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O2 Offers Free iPhone 3G with Certain Plans
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Value Added Tax... (VAT) is 17.5% on all goods. Only difference is, the price shown is with tax.
Really, we get the same treatment as you do. Everyone has to pay tax one way or another. The only difference is that VAT is the same everywhere. I think I'm right in saying that different states have different rates of tax?
Still, electronics, fuel etc is all cheaper in America, so we're still being shafted. £35 a month is around $68.
Help me switch from Orange
Hi all, after 10 long years with Orange i have recently been shafted hard by them and planned to migrate to the new iPhone when it was announced. I went sim-only on Orange in readyness for this.
Question is.... what do i need to do now in order to be ready to move to iPhone on July 11th whilst keeping my number?
any help is much apprecaited.
ta
theGentleman
Hi all, after 10 long years with Orange i have recently been shafted hard by them and planned to migrate to the new iPhone when it was announced. I went sim-only on Orange in readyness for this.
Question is.... what do i need to do now in order to be ready to move to iPhone on July 11th whilst keeping my number?
any help is much apprecaited.
ta
theGentleman
I imagine it is possible to commit to, say, the basic £30 contract for 18 months and then upgrade to a higher plan for a time. You can never downgrade--ie if you take the £75 plan that's for the life of the contract. Occasionally with my Vodafone contract in Greece (not iPhone) I upgrade for a couple of months to get more minutes or data, then downgrade again. If I cancel the contract I'm responsible only for the original contracted price, not for any upgrades I've made.
One of the main reasons you cannot downgrade is that almost all retailers in the UK and several other countries subsidise heavily the purchase price of the phone. If you're not fussy about the handset you can always get a free phone for committing to a contract. These discounted phones are always locked to one carrier, although it's common to get a phone unlocked in any High Street for around £15. It's interesting to see that Apple have now had to jump on the bandwagon. Pity they didn't do their market research a year ago and a pity they don't plan to sell unlocked phones at full retail price.
Yes, all the prices quoted in Europe include Value Added Tax, but the rate varies from country to country (17.5% in UK, 19% in Greece, for instance). Only companies dealing specifically with the business community will quote pre-tax prices because, under VAT rules, businesses can recover the tax against the tax they pay on sales. Like many Europeans I get caught out shopping in the US. Although I know full well tax will be added at the till, I still get lulled into a false sense of cheapness as I fill the cart.
You just need to phone Orange and ask them for your PAC code. They're obliged to give it to you. Once you have the code you'll have a certain amount of days to use it. If you don't use the code, nothing will happen to your Orange account, you can just keep on using your existing sim and handset.
It's best to give them a call towards the end of June as it usually takes a few days for your PAC code to come through.
Jay
Thanks Jay...
...and if i then give my PAC to 02 do they sort out the cancellation of my dealings with Orange, or do i still need to get back to Orange and give them the spanish elbow?....
ta muchly.
...and if i then give my PAC to 02 do they sort out the cancellation of my dealings with Orange, or do i still need to get back to Orange and give them the spanish elbow?....
ta muchly.
The is not common though, everything in UK shops and usually on the tinterweb is priced total including the mandatory 17.5% VAT (Value added tax). I think the only things that are VAT exempt are certain childrens clothes and nappies and of course anything bought from a business, hence all materials for manual work such as car parts, plumbing and building stuff is usually quoted without tax.
Also dont get us brits on to petrol/diesel (gas) tax its ridiculous, currently derv cost ~10$ a US gallon or ~£1.30/litre
Lol the spanish elbow, good one.
No o2 will sort it out for you. They'll arrange for your number to transfer ovr on a given date, at which point your old sim (orange) will go dead. You'll then receive a bill from Orange for anything you owe, such as that months line rental, up to the point of the termination.
Jay
That's not true.
On my T-Mobile contract, I can downgrade after the first 6 months of the contract.
yep O2 will cancel it (althought if your on contract you have to give your current network 30 days notice and then they will rebate you with any unused line rental as that and port you number it usually takes a few days so my have to use iphone on a temp number until its done. Then your old Orange sim ill stop working and your new o2 one wil activate, rarely without any deadtime between, but they dont guarantee it.
