Two weeks ago I upgraded my Sony Ericsson T610 to it's successor, the SE k700i, and very nice it is too - a much better screen, an additional Bluetooth headset profile and a much improved camera with 'flash' (although I use that term very loosely for what is actually a bright white LED). At the grand cost of £0, it was a considerably better deal than the (£189) P910i which would have been a much bulkier phone and not suitable for going out on the town with!
The main motivation wasn't to get a new phone, but to get Orange to let me move onto a better tariff which would give me plenty of anytime minutes without costing the earth. Beforehand, I had been making the most of Orange's Line 2 deal, where you can add a second line on the same SIM and have two sets of inclusive minutes. So for the past 12 months or so I had been on Orange Value Promise matching O2 Leisure Time Plus on my Line 1, and Talk 60 on Line 2 (for daytime minutes).
This gave me 500mins on-net off peak calls, 50mins cross-net off peak calls, 100txts and 60mins anytime minutes. The line rental for this little lot came to £20 for Line 1, plus £14 for the Line 2 and meant that if I went over the 60mins (which I often did) then it would only be 10p/min on Line2 instead of 30p/min on Line 1. Keeping track of minutes was a nightmare though, even though the phone supported total call timers for the separate lines. It was also a pain to make sure the Bluetooth headset profile was always using the most cost-effective line when I was in the car.
Fortunately all these problems were solved when Orange Retentions agreed to switch me onto Select 500 tariff, which matches the 3 network's VideoTalk 500 and gives me 500mins cross-net anytime minutes for £25. Compare that with Orange's standard 'Your Plan 400' tariff which costs £50 for 400 likewise minutes, and you can see why I was happy. They also threw in 30 free texts for 3 months, which I topped up with another 120 texts for £8.
So now I'm paying £33 a month and shouldn't ever go over that, unless I get sent overseas again with work and run up a big roaming bill! My plan is to get my T610 unlocked though so that if that did happen I could get a PAYG SIM if I was going to be anywhere for long enough to warrant it.
The final Brucie Bonus came though when I checked my bill for November, which was generated just after I upgraded:
Select 500 : 01 Nov - 30 Nov £21.27(+VAT)
O2 Leisure Plus Xtra 500 : 01 Nov - 30 Nov £0.00
Text 120 : 01 Nov - 30 Nov £6.80(+VAT)
Select 30 Text: 01 Nov - 30 Nov £0.00
The second item was the bundle which Orange had added to the O2-matching package a few months ago to top-up my minutes to 1000, and for some reason or another this package hasn't been removed from my account. Further down the bill it confirms that I have 500 minutes available on this bundle, in addition to the 500mins on Select500. The Orange minutes-remaining service on 150 confirms I've still got >400mins of my Select 500mins remaining as of today, despite using 315mins since I got the new phone. The off-peak usage must be coming out of the other pot :) Fingers crossed it will stay like that forever!!
So, to cut a very long story short... I get 500 cross-net anytime minutes, 150 texts and 500 on-net off peak minutes for the princely sum of £33.
Not only have I managed to get on Select 500, so has Georgie, Bruvver Baz and my mate Big Bird, and two of them did so only 9 months into their contract. So if you're coming to the end of your Orange contract see what Retentions can offer you. For more advice, check here.
Posted by jonah at November 14, 2004 04:40 PM | TrackBack