Help sort my mobile life out please!

_PD_ · 10 Oct 2007 at 10:42

OK, I have a slightly broken (but useable) K800i on Orange, in an 18 month contract which ends March 5th 2008. They say I can request an upgrade on 6th December.

I currently get 500 mins and 500 texts.

My gf is at uni elsewhere and it's taking me about 50 minutes/day or more phoning her. She's on 02.

We're both running out of minutes, and need to do something, fast.

My options, as I see it, are:

Get her an Orange PAYG phone and add it to my magic numbers - though this means adding another 12 months to my contract.

Get myself a contract phone on 02 - I was planning to do this anyway when the new N95 8Gb comes out next month. Would run it alongside my Orange phone until that expires in March.

Get myself an 02 PAYG phone, and a sim-only contract deal to last until I get the N95 as above. Use the free 02 minutes to call her.

Use Skype.

Anything else I can do? Can I get O2 to buy me out of my Orange contract (currently £145)?

I rang Orange and some incomprehensible woman muttered something about me being able to get a deal with free 02 minutes from them on 6th December? Is she just trying to keep me on board? Or can they really do that?

Also, when the N95 8Gb comes out, whats the cost going to be on a £35/month contract? If it's going to be £199 for the phone, I won't bother...

Cheers!

Cobra

Spamalot · 10 Oct 2007 at 12:33

Cobra said:
Use Skype.

Or you could do what I should have done and be single.

Bengaboy · 10 Oct 2007 at 12:46

If you go with vodafone with an 18 month contract , you get a thing called stop the clock.

Stop the clock is a thing where after 6pm and weekends (basically off peak times) you use 3 mins of your contract mins and after that you get up to 57 mins free.

So basically you call for an hour and only use 3 mins of your contract.

After the 60 mins, it wont do a stop the clock thing again. So just hang up and ring back to start another stop the clock thing. 2 hours for 6 mins of your mins is brilliant and from what i read would be perfect for you

Participant · 10 Oct 2007 at 13:08

All this for a fanny. Fannies aren't worth it - they smell, they're slimy (hopefully), and they only open up if you buy them stuff first. PS I'm not gay just to clear that up - fannies are ok for a bit of fun but they can be demanding on the wallet.

ste_bla · 11 Oct 2007 at 13:39

My long term idea

How about;
1) a cheap phone such as a w810i for £80 on o2 (argos)
2) get you bird a o2 PAYG sim
3) get a £15 a month sim only tarrif with unlimited (well 2k) mins to o2 phones
4) Reduce orange to lowest tarrif you can and lt it run out
5) When orange contract finishes then get a new contract with the phone you want and cancel the o2 one!

_PD_ · 11 Oct 2007 at 15:38

I've done nearly that!

I've got myself an N95 off ebay, and a sim only £15 O2 contract. I'll use the N95 with the O2 sim to ring the gf, Orange with K800i for everything else. Come December, I'll probably ditch the Orange contract (pay it off for about £80), and get the N95 8Gb on a decent O2 contract, selling my K800i and N95 original on eBay.

Comprende? Thanks for the advice ste, good thinking. Will ring Orange to see if they can reduce my tarriff once I have O2 up and running.

Ukadder · 11 Oct 2007 at 16:49

What about a business plan? vodafone don't check if you're a business or not (make one up!) easy to blag it. There current business plan allows free calls between all company mobiles, we have 7 phones on the same contract with free calls between them! Costs us about £180 a month but for just 2 phones you could get a contract for starting from £37.

Just another option to throw in!

http://www.vodafonebusinessshop.co.uk/SmallBusinessPricePlans.html

Pookie Bear · 11 Oct 2007 at 18:11

Bengaboy said:
If you go with vodafone with an 18 month contract , you get a thing called stop the clock.

Stop the clock is a thing where after 6pm and weekends (basically off peak times) you use 3 mins of your contract mins and after that you get up to 57 mins free.

I have this and it works a treat - and I'm on a 12 month contract - costs me £5 a month. I use it for about eight hours a week and it barely dents my free minutes

_PD_ · 11 Oct 2007 at 18:15

I'll look into that, too... Got the 02 sim to tide me over, I can cancel that with 30 days notice. Cheers!

Hopefullyuseful · 12 Oct 2007 at 09:12

Bengaboy said:
If you go with vodafone with an 18 month contract , you get a thing called stop the clock.

Stop the clock is a thing where after 6pm and weekends (basically off peak times) you use 3 mins of your contract mins and after that you get up to 57 mins free.

So basically you call for an hour and only use 3 mins of your contract.

After the 60 mins, it wont do a stop the clock thing again. So just hang up and ring back to start another stop the clock thing. 2 hours for 6 mins of your mins is brilliant and from what i read would be perfect for you

Hi,

Yes, with Stop The Clock, this works for contract and pay as you talk and yes it gives you 57 free minutes of calls after the initial 3 minutes of that call to all UK mobile networks and UK landlines. The times are slightly different for this depending on what kind of connection you have. With PAYT it's between 7:30pm and 7:30am Monday to Friday and all weekend, with contract it's between 7pm and 8am Monday to Friday and all weekend. Click here for the Vodafone Stop The Clock information on their website.

With contract if you have minutes in your tariff, you simply use 3 of those minutes and aren't charged anything for that 60 minute call. PAYT it's your standard call charges for your price plan for the first 3 minutes then the rest of the hour is free, good eh?