Your PAC code is valid for 30 days so can get it today. The usually text it to you, but they can be asses and send it by post so best to get your PAC sooner rather than later so that
The taxes are always included in the UK for consumers, and it is the same in most countries (well certainly the ones I have visited anyway). I prefer it that way, personally. All I really want to know is "how much is this going to cost me". I don't want to have to calculate how much the government is raping me by at every transaction. Yes, it often feels like we're paying too much tax. A blanket 17.5% on most items is very high. Food, some clothing and books are exempt from tax, and there is a reduced rate tax on home energy. But everyone has to pay it, so just tell me how much I've got to pay, alright?!
The exception is businesses, as has already been pointed out. B2B companies always price their items for sale "excluding VAT". But it is always made clear in the pricing. This is because most businesses are VAT registered. VAT registered companies claim their VAT back from the government and so, in effect, don't have to pay it - they are more interested in how much it's going to affect their actual bottom line after they have claimed back VAT.
I often spend several months at a time in the US so I have experienced living with "tax excluded" pricing on a daily basis. I don't like it! I personally find the "tax included" pricing in the UK much better. I'm all for showing how much the government has added in terms of taxes/duty/etc., but as a footnote please! The big price I want to see is how much I am going to have to hand over at the checkout.
P.S. I've just thought about something which is often not priced with taxes included in the UK - flights. It's very, very annoying. You often have to get to the point just before you're putting in your credit card number in the checkout process before you can get any meaningful figures to compare flight costs between carriers.
I could downgrade after half of the contract has past with Voda and Orange.
If its the same for O2 then its worth getting a 16gb for £59 at £45, enjoying the extra mins for 9 months, then going down to £35. That way the 16gb cost essentially £149 (90+59), plus the £35pcm. The only potential spanner is if the £35 tarrif in 9 months is not as good as the current tarrif in terms of mins/txs, this has happened to me before with other networks as over time they are getting more expensive per min/text...
Anyone remember Orange Everyday 50 (50mins everyday for £13.50 pcm and a Nokia 3210, bargain)
Really excited about the 3G iPhone. Me and my partner will both be upgrading our 1st Generation iPhones in a few weeks time.
EDGE seems to be patchy across the South of England, but O2's 3G always seemed to be omnipresent wherever I went with my old SE K800i.
Pluses:
Negatives:
I don't really care about MMS. I know some people will be disappointed about that, but I have no interest in receiving messages containing "jokes" or with photos of people's appendages on display. Send it to me by email instead please!
I hope there's going to be a way to have both a corporate Exchange account (with the calendars, remote erase, etc.) but also to have personal email accounts and calendars on there as well which won't be affected by anything an IT department can do remotely.
There's a pretty good article about all the Pros and Cons on LifeHacker, by the way.
EDGE seems to be patchy across the South of England, but O2's 3G always seemed to be omnipresent wherever I went with my old SE K800i.
Pluses:
- Excellent news that BT Openzone hotspots will now be included in addition to The Cloud. I wonder if that will include hotspots in Ireland for UK customers as well.
- Monthly package pricing doesn't change despite speed increases (it seems AT&T are being really unfair by charging extra to US customers for 3G).
- GPS. I don't own a car, but it's still going to be really useful. I imagine this will be one of the biggest new selling points for most people with a car.
Negatives:
- The camera is still 2MP. What?! There's still a part of me that is expecting a 5MP camera to be the little icing on the cake feature we discover on 11th July! 2MP is a joke in this day and age. And Sony Ericsson have been putting proper xenon flashes on their camera phones for years now. Sort it out, Apple! I can guarantee that everyone who sees a friend with an iPhone will say "but it's only got a 2MP camera" in a fit of jealousy. It's the one thing left on the specs that just seems like a complete oversight. Funny how Mr Jobs neglected to mention this as "one of the issues we've listened to and addressed".
- Still seemingly no way to share out the 3G connection to a laptop via Bluetooth or even Ad-hoc WiFi. I really hope somebody creates an application to do this. But knowing Apple, they probably won't agree to list it in the App Store!
- Still no decent roaming agreements. If I go to another iPhone Enabled Country™, I want to be able to use it there and not worry about data costs, or at least be able to swap out the SIM for a temporary one! It's not exactly the iPhone experience if you have to turn off data!
I don't really care about MMS. I know some people will be disappointed about that, but I have no interest in receiving messages containing "jokes" or with photos of people's appendages on display. Send it to me by email instead please!
I hope there's going to be a way to have both a corporate Exchange account (with the calendars, remote erase, etc.) but also to have personal email accounts and calendars on there as well which won't be affected by anything an IT department can do remotely.
There's a pretty good article about all the Pros and Cons on LifeHacker, by the way.
