Business Mobiles - Contracts

[FrankAbagnale]

I am about to renew my current contract for circa 20 iphones with one of the main players - we've been with them for years but there have been a few billing issues recently and it seems they've streamlined their processes which has removed our account manager.

I'm generally happy and am likely to renew, but I would be very interested to hear if anyone has a strong preference for a particular provider they use? Are any of the providers offering cracking deals?!

As a brief summary it is 20 mobiles, with unlimited UK calls and texts, 1GB of data and a decent hardware fund over 2 years.

[Mr Overheads]

What's a "decent" hardware fund?

Is it from a re-seller or direct from a network?

Is the hardware fund restricted i.e. use it on hardware or lose it, or can it be taken as cash?

What's the line rental?

[FrankAbagnale]

Mr Overheads said:

What's a "decent" hardware fund?

Is it from a re-seller or direct from a network?

Is the hardware fund restricted i.e. use it on hardware or lose it, or can it be taken as cash?

What's the line rental?

£8500
Network
Use it or lose it
Total cost £606pcm + VAT

[insurance_jon]

we use an O2 reseller called talk direct.

face to face service, and they resolve any issues.

they own all the O2 retail shops in Yorkshire and really bend over backwards to help

[edc]

Sorry to jump on the back of this but I need a contact for arranging business mobiles too. Maybe a small start with 5-10 UK based but need regular international roaming and if possible the ability to add new numbers based in Europe again with international roaming regularly.

[Matt99man]

FrankAbagnale said:

£8500
Network
Use it or lose it
Total cost £606pcm + VAT

I would say you could do better data wise there Frank, price wise it's there or there abouts what I would expect for a renewal. Is the data shared between the users?

[Matt99man]

edc said:

Sorry to jump on the back of this but I need a contact for arranging business mobiles too. Maybe a small start with 5-10 UK based but need regular international roaming and if possible the ability to add new numbers based in Europe again with international roaming regularly.

Good news Ed is your euro roaming should be inclusive in 18 months or so time. If you want some help mate fire me a PM or email, we set these up all day long for small/medium businesses.

Edited by Matt99man on Thursday 27th August 09:58

[Sheepshanks]

FrankAbagnale said:

Total cost £606pcm + VAT

Ours is only slightly less for a dozen iphones, although they're 64GB and we have 2GB data.

How does the "hardware fund" work - I don't recall seeing that before?

[Mr Overheads]

What's your network preference? And would you consider switching network?

Though I'll post an example quote from each network (via reseller) on here tomorrow or Friday, we'll see how it compares.

Is your £606pcm before or after deducting the Hardware Fund? i.e. over 24mths what is the total cost of rental less the hardware fund?

[FrankAbagnale]

Matt99man said:

I would say you could do better data wise there Frank, price wise it's there or there abouts what I would expect for a renewal. Is the data shared between the users?

Yeah, so it is 1GB per phone but it is all pooled together so if one phone uses 1.2GB and one uses 0.8GB then it's fine.

[FrankAbagnale]

Sheepshanks said:

Ours is only slightly less for a dozen iphones, although they're 64GB and we have 2GB data.

How does the "hardware fund" work - I don't recall seeing that before?

We aren't offered any phones with the contract (we already have phones) but over the course of two years we can spend the lump some on phones/ipads. It's basically an allowance.

So when one of the employees breaks their phone on a pi$$ed up stag do and comes in saying they sat on it while attending a church service - I call the provider and order an new iphone which comes out of the fund.

[FrankAbagnale]

Mr Overheads said:

What's your network preference? And would you consider switching network?

Though I'll post an example quote from each network (via reseller) on here tomorrow or Friday, we'll see how it compares.

Is your £606pcm before or after deducting the Hardware Fund? i.e. over 24mths what is the total cost of rental less the hardware fund?

I dont particularily have a preference, although am currently with Vodafone who are generally good. I spoke with a chap at EE who was awful and that one experience puts me off using them.

I believe my payments to the provider are 606 x 24 (£14,544).

So total rental cost minus hardware fund is £6044.

Edited by FrankAbagnale on Thursday 27th August 09:41

[Matt99man]

FrankAbagnale said:

We aren't offered any phones with the contract (we already have phones) but over the course of two years we can spend the lump some on phones/ipads. It's basically an allowance.

So when one of the employees breaks their phone on a pi$$ed up stag do and comes in saying they sat on it while attending a church service - I call the provider and order an new iphone which comes out of the fund.

Hardware funds work well if you have the requirement for handsets for every line on the account, we tend to offer a mix of hardware fund and airtime credit. This way you do not lose out if the fund is not used, most just end up buying devices they do not need just to use it up at the end of the 24 months! If you want some more concise info pop me a PM or email mate

[FrankAbagnale]

Matt99man said:

Hardware funds work well if you have the requirement for handsets for every line on the account, we tend to offer a mix of hardware fund and airtime credit. This way you do not lose out if the fund is not used, most just end up buying devices they do not need just to use it up at the end of the 24 months! If you want some more concise info pop me a PM or email mate

The hardware fund works quite well for me as we never use all of it. It means I can chuck out a few iphones and ipads to family which is always well received!

[Matt99man]

FrankAbagnale said:

The hardware fund works quite well for me as we never use all of it. It means I can chuck out a few iphones and ipads to family which is always well received!

This is very true, our account managers allways see a little spike just before christmas for some reason...

[FrankAbagnale]

As an update, spoke with a call centre person at O2 and the soonest they can get an account manager to call me to discuss requirement and quotes is tomorrow afternoon.

Is it unfair of me to judge them on what I perceive to be a lack of urgency/motivation?

I think my sales would half if I responded to leads in the same time lines!

[Sheepshanks]

FrankAbagnale said:

As an update, spoke with a call centre person at O2 and the soonest they can get an account manager to call me to discuss requirement and quotes is tomorrow afternoon.

Is it unfair of me to judge them on what I perceive to be a lack of urgency/motivation?

I think my sales would half if I responded to leads in the same time lines!

O2 referred us to their "partners", without asking us. First we knew was they started calling us. Thought it was some kind of scam at first but they had all our account details.

Edited by Sheepshanks on Thursday 27th August 14:12

[Mr Overheads]

Quote 1 - Vodafone
4G
40Gb of shared data
£580pcm rental
£7500 cashback
Net 2yr cost £6,420

Quote 2 – EE
4G
20Gb shared data
£540pcm
£7,000 cashback
Net 2yr cost £5,960

Quote 3 – O2
4G
2Gb each of data (not shared)
£400pcm rental
£5,605 cashback
Net 2yr cost £3,995
(Or increase to 6Gb each for net cost of £5,900)


So your Vodafone renewal quote looks good if you are happy to have a use it or lose it hardware fund (rather than cash). But you could save over £2k switching to O2.

(Edited for a better EE quote)

Edited by Mr Overheads on Tuesday 1st September 21:59

[FrankAbagnale]

Thank you for the above.

I think i'll go with Vodafone.

Many thanks to all contributors.

[Matt99man]

FrankAbagnale said:

Thank you for the above.

I think i'll go with Vodafone.

Many thanks to all contributors.

Good to see you have stayed on our side!