Upgrading via a 3rd party

Crafty · 11 May 2012 at 17:25

I'm with vodafone at the moment and have an upgrade due, rather than deal directly with vodafone direct I've been looking at deals from Carphone Warehouse / phones4u. What are the pitfalls of upgrading with a 3rd party ? does it effectively lock you in to upgrading through them at the end of the contract ?

I guess that they make their money by buying contracts from the networks and then adding a profit margin ? Thus the network isn't funding the phone(as they would if you went direct) ?

Any info welcome

mame · 11 May 2012 at 21:06

It doesn't make any difference to your contract. Sometimes, they can even get the tariff reduced or the phone itself cheaper. They can be crafty with other things but if you're savy with mobiles then you will spot their tricks

Things I've witnessed P4U doing;

Hard-selling a Wildfire to someone on a £35/month contract. the original Wildfire. I was sat next to them with the Argos app open saying "look, they're only £90 to buy PAYG". they ended up with the Galaxy S1 for the same price (free) that had only just been released.

Adding a Sky sports sub to a phone contract. Something that was never even hinted at. Luckily orange cancelled and refunded it because they could see if hadn't been used. But I bet the salesman got a few £ for our trouble.

Hard-selling insurance for £12.99 a month that had a £100 excess reducing to £50 excess. I had to explain to myself to 3 members of staff why I didn't want it, including the manager who they went to fetch just to talk to me.

Offering a brilliant upgrade deal, going through all the sim activating etc etc then showing the customer their new mobile number.

Crafty · 11 May 2012 at 23:35

thanks! I might go see what deal they can give. I did go to one last time around but vodafone actually beat them so I went that way.

I want a galaxy S3, but vodafone wont give out upgrade deals until the phone launches and the upgrade team have stock to use. Some way to repay customer loyalty

matt99man · 12 May 2012 at 01:57

Crafty said:
thanks! I might go see what deal they can give. I did go to one last time around but vodafone actually beat them so I went that way.

I want a galaxy S3, but vodafone wont give out upgrade deals until the phone launches and the upgrade team have stock to use. Some way to repay customer loyalty

Vodafone are doing pre orders for the galaxy s3 now on upgrades, just give them a bell. I played round with the s3 the other day, very smart handset indeed, the one I used had a generic case but screen and software was as will be with the final release