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mate in glasgow o2 call support centre says calls of fury about this all night....not suprised...what a nightmare pricing for them...

there is not a hope in hell o2 have of shifting these 3gs units, absoultely no one will end earlier than 2-3 months...

i dont expect them to have as much stock as last time either

expect some changes to this before the end of summer....

talk about shooting yourself in the foot
 
Dear god

Firstly, chalk another one to the tally of people shocked and annoyed at these prices.

If I pick up a 32gb 3GS on the £44 contract, after how many months can I drop down to the £34 contract?
 
What we see here is a classic Stop Gap tactic... Apple needed something to combat the Palm Pre and quickly... so they released this half arsed effort of a phone... its not deserved of the Apple logo on the back of it. :mad:
 
Firstly, chalk another one to the tally of people shocked and annoyed at these prices.

If I pick up a 32gb 3GS on the £44 contract, after how many months can I drop down to the £34 contract?

9 months, saving you £10 and giving you all the extra minutes.
 
My original plan was to wait until December and upgrade without any penalty.

I'm now thinking about letting my contract end, going on to Simplicity and upgrading to whatever new model they announce this time next year.

Me too, I'm dropping from the £45 plan to the £35 tomorrow, I'll also tell them exactly why. Then in December going on the simplicity £19.58 tariff and being contract free.

Bollocks to 'em.
 
The main reason to me why the upgrade price is crazy is because you won't actually be using any of the minutes/texts/data for whatever months you had left. The fee should be based purely on how much subsidy is left.

If we take the 8GB as £350 (the PAYG price) and the total contract is 45 * 18 = £810 (to get the 8GB 3G free last year)

£810 Total
£350 "subsidy"
£460 for data/calls

So £350 / 18 months = a subsidy cost of £20 a month. It should be £20 * how many months you have left.

Or is this being unreasonable? If O2 took this approach they would not lose money on early upgrades and would have customers signed up for another 18 months.

If I was going to upgrade then I might be tempted to sell my 3G to cover the cost of the remaining contract. I agree with your argument that it should not be charged at full monthly rate x months left but rather a "cost only" version of this as you suggest. For me 6 months at £20pm would be £120 and surely a 3G would fetch more than that in pristine condition with original box, manuals, charger etc. I would in fact be hoping for close to double that so it would pay for most or indeed all of the initial cost of buying a 3GS.

Having said all that I'll be happy with upgrade 3.0 for another 6 months then maybe go to Pay n Go for another 6 months and then get an iPhone 3G GTi (or whatever the next one is called...) :D

Cheers,
Craig.
 
As an existing customer I'm not surprised and bear no grudges in that there isn't really any upgrade option. I didn't expect one and you wouldn't get it on any other phone so I see no reason why iPhone should be different.

What I find bizarre though is the fact that as a new customer to get one of these 3G S you would need to be on a two year contract before there is an option to get the phone for free. The cheapest you can have it on 18 months (who wants a 2 year contract) is £87 for the phone and then £45p/mth. That's almost 900 quid over 18 months. I don't see these selling and as a new customer I would be more attracted to the old 3G.

Also the old 3G isn't available any cheaper than it was in the UK you still need to spend £100 if you want 18 months at £35p/mth. More than £700 all in! Seems ridiculous for hardware that's a year old. I would have expected the phone, given it's hardware that's a year old, to be free on 18 months at £35 a month!

EDIT: I've crunched numbers and in general the prices have gone up in the UK for the new phones and are overpriced for the old phone.
 
What I find bizarre though is the fact that as a new customer to get one of these 3G S you would need to be on a two year contract before there is an option to get the phone for free. The cheapest you can have it on 18 months (who wants a 2 year contract) is £87 for the phone and then £45p/mth. That's almost 900 quid over 18 months. I don't see these selling and as a new customer I would be more attracted to the old 3G.

Also the old 3G isn't available any cheaper than it was in the UK you still need to spend £100 if you want 18 months at £35p/mth. More than £700 all in! Seems ridiculous for hardware that's a year old. I would have expected the phone to be free on 18 months at £35 a month!

Exactly.

Phazer
 
As an existing customer I'm not surprised and bear no grudges in that there isn't really any upgrade option. I didn't expect one and you wouldn't get it on any other phone so I see no reason why iPhone should be different.

What I find bizarre though is the fact that as a new customer to get one of these 3G S you would need to be on a two year contract before there is an option to get the phone for free. The cheapest you can have it on 18 months (who wants a 2 year contract) is £87 for the phone and then £45p/mth. That's almost 900 quid over 18 months. I don't see these selling and as a new customer I would be more attracted to the old 3G.

