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.