Buying a phone via 3rd party site

[NotAGolf]

I'm with EE and am looking to upgrade. I jumped on a live chat today as their offers are abysmal compared to the competition so was seeing if they could offer anything better.

After a bit of back and forth, they asked me where I was getting quotes from. Here is their response to me after mentioning it was AffordableMobiles:

11:52, Jul 10 - Ankit:
Thank you for sharing the link. I would like you to understand that Affordable Mobiles, Uswitch and many more are the third parties are not the service providers of UK, we really do not match the deal with them. I understand that the prices they are offering are really tempting and I would also think twice before not taking that deal with them, but they do not have to manage the network. They get the handset outright and sell on commission basis. This is why the deal they offer are at the cheapest rate.

Third party companies source and supply their own phones (not always from the manufacturer directly) and sell it at a price that will make them enough commission to cover the cost of the phone and a small profit.

We don't price match third party offers for customers for many reasons, they cannot match our services, warranty or speeds. The average speed you will get over a third party provider will be 15.6 mbps where as EE offers you a100mbps speed which is unmatchable.

Third party companies often strip away inclusive services so you lose access to things like your device warranty for example. If the phone develops a fault the network would not repair or replace that handset as it was not provided by them.

Not just EE, you can check any other network provider's official website and you will find that the price of a third party is the cheapest of all, and I have shared all the reasons for their cheapest price above.

So the average speed thing sounds like ******* figures, but I get that other networks may be slower than EE. That's fine, speed isn't a big deal to me.

The 'cannot match our services' just sounds like an incredible vague term that probably covers a service I do not want/care about.

The warranty one is an interesting one though. As the product is the same, is the warranty not the same? I get that I'd have to go through AffordableMobiles rather than direct with EE, so that might be a bit more hassle, but is the level of coverage the same?

I guess in short I'm wondering if there's any risk to going through a reputable third-party seller?

 

[biron_w]

All of that sounds like a load of nonsense and just scare tactics to try and get you to buy a phone from them. If you are on the EE network with an EE SIM then they can't give you slower speeds just because you bought it from a third party vendor. That would be in breach of trading standards.

 

[Orcvader]

As above, I'm with EE now, always bought my phone elsewhere and have an no issues at all. Everything works, full speed, WiFi calling, etc. Warranty is also usually fine as long as the company is decent, by law they have to provide at least a minimum of 2 years. I have had no problems with Amazon for example, they replaced the phone quick.

 

[neoboy]

Load of nonsense, I probably bought once directly from a network in last 10 years as resellers beat them on price almost all the time.

Network will be exactly the same as buying directly and any phone manufacturer will accept receipt from a reseller for warranty purposes without any issues. Their entire business model is basically people either not knowing or being too lazy to check out uSwitch etc

 

[Kill_Phil]

@NotAGolf as above just scare tactics. Have bought my last 3 contracts from such places. Heck one of the bigger ones is even owned by ao.com so all legit

 

[Jim99]

It's true that it is different to taking out a contract directly with a network. Generally they're sourcing well priced phones, re-selling you a contract from a network and then potentially sharing some of the commission they get with you to bring the price down.

EE decided a year or two ago that they didn't want to play that game any more, so they've stopped doing those kinds of deals with the resellers. As they mention in the chat, they've started doing things like creating maximum download speeds that are different per contract to try to split things down even more and encourage you to go direct.

I've always used those sites, though, and as much as people working at the networks used to moan, they were fine. Now that EE don't do them, though, and they're the only network that serves my area properly, I've had to revert to going to EE direct. On the plus side, when I last asked for a PAC (I'd decided to move over to Plusnet to save cash) a relationship manager got in touch, and now I can just email him when I need a new deal or a change, and he tends to get me better deals than I can get elsewhere.