Also the old 3G isn't available any cheaper than it was in the UK you still need to spend £100 if you want 18 months at £35p/mth. More than £700 all in! Seems ridiculous for hardware that's a year old. I would have expected the phone to be free on 18 months at £35 a month!

Let's look on the bright side - at least the resale values of our existing phones will hold up better...

You're right though - sadly - I think Apple/O2 are missing a chance to sell a lot more phones, apps and accessories by reducing the price of the 3G 8GB to zero or close to zero. I would expect to pay £99 for the new 3GS 8GB or £149 for the 3GS 16GB on a 35pm contract.

Craig.
 
Why no tethering on Pay and Go?

I know it's expensive, but may have been useful to me.

Still, if they don't want my £15 per month, who am I to argue...
 
im sure we will see them very soon i use my iphone 3g on pay as you go but i think i will get me a contract now

I've been thinking exactly the same thing. I might wait until iPhone 4, given the fact that sweet as it is the new iPhone isn't the massive overhaul it could have been, simply in that I don't really need video on my phone (though the speed, power and storage capacity increase is cool). But I've just been on the O2 website only to discover that tethering won't be supported on PAYG, just as email-to-phone already isn't (and that certainly came as a surprise, given that my old PAYG 3 phone had all the features of contract phones enabled on PAYG, such as video conferencing and email-to-phone). So maybe when my iPhone 3G PAYG is ready for replacement I may look to getting a new iPhone on contract for first time ever.

But I don't like it.
 
RT: #o2fail sign petition against @o2 forcing iPhone 3g customers to pay out contract to upgrade to iPhone 3gs http://is.gd/TChq

Ok, ok I get that you're all angry but come ooon. We've been over the 2G unsubsidised/3G subsidised thing a million times. We know why you can't just upgrade and this is EXACTLY like with every other phone/contract O2 sells.

It's not like it's a shock, people have been saying this on here for weeks, why are you all so frickin' surprised?

What is pretty shoddy is the price of the 3G remaining the same and the 3GS being even more expensive, get a grip O2.
 
Those prices are a joke! I would love to upgrade my 3g but if i have to buy out of my exisiting contract which would prob be around £200 then buy another the 32gb 3gs for £274 that's crazy money!

Apple want to shift these phones and at that price for exisiting iphone users it is a joke! ~Come on apple and o2 uprgrade option for us 3g'ers
 
Give it a couple of weeks after a flop release day and you will see how Apple is going to be riding O2's back side for a repricing...

My renew date is 18/4/10 by the way..
 
o2 are taking the wee wee

i got a 3g last august so to buy out that contract would cost me £190+ up till feb '10. i have a 30% discount from work which saves £9 a month. add the cost of the 16gb 3gs model and i'm looking at £375 roughly to get the new phone. package stays the same.

erm...... nah! i'd rather wait till o2 realise they've overpriced the new version and come up with free upgrades. does anyone know if the 7.2mbs speed is available on o2 network? if not there's not really much to make me want to upgrade.

also charging a small fortune to tether is a laugh. *ahem* jb allows this for free. more ram, better camera, compass and fully functional sat nav would be nice but doesn't justify the cost. again, cycorder has been available for a while, though tbh i don't really use it.

sorry o2 - you appear to be shooting yourself in the foot..
 
This '3GS' has stopgap written all over it.

I kind of get this feeling as well. It's a nice piece of kit and everything but not an essential purchase after the existing 3G. Now, when the '4G' comes out, different matter. The 3GS will probably appeal more to new adopters and those upgrading from first gen, assuming this messy contract business is sorted out.
 
im seriously considering jumping ship, cancelling my iPhone with my insurance ACP then going to orange and getting the 32GB N97, Free on a £45 month contract with 1200 Mins, 3000 txts and its 18 month, or Paying £49 for the phone and going on a £35 contract....
 
Probably ecause they can't achieve over 400 kbps on Pay and Go.

I can't see why not. I have a Three dongle and it's on PAYG. When I run out of credit, I run out of internet. Simple. What stops o2 doing this with tethering? The only thing I can't really complain about is the fact that I still have a few months free web surfing on o2, and will gladly pay a tenner a month when the freebie is up because I do most of my basic surfing on the phone. It's so much more convenient than lugging a laptop around -although I am still a little miffed about the no tethering on PAYG. I always think, like, if Three could do it when I had a Three phone on PAYG, why not O2 with the iPhone?

Interesting to see at the keynote that we iPhone users count for so much of mobile net usage. Is there any wonder since browsing on iPhone is such a natural and intuitive experience? Maybe that's why AT&T are being so fussy in the US. Give us the option and we'll cane it. Sweet.
 
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