T-Mobile charging £75 to upgrade mobile phones?
In a new scheme designed to stall upgrades and save money until the new financial year, T-Mobile ‘s contract customers will have to fork out £75.00 to upgrade their mobile phones. However if a customer doesn’t wish to hand over that cash, T-Mobile is offering a £5.00 per month discount in what they are calling a “Christmas loyalty bonus.”
T-Mobile says: “We believe that, in the current economic climate, most customers will welcome the opportunity to make savings on their monthly bills. All customers retain the choice to upgrade their handsets during Q4, but following a review of the eligibility criteria for mobile phone upgrades, some customers will be subject to reduced entitlements.”
The inability for customers to upgrade their handset isn’t going to go down too well I would imagine as most look forward to the upgrade to a better handset. However some may prefer this “Christmas loyalty bonus”. One thing though, funny how the T-Mobile G1 is exempt from the restrictions.
Source — mobiletoday
Comments
3 thoughts on “T-Mobile charging £75 to upgrade mobile phones?”
At last someone has picked up on this rubbish from t-mobile. What loyalty are they showing their customers who have been with them for a long time (4 years for me), ‘£75 charge to upgrade your phone’. Also depending on your price plan you may have to pay the FULL price of the phone. i have had a number of complaining conversation with their upgrades department who have told me that the message they are telling other customers is to send an e-mail to complaints on the hope that the directors, ‘who have brainboxed this idea’ will change their minds, (i think not).I was also told the reason for this was due to the current climate and that t-mobile at present were no longer getting discounts on the phones they buy in from suppliers.
As i see it t-mobile are scamming their customers big time, if your a new customer you can get a free new phone on a cheap price plan which is good as you’ll be saving money but watch out when you come to upgrade as you will not be entitled to a free upgrade as you’ve been on such a cheap upgrade, pay full price for a phone roll on the next new customer to lynch in.
Lastly I was told to to either wait till the new year or April and things may change but in the meantime if i’m having problems with my phone to go and buy a cheap one from asdas or tesco’s and swap the sim over mmmnnnn thanks for such good advice!!!! NOT
WIth regards to your comment re tmobile. I have worked in the mobile phone industry for some time so here is a bit of an insight into some of the things that happen behind the scenes…… With all the phone companies and may other companies as well , they work to some kind of annual budget re expenditure and to keep ahead within this budget from time to time they may change certain policies as to plan ahead or change them if running a bit behind. . even if it does mean charging a premium to upgrade for some customers. Realistically if you are on a lower tariff you arent going to get the N96 f.o.c as if you check out all the offers across all the network they are charging extra for this phone or phones of similar value , unless you are typically on a higher plan. Which is common sense as they arent a charity. If your bill is around £120 like you said it is i would imagine they are less likely for you to have to pay £75 + handset cost unless you just changed onto a high tariff in recent months or .. unless some of your monthly bills include charges going towards international calls for example.. Although your bill would appear high to you – a lot of people dont actually realise that with this type of call the networks overseas get a bite of these costs which the networks would charge you for at this end but they actually pay out on your behalf to the other networks overseas. So they arent really making as much money as you think. Going back to charge for upgrading – yeah the other guy is right alot of the networks will begin the new year with new offers and the start of a new financial balance sheet, the idea of the Xmas loyalty bonus was to give the customers money off their bills without renewing a contract – which with everyone harping on about the “credit crunch” has got them thru xmas with a bit of money off their bills and this would be running for up to 6m or until you wanted to go for an upgrade. What you have to remember as well which a lot of people seem naive to is the phone upgrade is not part of the contract and if you read over this you will see it isnt actually worded in there either – its simply something they give you as part of the contract which people assume they can have. The networks could all simply turn round and say we arent issueing phone with contract anymore as the contract themselves are the money you pay for the amount of mins OR for a service and not for the handset itself….
amanda i respect the fact that you have been in the industry for some time so perhaps you can explain how t(hief)-mobile can look to charge me near £300 for a phone before xmas because of the credit crunch, and now they’re trying to sell me the same phone on my same tarrif to renew my contract for around £130, are we still not in a credit crunch maybe even worse off?
I could understand them saying because i have a discounted line rental I would have to pay full price for the phone, but I still have the discount and now I can get it cheaper therefor if I was naive enough (and some people were) to pay £300 t-mobile would have made £170 on me and many more.
you talk about having a low tarriff will not get you a high valued phone, my actual tariff is around £30 but i have 1/2 price line rental, but I was told that even at £30 I would not be able to get the high valued phone I would have to go a higher tariff this was all before xmas, but if I were to get a new contract with a new number on the £30 tariff I could get the phone for free and now after xmas the exact same policy applies but the difference is I would technically be a new customer now can you honestly say that that they value their loyal customers.