O2 or Orage PAYG for £10pm spend?

I'm currently on an old Orange "Out here now" PAYG tariff (5 free texts a
day for life) + the "Spend and save" option (25p/min for first three min,
then 5p/min) but the arrival of a new phone with a camera and GPRS mean that
I'm spending more.

I've tried looking at the new Orange PAYG tariffs but call rates seem poor
and Orange customer service is really p*ssing me off at present. (In the
last week, they've managed to turn off both mine and my daughter's picture
messaging capability whilst making "a small change to your tariff"). Took
bl**dy ages to get through and sort it out.

I've also got an old spare O2 sim with On-line Pay & Go and Text Anytime
monthy allowance that for a £10 top up, gives 300 free texts (or 100 free
picture messages) & 1MB of browse/download for the next month.

After losing my sim O2 were very good about replacing it quickly (with all
my original call credit). I could also get through to them in a couple
minutes rather than nearly half and hour each time for Orange.

The O2 tariff seems more attractive at the moment but they may be newer
offers that could be better for me that I don't know about.

The Orange tariff may be good for data but call charges seem expensive and
most of my costs will go on calls.

To be honest, I know that this is a hard one to answer as there are just too
many bl**dy options. ;-) I just really want to know if the O2 deal I've got
at present on my spare sim is a good one that's worth holding on to and
worth porting my Orange number to.

Cheers.

Tim

On 2007-01-05 15:22:45 +0000, "Tim Downie"
<timdownie2003@obvious.yahoo.co.uk> said:

> I'm currently on an old Orange "Out here now" PAYG tariff (5 free texts
> a day for life) + the "Spend and save" option (25p/min for first three
> min, then 5p/min) but the arrival of a new phone with a camera and GPRS
> mean that I'm spending more.
>
> I've tried looking at the new Orange PAYG tariffs but call rates seem
> poor and Orange customer service is really p*ssing me off at present.
> (In the last week, they've managed to turn off both mine and my
> daughter's picture messaging capability whilst making "a small change
> to your tariff"). Took bl**dy ages to get through and sort it out.
>
> I've also got an old spare O2 sim with On-line Pay & Go and Text
> Anytime monthy allowance that for a £10 top up, gives 300 free texts
> (or 100 free picture messages) & 1MB of browse/download for the next
> month.
>

Orange actually offer a tariff very similar to this that you could
change to - 'free text top-up'. Would save the hassle of porting your
number etc.

http://www1.orange.co.uk/service_pla..._overview.html

Chris

Chris Boyd wrote:
> On 2007-01-05 15:22:45 +0000, "Tim Downie"
> <timdownie2003@obvious.yahoo.co.uk> said:
>
>> I'm currently on an old Orange "Out here now" PAYG tariff (5 free
>> texts a day for life) + the "Spend and save" option (25p/min for
>> first three min, then 5p/min) but the arrival of a new phone with a
>> camera and GPRS mean that I'm spending more.
>>
>> I've tried looking at the new Orange PAYG tariffs but call rates seem
>> poor and Orange customer service is really p*ssing me off at present.
>> (In the last week, they've managed to turn off both mine and my
>> daughter's picture messaging capability whilst making "a small change
>> to your tariff"). Took bl**dy ages to get through and sort it out.
>>
>> I've also got an old spare O2 sim with On-line Pay & Go and Text
>> Anytime monthy allowance that for a £10 top up, gives 300 free texts
>> (or 100 free picture messages) & 1MB of browse/download for the next
>> month.
>>
>
> Orange actually offer a tariff very similar to this that you could
> change to - 'free text top-up'. Would save the hassle of porting your
> number etc.
>
> http://www1.orange.co.uk/service_pla..._overview.html
>
> Chris

Cheers Chris. I made the mistake of going in to our local Orange shop who
were absolutely clueless and had no idea about their own deals. The above
offer is quite tempting but the call charges are still pretty poor (20p /min
flat rate vs 25/min for first three minutes dropping to 5p/min with
O2).rubbish. There's no mention of whether three "free" text messages can
be used for one picture message.

I'm also not forgiven Orange for there abysmal phone support yet.

Tim

On 2007-01-05 18:02:53 +0000, "Tim Downie"
<timdownie2003@obvious.yahoo.co.uk> said:

> Chris Boyd wrote:
>> On 2007-01-05 15:22:45 +0000, "Tim Downie"
>> <timdownie2003@obvious.yahoo.co.uk> said:
>>>
>>> I've also got an old spare O2 sim with On-line Pay & Go and Text
>>> Anytime monthy allowance that for a £10 top up, gives 300 free texts
>>> (or 100 free picture messages) & 1MB of browse/download for the next
>>> month.
>>>
>>
>> Orange actually offer a tariff very similar to this that you could
>> change to - 'free text top-up'. Would save the hassle of porting your
>> number etc.
>>
>> http://www1.orange.co.uk/service_pla..._overview.html
>>
>> Chris
>
> Cheers Chris. I made the mistake of going in to our local Orange shop
> who were absolutely clueless and had no idea about their own deals.
> The above offer is quite tempting but the call charges are still pretty
> poor (20p /min flat rate vs 25/min for first three minutes dropping to
> 5p/min with O2).rubbish. There's no mention of whether three "free"
> text messages can be used for one picture message.
>
> I'm also not forgiven Orange for there abysmal phone support yet.
>

Ah, not necessarily a mistake - you just have to find the right shop to
go into ;-) (says he who works in one). Picture messages will be
standard rates all the time unfortunately: 30p or 50p for bigger ones.
For calls - have you looked at the Orange extra talktime & world
bundles?
http://www1.orange.co.uk/service_pla...a_minutes.html
Only useful for mins to Orange/landlines mind you. Easy enough to
manage as you get texted when they're up and can check the balance of
them via 453.

Phone support over the past few months has hit a bit of a low, but they
have taken new people on, training takes time, and I'm optimistically
thinking it can't get any worse :-)

Good luck whatever you choose!

Chris