Guest Thistle Posted February 13, 2003 Report Posted February 13, 2003 From Wednesday 12th February 2003, the upgrade fee structure will change for all Orange customers who have had their current Orange phones for less than 18 months. Why are Orange changing the structure? Suposedly to reward high value customers who spend over £60 per month for their loyalty and to increase customer satisfaction Customers who have had their phones for less than 18 months may be required to pay an upgrade fee, which is subject to status, in addition to the cost of their new phone. Customers who have had their phones for more than 18 months will only have to pay the cost of their new phone when they upgrade New Orange Upgrade Fees Age of phone (Since Subscription Start or Last Upgrade Event) Customer value (illustrative total monthly customer bill per handset) Band 1 (<£30 ) 0-3 Months (0-<3 ) £250.00 3-7 Months (3-<7 ) £200.00 7-12 Months (7-<12 ) £125.00 12-18 Months (12-<18 ) £50.00 18 Months + (18 + ) £0.00 Band 2 (£30 - £60 ) 0-3 Months (0-<3 ) £250.00 3-7 Months (3-<7 ) £100.00 7-12 Months (7-<12 ) £75.00 12-18 Months (12-<18 ) £0.00 18 Months + (18 + ) £0.00 Band 3 (£60+) 0-3 Months (0-<3 ) £250.00 3-7 Months (3-<7 ) £50.00 7-12 Months (7-<12 ) £0.00 12-18 Months (12-<18 ) £0.00 18 Months + (18 + ) £0.00 Not sure if I like the sounds of this to be honest :roll:
Guest tom Posted February 13, 2003 Report Posted February 13, 2003 Erm... I didn't sign to that in my contract, so can this affect me? I doubt it, seeing as how they can't force me to change from everyday 50, but still. Hmmmm
Guest SirGaz Posted February 13, 2003 Report Posted February 13, 2003 Not sure how legal it is either. We all signed contracts (well the PAYG people didn't) and it's what's in the contract that counts. I haven't read mine so I don't know what is actually in there but if there is any notification about how long you have to keep the contract for before an upgrade is rewarded then they have to abide by that. They can easily change this for new contracts however.
Guest vampyre69 Posted February 13, 2003 Report Posted February 13, 2003 This is something there in the T&C's about written or general prior notice before doing so. Translated: "we will put it in writting about 24hrs before it takes effect and back date it and post it to you, or if it affects a mojority of users will notify everyone by written communication on our website but please bear in mind it will be tucked away somewhere obscure untill the last minute"
Guest karmapolice Posted February 13, 2003 Report Posted February 13, 2003 Hi, My contract is about to expire in 2 weeks and iam on talk 30 and sometimes talk 60. Ive just got off the phone to Orange and they say that my upgrade fee will be ZERO and existing customers will pay the normal fee from £0.00 to £75.00 However new customers will have to do the 18 month stretch instead of 12 months....which i think is taking the pizz. :twisted: The girl at Orange said "weve only just heard about the change..they dont really tell us anything"....DOH!! hope this helps Karmapolice
Guest bobroberts Posted February 13, 2003 Report Posted February 13, 2003 doesn't seem that unreasonable to me i'm pretty sure that the other operators have similar bands and upgrade fees. most people fall into the bands B & C and so the 12 month £0 upgrade still applies... and more so it means people who spend a lot can upgrade for free after six full months... is this not actually a goofd thing and what the change is really all about??? bobroberts
Guest stevewright Posted February 13, 2003 Report Posted February 13, 2003 Must be because OFTEL are making operators reduce their call charges - got to make their money somewhere... Incidentally, I don't think "most people do fall in to Bands 2&3", and that shouldn't be a good enough reason to justify this change.
Guest Gorskar Posted February 13, 2003 Report Posted February 13, 2003 My average monthly bill last year was just over £20, so if I was to go for an upgrade at the end of my 12month contract I would have to pay £50 for the privalege, + the higher phone prices. Thanks alot orange. I think I will simply take out another new contract. People can just put up with my phone number changing every year. To keep it is just silly money.
