Orange shop

[mame]

Just wanted to post what happened when we went to the orange shop yesterday when my mum went to upgrade her phone. Her 18 month contract was up.

She pays £25 a month, a racoon something. She wanted a samsung (after steering her away from the motorola v8) and it boiled down to either the g600 for free or the samsung soul for £119.99 She was contemplating this untill i told her a very firm no, not because of the phone, because of the price.

so I asked: "What if we change up to a £35/month tariff ? is the phone free then?"
"no... it's still £119.99. We can do it for free if you take a out a new contract/number."

My mum also considered this. I said if it comes down to it, we will take out a new contract elsewhere. The woman in the orange shop just said "oh but why do that when you are here now? I can sort all that for you"

so after dragging her (not literally!) out of the orange shop we called into phones4u and got the phone for FREE still on the same £25/month. No new contract or number porting, just a straight upgrade! So that would have been £120 for absolutly nothing.

 

[Janesy B]

Sneaky gits.

 

[mattpc]

I think you didn't take a hard enough line in the first place. I've always got good deals on phones usually by just phoneing 150 and talking to the disconnections department. This time I had to go thru phones4u because orange didn't directly supply E90 Communicators. I have not changed my number since 2001 for business reasons. The first time I paid for a phone was this year and even then it was £25 for the Nokia E90 which is a very expensive phone.

 

[garyh]

The Orange stores work off upgrade bandings, your mother was obviously not a high spender - and as such Orange are unlikely to want to retain her as an existing customer as she makes little or no profit on the higher range handset she wanted.

No amount of battering would have changed this, the price is set. P4U obviously get more commission from the upgrade and are willing to plough that into the sale to retain you in their store - that's their choice.

A rather silly system with regards P4U it's agreed, but the pricing at the Orange store makes perfect sense - your mother doesn't make enough to cover the cost of the phone, so they will charge her.. quite simple really.

 

[mame]

well yeah i see what you're saying but as the end customer, it's only the price that we would be interested in. Also something must be slightly wrong if an agent for orange (p4u) can offer a better price than orange themselves. Either way, she got the phone she wanted for free with no hassle of swapping numbers/networks etc