People should en masse refuse to upgrade and let their contracts run on past term. Buy your handsets outright and nab a SIM only rolling contract, significant savings in a year let alone the 24/36 months these shysters are peddling. Only renew if they give you same price or less for a better connection. Sick and tired of this shakedown.
I did this a couple of years ago, my phone (which I'd bought over the course of a 2yr contract) was, and is, absolutely fine for my needs so for the last 2yrs I've been SIM-only. Enough calls, texts and data and only costing me £5/mth with a discount I'd negotiated.
Had to get a new SIM card when that ran out, but only a very small increase. Mysteriously my connection started dropping off the network intermittently, so I asked for another SIM...which did exactly the same.
A quick look on the internet revealed various conspiracy theories suggesting that I was being 'constructively dismissed' because I was a cheapskate customer (I call it thrifty
), so after 2 weeks of a totally shit service and no end of it in sight, I left and changed to the same type of SIM-only deal with another provider (another £1.50/mth).
The network I left was Virgin (which I'd been with virtually since they started). During the problems, several of my calls were met with 'we don't know what's happening and we're working on it'. Pretty sure it was just bullshit.
Just another version of 'in-built obsolescence' as far as I can see.
