Oooooh.

I'm now in the last month of my current deal, so rang up Orange yesterday to inform them that I'd found another deal online that beat theirs for the HTC One X and, subsequently, would be going with another provider.

Got a phonecall today from their loyalty and rewards department, offering me a deal to stay with Orange. They couldn't offer me a like-for-like competitive deal for the HTC. However, the deal was upgrading to the new Samsung Galaxy S3, unlimited calls, unlimited texts & 1GB of data per month for £31, with no cost for the actual phone.

It's apparently a better phone than the HTC, and unlimited calls and texts is as good as I could ask for really. Very happy.

So you should be! Quite the deal.

Baffled by Orange retentions these days. Couldn't budge them for anything on an S3, only got a free phone out of them. I had to go to Phones4U to get something off and that was through Orange as an upgrade.

It depends how much you spend a month. If you are on a cheap tariff and keep to your limits, your worth to them is massively reduced. If you are on a £50 tariff or overspent on your current tariff for example you will have been more profitable. Also depends on how they are doing, if they're hitting targets they won't throw money out of the door to keep customers that aren't very profitable.

Yeah you're right. Was on a £30 a month contract and never went above. Just found it strange that Phones4U could get me an upgrade with a massive saving and Orange wouldn't budge when I spoke to them.

My new tariff starts on Friday so currently on the 15.50 deal, think I get 100 mins, ultd texts but no data so I end up going slightly over my contract now and again, with the most being about a tenner over, usually only a couple of pound. Depends if I have a busy month needing to be ringing people, or away from my laptop and needing internet access.

Probably why they want to keep hold of me, then

Can't see any way I can go over what they've gave me now, won't use anywhere near that much data as I don't really need my phone at work, in fact will probably just take my current handset with me so that there is no chance my new one can get dusty or damaged. We have internet access at home, and when I go back to uni in September I am online more than I am at the moment.
Suppose only if I need to ring any 08 numbers, that'll probably be the only thing I can be charged for.

Does anybody know how to unlock I phones?

O2 aren't to helpful.

Your supplier has to request your phone be unlocked by Apple, should cost £15, this is the charge Apple pass on to the telcos. Any other method will be temporary and will be undone at the next iOS upgrade.

O2 can not refuse to unlock a phone as long as you are close to the end of your contract.

My mum paid the 15 quid and sent it over to me in oz, when it arrived i reset it and it was locked.

We've both rang O2 on numerous occasions and they say they cant do anything without the number off the sim card (we've lost it).

Is this right?