Guest stevewright Posted February 13, 2003 Report Posted February 13, 2003 What I don't understand is - if 47 million people in the UK (population 58 million) already have mobile phones, why is upgrading such an expensive option? Surely we are the customers boosting their ARPU (average revenue per user)? The admin costs of cancelling contracts and starting new ones must be huge, not to mention the inconvenience to the user of having to change his/her number...
Guest Gorskar Posted February 13, 2003 Report Posted February 13, 2003 definitely - where is the sense in the current system? Keeping my number would be nice but look at it like this: My old bill was about £20/m Upgrading - £150 ish for the spv Now, extra £50 for the privalege of upgrading after 12 months, when my contract has ended! = £200!! Buying new £0 for the spv new contract = £30 +6spv = £16 extra for 4 months until i swap back to a cheaper contract at around about £20/month = £64 Now it doesnt take a genius to work out the better deal It does seem crazy though - Why cant orange offer comparable deals on upgrades to new contracts? There is a lot less paperwork and fluffing around + it makes the loyal customers happier. You are signing up to a new 12 month extension to your contract, so its not hurting them.
Guest tnaseem Posted February 13, 2003 Report Posted February 13, 2003 After your 12 month contract is up, just threaten to cancel and I'm sure Orange will be open to negotiation! It happened to my sister, who phoned up to get a PAC code so she could get a new phone (Samsung T100) with another provider for nothing. Orange then offered her a free upgrade to the new phone + all the accessories this shop was offering - all for nothing! In fact, I just switched from Vodafone to Orange because I wanted the SPV. My previous provider offered me a free 7210 + accessories if I stayed with them. Told them to bugger off of course! So, in short if after 12months you want to upgrade, haggle!!! :) Cheers, Taz
Guest Matt Whitfield Posted February 13, 2003 Report Posted February 13, 2003 Yup, same thing happened when my g/f asked for her PAC code from Vodafone to switch to Orange - they offered to match the package. I however asked for my PAC code from 02 (who are definitely commanded by Satan) and even though I spend huge amounts of money with them only managed to p**s me off even more by being really difficult about giving me my PAC code and really didn't give a t**s about the fact I was leaving... well, rot in hell O2 is all I can say!! :twisted:
Guest Big Ron - No Longer a Mem Posted February 13, 2003 Report Posted February 13, 2003 What I don't understand is - if 47 million people in the UK (population 58 million) already have mobile phones, why is upgrading such an expensive option? Surely we are the customers boosting their ARPU (average revenue per user)? The admin costs of cancelling contracts and starting new ones must be huge, not to mention the inconvenience to the user of having to change his/her number... The ratio of "pay monthly" to PAYG customers is roughly 1:2. Some of the highest ownership figures can be found in age groups too young to sign binding contracts. The Consumer Association's "Which?" magazine reports that of the 2/3 on PAYG deals, 2/3 would spend LESS each month if they kept the same patterns of usage and switched to a contract. I guess the basic problem is, you're a Dad, and you want your child to be able to phone in an emergency.... but you do NOT want your love-struck teenager running up a £200 bill every month phoning her boyfriend's mobile on-peak and on another Telco. T-Mobile have a solution that they (puzzlingly) don't advertise. Your usage is LIMITED to your "free minutes". When they're gone... the phone stops making outbound calls until the next billing period. Strikes me as the ideal solution for many millions of parents. Which is why MY 11-year-old son's phone is on T-mobile. The Telco's are slowly making "additional services" (GPRS and Roaming within the last few months) available to PAYG customers... but long term they'd do better to convert them to contract customers. Far more flexibility, and much better chance to add extra revenue. It's one of the (few!) appeals of AoL - that parents can individually tailor what each of their kids can access on the web from their own logon/password. Telco's could learn a lot from AoL's relative success with the youth/family market. PAYG is Morpheus's sphere of expertise. I wonder what HE thinks?