This is true and v annoying esp as now budget flights also add on any luggage, food on top and the original 50 quid flight has doubled!
Thats not correct, O2 let you downgrade after 9 months on ANY tariff - 12, 18 or 24 months - and you can downgrade one level at a time once per month, so you could in theory go up to the £45 a month tariff to get the iPhone for free, then after 9 months you can go to £35 tariff, in month 10 to the £30 tariff.
"Best of all, the new 8GB iPhone won't cost you a penny on our £45 and £75 Pay Monthly tariffs for iPhone. And it's just £99 on our £35 tariff and new £30 tariff. This special early upgrade offer is only available online at o2.co.uk anytime from 11th July until 11th October 2008."
Does the wording of the info on the 02 website worry anyone else? I was assuming I would line up on July 11th like everyone else to upgrade my iPhone but unless i'm reading this wrong its saying existing iPhone users can only upgrade online through the website? While admittedly it's not that big a deal, it's gonna annoy the hell me and presumingly other early adopters if we can't get one on launch day :/ It would suck if we had to wait for one to arrive in the post
Does the wording of the info on the 02 website worry anyone else? I was assuming I would line up on July 11th like everyone else to upgrade my iPhone but unless i'm reading this wrong its saying existing iPhone users can only upgrade online through the website? While admittedly it's not that big a deal, it's gonna annoy the hell me and presumingly other early adopters if we can't get one on launch day :/ It would suck if we had to wait for one to arrive in the post
$68 a month would be cheap as h#ll for me. that was how much it cost me when I had a Z525a w/ unlimited texts & no data. My 1st gen iPhone runs me over 90 a month (after taxes) for 450 mins, unlimited text and unlimited data. From what I've seen the plans you guys (O2) aren't quite as customizable as they are over here. Example I could get the unlimited voice plan and not get any texts if I don't want them.
As for fuel, your US counterpart uses a lot more so the actual cost for your commute is actually a little less (UK: "According to the report, the average distance travelled by UK workers is 8.5 miles - 17% further than a decade ago."; US: "They report an average one-way commute time of 26 minutes (over an average distance of 16 miles)"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3085647.stm
http://abcnews.go.com/technology/traffic/story?id=485098
I really would rather the dollar menu be the $1.10 menu tho so I know how much things are going to cost before I go to the register. I'd be far more likely to pay cash if I knew that my 4.99 lunch would actually only cost 4.99...
"Best of all, the new 8GB iPhone won't cost you a penny on our £45 and £75 Pay Monthly tariffs for iPhone. And it's just £99 on our £35 tariff and new £30 tariff. This special early upgrade offer is only available online at o2.co.uk anytime from 11th July until 11th October 2008."
Does the wording of the info on the 02 website worry anyone else? I was assuming I would line up on July 11th like everyone else to upgrade my iPhone but unless i'm reading this wrong its saying existing iPhone users can only upgrade online through the website? While admittedly it's not that big a deal, it's gonna annoy the hell me and presumingly other early adopters if we can't get one on launch day :/ It would suck if we had to wait for one to arrive in the post
I thought we would have to go to the O2 or CPW to activate them to stop non activation and unlocking?
Therefore by my calculation its cheaper (£10, plus additional mins/txts) to get the £45pcm and dropping to £35 after 9 months and £59 16gb than go straight onto £35 and paying £159 for the 16gb?
Am I missing something?
i'm interested in the PAYG plan. i wonder how much it will cost? or should i go with the £30/month tariff? i'm not a heavy cell phone user. if some of you can chime in, i would appreciate it.
as an american living in the uk, i'm glad that the 3g iphone costs roughly the same as it does back in the states!
as an american living in the uk, i'm glad that the 3g iphone costs roughly the same as it does back in the states!
Tempting
I've just had the text from O2 offering me to register for the 'upgrade'. So it looks like an online deal only, and if O2 can get them out on time then delivery will be fine. However, 11th July is a Friday, so I guess existing iPhone customers won't get one before 14th or 15th.
One question remains. What happens with your existing iPhone? I guess PAYG, or even better, a Sim only contract (monthly Simplicity). What do you guys think?
I've just had the text from O2 offering me to register for the 'upgrade'. So it looks like an online deal only, and if O2 can get them out on time then delivery will be fine. However, 11th July is a Friday, so I guess existing iPhone customers won't get one before 14th or 15th.
One question remains. What happens with your existing iPhone? I guess PAYG, or even better, a Sim only contract (monthly Simplicity). What do you guys think?