How to mess up the iPhone launch – part 3
Posted by Dave in Handsets, Mobiles, Networks, Technology, tags: iPhone 4, O2Mere hours after I posted blasting the networks for the lack of information on the UK pricing for the iPhone 4 a little snippet of information has come to light. Not from the networks who are still remaining deathly silent as the game of chicken continues into a 3rd day but from an anonymous tipster e-mailing pocket lint. Now for reasons that will become clear in this post I am taking this information with an extremely large pinch of salt as I cannot believe O2 would demonstrate such stupidity as to offer an early upgrade offer that isn’t actually an offer (again as you will see later in this post)
The rumoured £20 per month remaining of contract to upgrade looks good on paper sure. Most iPhone customers are on tariffs ranging from £25 to £75 per month so this is great no? NO it’s not great!!!
Most iPhone customers probably believe the iPhone tariffs are the full range of tariffs available to them. They aren’t. I changed 2 months ago from an iPhone tariff over to the standard set of tariffs as I was starting to use my iPhone sim in a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. And being on the standard tariffs makes me aware of two more additional tariffs below the £25 level priced at £15 and £10.
So I will be on the £25 a month tariff with 12 months left to run when the iPhone 4 comes out. So assuming this taken with a pinch of salt report is correct upgrading to the iPhone 4 using the early upgrade offer will cost me £240.
Alternatively I can either try and get an additional contract or if that fails I’ll have to wait 2 months, downgrade to £15 and then to £10 a month and then pay off my contract. That will cost me £25 for the first month, £15 for the second and then £10 months at £10 which is a total of £140 saving £100.
If the report does turn out to be accurate and that really is the O2 upgrade “offer” I’d strongly suggest people take a good hard look at it and work out if it will be significantly less expensive to do it another way
EDIT – The details are now up on the O2 website regarding the early upgrade offer and as feared its the fantastic £20 a month offer that works out more expensive than dropping down to the lowest tariff and then buying out the remaining months of the contract. Nice one O2
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Since making this post I’ve done a few more sums and worked out that people on the £75 (old), £60 (new) or £45 per month tariffs will be better off taking the £20 per month remaining offer if they have 12 months left to run
Assuming a 3GS was bought at launch on a 24 month contract with 12 months left to run the upgrade costs would be as follows
Rumoured £20 per month remaining – £240
£60 tariff – £300
£45 tariff – £250
£40 tariff – £215
£35 tariff – £185
£30 tariff- £160
£25 tariff – £140