Leaving Orange... part three...

I've had a LOT of problems with Orange in the past while I was in contract, and I've been looking to leave them (at least, their mobile service, anyhow). The complication has always been the provision of their home broadband service as part of the last contract... so... having seen the blurb for the TG01, and thinking "ok, so I'm with Orange, so it might count for something, even if I'm out of contract now, so let's see what Orange can do"...

Note that I'm well out of contract lock from their Canary 30 calling package (with no data plan). This was the plan I signed up to when I got their broadband service a couple of years back; I also pay a notional fiver a month for their "unlimited" home broadband service. On the phone to their helpful young lady at orange Broadband, it turns out that if I leave orange Mobile, the fiver will rise to a score (twenty quid) a month.

That's an extra £15 a month for what I'm using!

OUCH Part one

I was then on the phone for something like 20 minutes to a fairly helpful (for a change I got an intelligent human there as well - I must've been on a roll!) bloke at Orange Mobile Retentions, to see what kind of deal they could do me on the latest gadget to hit the shelves, the Toshiba TG01, one heck of a powerful Windows Mobile PDA/Phone (details over on GSMArena)

However, despite looking at every dodge, from reduced calling plans, increased calling plans, length of contracts, and so on, the best they could offer was two years (24 months) at 50 quid a month including 1 gig of data allocation (that's a tenner a month) and a one-off charge of 100 quid for the Toshiba TG01 handset itself.

With the insurance, the Canary 30's costing me roughly £35 a month. They'd be asking an extra £15 to twenty (if you add in the Orange Car Insurance) a month.

OUCH part two

I think it's time to (1) revert to my original idea of a lesser phone (HTC Touch Pro 2 or Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 come immediately to mind) and (2) look at another service provider (T-Mobile comes to mind on data/phones alone) ...

Although getting all the figures to balance out on what the yanks call a "revenue neutral" model is gonna be... challenging...