Sorry your browser is not supported!

Here's perhaps a gold bit of advice that I will be using in future.

Today I received my new phone with an 18month contract with 3Mobile. £35/month 800mins 1000texts, first 6months half price. Good deal right? Well, once I'd got the phone I started to have second thoughts cos I'm low usage user. Even though Pay As You Go is a rip off cost wise, if you hardly make any calls/send texts, it can save you a lot of cash. So I decided to phone them up and send the phone back.

I don't reckon this happens very often. Most people won't receive their phone and change their minds, but this is exactly what you should do. When I phoned them up to say I wanted to send it back, they really didn't want to lose my business, so they started negotiating with me. In the end I got 12 month half price line rental with the first 2 months free, the admin fee waived and an upgraded handset. So to get that straight, for a whole year I pay £17.50 for 800mins any time any network, 1000 texts (which I'll never use, but still), 30 video calls/month free, £5/month worth of free game/music downloads and free internet surfing (email pickup).

Moral of the story - you can negotiate a HELL of a lot for you mobile phone deal. Perhaps not when you buy it, but when they think they have your business and you're threatening to send it back, the ball is in your court.

Surely this would only work with some of the smaller providers? There's definitely a couple major providers here that I wouldn't imagine would bother negotiating that much, however, it's still worth a shot. Good tip.

Yeah, I can only speak for the UK and obviously 3Mobile, but 3 are very big in the UK now and apparently voted the best mobile network of 2005. Now, it might be the case that they just have good customer service, but either way it's worth a try. It's a waste of money for the company to potentially have secured a client, sent out the phone etc. and then have to repackage a returned phone and undo all their admin. It's easier for them to knock some money off the price. Their mark-up on phone users must be massive so I reckon there's room for negotiation.

Worth a try, that's all! Just make sure if you phone them up and say you want to return the phone (and really you don't want to return it), you don't bluff them all the way and actually send the phone back. Then you'll be screwed.

Edit: Oh, btw, you have to give the reason as money. I think they'll offer whatever they can to make you happy. If I'd complained about the handset, they'd of set me another one. I complained that I couldn't afford it, so they dropped the price, then I complained my other contract had 2 months to run, so they gave me 2 months free, and then I complained about the handset and they swapped it. Just complain about as much as you can without taking the piss, and they might just sort you out.

It all depends on who you talk to. If you would have got someone else, they may have told you to piss off.

A few years ago, I signed up for high speed internet at my home. It was at that time $35 per month. About 6 months later, I was paying $55 per month. Now, I had lots of services through this provider, so I decided to call them up to see what they would do for me. Basicly, I told them that the increase in price has really made me NEED to cancel the high speed internet service unless there was something that they could do for me. I told them that not only do I have their internet service, but I also have their cable TV service, local and long distance phone service and cellular service. His response was:
Well, I see you only have our standard cable TV service. I can't give you a deal on the internet, but I CAN give you a deal on our digital GOLD package for cable TV. I kept myself calm as I listened to his offer. "You can have it for only $50 for the first 6 months!". I then humored him and asked how much would it be after that. He said, "well, if you keep the same package, it would be $80 per month after the first 6 months."
I said, "So, I call you up because I can no longer afford your internet service because of the rediculous increase in pricing. Your great offer to me is to increase my cable TV rate by $10 for the first 6 months and $40 after that?!?"
I told him to cancel me imediately. He said that he could not do that and he would have to transfer me. The next thing I heard was dial-tone!!!

I then called up a local dial-up provider and got signed up there. It was only $10 per month, but it was a year contract. After I did that, I called the high speed internet provider back up to cancel. I didn't tell them why or anything else. I just said I want to cancel. The girl said, "well what if we knocked it down to $30 per month for the next 6 months? Would that change your mind?"

Man, was I mad!

Bottom line is this. If you call to do something like that and you are NOT getting an answer that you like, HANG-UP and call again. Hopefully (and most-likely) you will talk to someone else that will help you get what you want. If not, rinse and repeat!

WOLF

Something similar happened with me when I cancelled my Xbox Live account a few years ago. The lady kept bargaining with me, even as much as a big chunk of the money off and two free games!

Dell did the same thing as well, when I received a laptop then got my brain back and decided to send it back ASAP. They were offering me hundreds off the price to keep it.

@Wolf - Agreed, it is the person you talk to in many instances, but it depends how much power that person has. This dude was a lacky in an office full of them, and he clearly had a deal written down for him. I mean literally as soon as I said price, he rattled off the 12 month 1/2 price line rental part of the agreement. These guys had clearly been versed in what they were allowed to negotiate and what they weren't, and basically as soon as you phone up to cancel, they offer another 6 months 1/2 price. It was only when I asked for the 1st 2 months free that he put me on hold to go and speak to his supervisor. The handset thing was an instant yes too.

So I guess it depends how big the company is and how they operate. Obviously these mobile phone companies are huge and have a vastly populated support office (even if it does take 15 minutes on hold to get through) with well trained staff. For something smaller like a broadband provider, they probably have less people in the office and more of a free reign over what deals they offer. So you can probably get more out of a small company if you barter with the right guy, but with a larger company they probably have their deals set out in stone for the little sales people to follow.

i think i signed up for the same contract a few months back and has been fine ith me, i recieved a nokia 6280. I was quite impressed with the features on offer and the ability to reduce your price plan after 6 months (two at the initial £35-# before they let you). the only cautious peice of advice i can offer is DON'T surf the web - uless you get 'add-ons', something like £2 for 5mb data transfer - i exceeded this limit without knowledge in the first month and ended up increasing my bill to a hugh £65! I was only supposed to be paying £17.50 in my first month.

yeah - I had a O2 contract which I wanted to close down because I joined up with Orange (The contract had run out). O2 practically refused to close it down and insisted on setting me up with a free contract Something like 25 minutes and 10 texts a month lol Never use it though.

@optical r

Good advice mate. I'll find out what I've got in more detail. It bothers me a bit that they don't actually send you a nice clear piece of paper with your your phone explaining exactly what you have on your contract. It's all so automated these days, so you get your premade phone and sim card package and no real paper work. You have to try and remember or guess what exactly is in your deal or chase after them, and sometimes they just dont set it up right, so you can be screwed from day one.

With my last Vodaphone contract, I was supposed to have "Stop The Clock" on my deal - so you make a phone call of up to 1 hour and only pay for 3 minutes if it's off-peak. Great deal, so I could phone my gf in the evenings and pay bugger all. First bill was £190, because they didn't set up my account properly and forgot to add on Stop The Clock. I never saw all of that money back, I could never get Dial A Phone (the guys who set it up) to properly sort it out, even though once one of their guys said he would properly fix it (he obviously bare face lied) and I ended up changing it myself through Vodafone directly and ended up with a RUBBISH deal.

NEVER EVER USE DIAL-A-PHONE. If you do, you risk financial suicide and brain tumours from the amount of time you have to spend on hold trying to sort it out.

I pay $600AUD ($50 per month) for $2760 worth of calls per year for my business phone.