Guest stevewright Posted February 13, 2003 Report Posted February 13, 2003 Interesting - I didn't realise the ratio of monthly:PAYG was as much as 2:1. Still, shame to penalise us for being loyal :)
Guest Shire29 Posted February 14, 2003 Report Posted February 14, 2003 Vodafone also do some form of limit for call charges on Pay Monthly. You can set a limit above your free minutes/monthly tariff and if you go over a bar is put on your phone, just like PAYG. They don't advertise this either. The mobile phone industry is in a bit of a mess at the moment in my opinion, the ability to port your number to a new network as a new customer encourages users to change yearly and the number of new phones on the market perpetuates the desire to get the latest technology/style/trend. (me for example lol) To me it makes sense for the networks to keep their customers if at all possible, it saves on overheads, increases loyalty and users become familiar with a network (less calls to customer support), but I don't see this happening, the networks seem focused on attracting NEW customers rather than looking after the ones they have. I can't say I fully understand the new Orange upgrade policy though, but at a glance it don't look good. Cheers, Shire
Guest ashley Posted February 14, 2003 Report Posted February 14, 2003 Personally, this is good for me! Seems very sensible With relatives in Falklands, our monthly bill is often over £150, so I'll be able to upgrade for free every six months.
Guest neilg Posted February 14, 2003 Report Posted February 14, 2003 yeah - I guess I am going ot make myself unpolular too but I have always spent over 50 quid a month and now I am up to 250 quid a month (I persuaded my employer to let me use my personal phone for business and claim back the expenses) so I can upgrade for free much sooner than before. As has been said though whenever I wanted an upgrade I just said I would leave and it soon just appeared! Can always just keep porting backwards and forwards between operators. I run Orange and Voda and there isn't much to choose between them in my opinion. I always used to have Orange for my personal subs as they had the latest things out all the time but since FT took them over they havent been so quick.
Guest Big Ron - No Longer a Mem Posted February 14, 2003 Report Posted February 14, 2003 Look at what must be THE important facts to the shapers and movers in the industry. Orange made around £137m profit last year. When they launch G3, the licenses alone (aside from infrastructure upgrades!) will cost them roughly DOUBLE that each year, turning £137m profit into a >£110m loss. I suspect that trying to work out what the hell they're going to do to keep the companies afloat is occupying time that would otherwise have been spent on more mundane matters, like logical tariffs. Did anyone watch the BBC3 documentary "Upwardly Mobile" a few weeks back? Went out at midnight on digtal-only, so probably very few saw it. Seems that ONE UK mobile telco is in direct negotiations with a very profitable US hard-core porn live-streaming-video internet site. (You send in emails on a pay-as-U-vote" basis, telling the "performers" what you want them to do. The pornographers wouldn't say which telco, but mentioned that "its brand name is a fruit". The documentary makers asked a senior figure at Orange to confirm or deny the story... he changed the subject. Looks like a measure of HOW desperate things are. In Japan, to break even, the new phone network required 1.3m subscribers. They've got 138,000. That's not exactly encouraging...
Guest Bouger Posted February 15, 2003 Report Posted February 15, 2003 The average bill does fall into the band where you still get a free upgrade after 12 mnths. The only people who it affects are those that churn their number every 12 mnths and those on lower tariffs. I suggest that most of you are whining about nothing and you will find after 12 mnths u wont have an upgrade fee. On the plus side, those of us that spend more and have been with Orange longer (and i mean with the same number) will benefit from being able to upgrade in 7 Months time not 6 as previously stated some where on here. Every one is always moaning about the price of handsets, the uk is still the only country in Europe that still subs its handsets. Trust me if Orange stopped this you would pay far more. The upgrade structure was in its planning way before the Oftel report and has nothing to do with it. Orange has done it to come into line with service suppliers who have the same or are about to do the same and YES VODA T-Mobile and the others ARE following suit.
Guest jtsaint Posted February 15, 2003 Report Posted February 15, 2003 I have been an orange customer for five years and its all about blagging. If you try hard hard enough then you will get a free upgrade, I have done it quite a few times This is quite a good policy for me cause it really annoys me that I spend so much money and have to work hard to get a free upgrade. Anyway the SPV is good enough to keep for a year isnt it? Especially with sites like this and smartphony about
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