Tips on getting the best phone upgrade deal

Everyone wants the best value deal they can get, especially when it comes to long term contracts. When it comes to cell phones, or mobile phones customers, especially those in the UK, are typically getting tied down to 2 year deals and whether it's a new contract or an upgrade/renewal you will always be wanting to get the best deal you can. When you first take out a contract you may find you get a hard time getting value in your deal though when it comes to renewal time you are the one in the driving seat.

When you first take out a contract with a company you will find your options quite limited to those provided by the company's by default. Although you can find some decent deals online that are better than going direct through the network providers themselves, you are still pretty limited to just the raw deals that are available to everyone and you'll rarely, if ever, succeed in negotiating a better deal for yourself. Although you can often find some really good deals you need to struggle and really will need to look around for anything that will have you snapping the offer up with out having second thoughts.

When it comes to renewing your contract you are the party in charge of the deal. After having a look around to see what is available to other customers on other networks you can then stand up as a customer and use your loyalty to your advantage. Generally the network you are with will call you a number of times when your contract expires, around this time you need to to be searching for the best deals you can. When you find a solid deal that you like and offers the phone you want at a price you can afford then you'll have found your starting point and will be in the driving seat. What you need to do is record this deal, whether it's a matter of getting a quote from a store or finding it online and saving the link depends on how you find it, but a link is the preferable option. What you do next can be one of two options, you can either call the cancellations line or contact the web relations part of the company and see if they will beat the deal you have found.

Route 1-Cancellations
To go via cancellations you will need to request your “PAC” number, this is a number that allows you to take your phone number and get it changed to a new provider. This is the point when your current provider starts to realise you are serious about leaving and will step up their game to try and keep you. If you are a long term customer or have more than 1 contract with them then they are often able to offer you a good deal to try and keep your custom. If you have a number of deals with them then they will be worried about you taking all your custom elsewhere so use this to your advantage.

Route 2-Web Relations
Some company's have a dedicated web-team that trawl through forums, most notable were both Orange and Vodafone on the “MoneySavingExpert” website. These teams can regularly offer you better deals than the cancellations team as they aren't sold on commission and have a lot of flexibility. The web team will be able to offer some excellent deals and as they become more popular they will become a bigger and better force in the future, so are worth hitting up to see how much help they can provide.

Whilst you are looking at your renewal you need to remember several key things. So follow these simple steps:
Know what is on offer before you attempt to negotiate
Refuse the offers from the first set of calls your get (these are Sales calls)
Contact either the cancellations or Web Relations team
Make sure you have access to the deals you are aware of
Use the deals you know about to try and get your current provider to match or better it
Stand firm
Don't say yes to anything that doesn't manage to match the best you've seen

The biggest step is that you don't feel pressured to stay with the same company out of some sense of loyalty, what you need to do is take the decision that is best for yourself. If you need to leave the company you have been with for a decade than do it, they obviously haven't made a big enough effort to keep you.

Just to give you an example of the savings you can make:
The first offer I was made for the phone I wanted was for £41 for 1200 minutes and 3000 texts with 750MB of data and 2GB of OpenZone Wifi. As I rarely use more than 300 minutes a month I wanted to negotiate a deal that was more suited to myself and after seeing one with a rival company to who I was with offering a deal that was pretty much what I was wanting (£26 for 300 minutes, 5000 texts and 500MB of data) I had a point to work from. I managed to eventually secure a deal where I got 300 minutes, 3000 texts, 1GB of data and 2GB of OpenZone Wifi for £26 and a £27.63 down payment. I had effectively managed to pay £27.15 a month for 2 years for a phone I wanted and a deal I wanted. Although I “sacrificed” 900 minutes of talk time I managed to get an extra 250MB data and save £332.37 over the term of the contract by refusing to take the first offer on the phone I was wanting.

If you are more flexible on the handset you are wanting you are likely to be able to save even more than I did so don't rush, take your time and make a decision when you are happy to make one. A saving of over 30% over the term of the contract is a huge deal and one that you really should be happy to get and is something that, using some of the above tips, you should be able to get.

For someone like me who loves using the internet but doesn't make many calls the final deal, the one that I took, is ideal. Whilst it may cost more overall it's excellent for the internet (giving a total of 3GB a month) and as I've never yet gone over 3000 texts I don't see the rival deal giving me any better value than the deal I took. everyone though is unique and deal to their own personal tastes.