slap on another 24 months when you do upgrade (which I suspect they do), I think it's way better than the older tariff system.

Also, the way they laid out the price plans means you can play around with the sliders to figure out the best overall phone cost for you.

P.s. being a new system, they may make some mistakes with their pricings at times. Keep a look out for bargains!
 
dasyad said:
Myshra, do you think Vodafone would do something similar?
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It's a retention mechanism for high values who only get phones from the shop, it's basically cash in hand for telcos and makes retention lockin easy so it's likely all will do it in time (other countries have had this for a while for what it's worth).

If we look at this from a numbers perspective, a phone a year is now something you can really only afford if you make a fairly decent amount so by offering it on credit you widen this to include people who have less disposable income. It also drops the wait barrier - turns out people are turning over at 18 months just to get a new iPhone and ditching the last 6 as effective writeoff. This is MONUMENTALLY stupid consumer behaviour but it makes the telcos money - if they can retain that is...

I suspect O2 did this first because they tried it out in.... I want to say Spain first but I can't remember if that's right. It was a South Europe trouble zone country and it did fairly OK with the target market (Young Professional is the target for the product, 25-40 mostly males) so they just copied it here.

So I guess the obvious question is the worth of it and I guess if you desire the phone enough as an upgrade then yes but with the lockin etc... I'm pretty sure I could do the cost out of contract for 2 phones / 2 years better than a network could do and save about 25-35% with cash upfront. But obviously not many people do have the cash upfront (and they arn't the target really, you'd already do this if you had the cash) so to them this is likely the better option.

Voda red hot I refuse to comment on, let's leave it at that :)
 
Very clever by o2. Just been in and the friends and family discounts are only applied to the airtime part of the bill, not the entire bill. So you get less discount overall.
 
4p said:
Very clever by o2. Just been in and the friends and family discounts are only applied to the airtime part of the bill, not the entire bill. So you get less discount overall.
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Was just about to reply and tell you hehe :)

Shame like because when we in store first heard about Refresh it was stated that the friends and family discount would be 50% on the airtime agreement but this was changed to 30% the day before it came out.
 
dasyad said:
Another thing I've thought of, with O2 Refresh are you not also relying on your phone being worth a fair amount via recycling or selling it used? I wonder if more people selling their phones earlier might have an effect on used phone prices?
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Unless phones start doing something new and different, I can see a situation in a few years where people start losing interent in upgrading their phones and then gradually, a situation where households have a drawer stuffed full of used phones that are almost as good (in real terms) as a new £500 phone. There will come a point where people won't be excitied about upgrading a 2.2ghz phone for a 2.8ghz one.
 
Myshra said:
I suspect O2 did this first because they tried it out in.... I want to say Spain first but I can't remember if that's right. It was a South Europe trouble zone country and it did fairly OK with the target market (Young Professional is the target for the product, 25-40 mostly males) so they just copied it here.
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They do it in Germany where it makes up the majority (over 95%) of postpay customers. So it's done better than 'fairly OK' there in a similar market to the UK. ;)
 
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Myshra said:
It's a retention mechanism for high values who only get phones from the shop, it's basically cash in hand for telcos and makes retention lockin easy so it's likely all will do it in time (other countries have had this for a while for what it's worth).

If we look at this from a numbers perspective, a phone a year is now something you can really only afford if you make a fairly decent amount so by offering it on credit you widen this to include people who have less disposable income. It also drops the wait barrier - turns out people are turning over at 18 months just to get a new iPhone and ditching the last 6 as effective writeoff. This is MONUMENTALLY stupid consumer behaviour but it makes the telcos money - if they can retain that is...

I suspect O2 did this first because they tried it out in.... I want to say Spain first but I can't remember if that's right. It was a South Europe trouble zone country and it did fairly OK with the target market (Young Professional is the target for the product, 25-40 mostly males) so they just copied it here.

So I guess the obvious question is the worth of it and I guess if you desire the phone enough as an upgrade then yes but with the lockin etc... I'm pretty sure I could do the cost out of contract for 2 phones / 2 years better than a network could do and save about 25-35% with cash upfront. But obviously not many people do have the cash upfront (and they arn't the target really, you'd already do this if you had the cash) so to them this is likely the better option.

Voda red hot I refuse to comment on, let's leave it at that :)
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Thanks for the insight :)

Doesn't the fact that people are turning over on 18 months show that people don't want to be tied in for 24 months though?

mame said:
Unless phones start doing something new and different, I can see a situation in a few years where people start losing interent in upgrading their phones and then gradually, a situation where households have a drawer stuffed full of used phones that are almost as good (in real terms) as a new £500 phone. There will come a point where people won't be excitied about upgrading a 2.2ghz phone for a 2.8ghz one.
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We've been spoilt in recent years where things have moved so fast, you could also argue that early smart phones were really underpowered for what they were needing to do. Only natural that we might experience a slow down over the next few years.
 
dasyad said:
Doesn't the fact that people are turning over on 18 months show that people don't want to be tied in for 24 months though?
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Consumers want the best deal, that doesn't mean networks will offer unprofitable ones ;)
It might be worth noting the below which I will now shamelessly steal from a report I have on it:
Further interviews with O2 have confirmed another important feature of O2 Refresh, specifically that there is no charge for cancelling the Airtime Plan, as long as the Phone Plan has been paid off. This means that a customer who pays the full balance on the phone can cancel their airtime contract without being charged, even if there are, for example, 12 months left on the contract. This model gives the customer more flexibility than traditional contract models, and could potentially change the relationship between operators and customers.
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Which they could communicate a bit better. This is basically SIMO + Handset on credit.
 
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