I was just in Phones 4 U as my other half was looking at getting a new phone and out of curiosity I asked if there was anyway of getting the HTC desire on a £20 per month contract (thinking there was prob no hope at the moment!) especially as I've just switched over to a 30 day simplicity deal with o2.

The girl said that once I've had the simplicity deal for 3 months I can go back in there and do a handet only upgrade and get the Desire for free - remain on the simplicity deal I'm on now but just sign up to it for 18 months rather than the 30 days!

Has anyone heard of this as it sounds a little too good to be true?

it may well be true, but to be honest i dont trust anyone in phones 4 u!!
you can get the HTC on o2 for £25 a month. though in my honest opinion i dont think the HTC is worth worrying over too much.
i have the new samsung wave on an o2 contract for £15 a month. does the same as the HTC and the screen is much much sharper

I've got a Samsung at the moment and we looked at the Wave and had a play with it in the shop today - it was ok but I preferred the Desire!

Load of rubbish I am afraid.

Don't know why she is saying wait 3 months, you can upgrade from Simplicity at any time. If you upgrade with a handset you won't be on Simplicity any more, you will be on a handset tariff which will cost more.

Seconded.

P4U are trained to hard-sell, they tell porkies to most of their customers who will then get their real bill later on. And when they complain, P4U simply pass them over to the network provider who can't do anything about it, because the billing is correct.

Avoid at all costs!

They can and do complete handset only upgrades

Can you elaborate? How do they upgrade you with a handset on a SIM Only tariff? Just sell you the handset outright?

ooh yes please explain? She also said i may be able to do it after 2 months on my simplicity plan!

You could be being had here! Three months just happens to be the length of time you need to keep the sim-only going for them to keep their commission!

I know there was a loophole back in the day (that might still exist) where a handset-only upgrade can be completed from an o2 sim-only account, but to a standard o2 tarriff (e.g. 100 mins, unlimited texts, £20 per month for 24 months). You would never be able to keep the sim-only price-plan though!

This works/worked because of a weakness in the system where the upgrade had to be completed with o2 manually over the phone and this meant what the sales assistant told o2 to do (i.e. connect to the £20 tariff) didn't have to match what they actually put through on the till system (i.e. handset only upgrade). This means the till allows you to do the phone free (or at an amount discountable to free) because there is a better price on the handset only upgrade than there would be if you told the till you were upgrading the phone to that tariff. (The reason is that handset only upgrades tend to be pretty profitable as tariffs tend to get better over time, so if you keep your old tariff, you're probably not gonna be on a great deal - that's the logic anyway.) Make no mistakes though, the customer will end up with whatever the sales assistant tells o2 to connect - what they put through the till is completely irrelevant to the terms of the contract. It's simply a way of getting the P4U systems to let you sell the phone for less than you should.

The P4U staff member could potentially lie to the customer about the tariff as the contact that is printed out will actually state 'handset only upgrade', yet this is actually worthless! Since you have zero returns hope on an upgrade, I would be careful here as you can't really be sure what you're getting!

Phones 4U may or may not notice the mismatch at a later date when they query commission payments from o2, but in my experience staff never got pulled up for it!

So this might be what they are planning, or they might just be looking to make a quick buck on the simplicity sale, since if you cancelled it after 3 months when the upgrade 'didn't work', they still get the commission!

When you Google for "phones4u handset only upgrade" this thread is the second result. The third is this:

"Phones 4u sacks 16 staff after Sim-only upgrade scam"
http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/Phones_...s%204u%20sales

Hmm I bet that lost Vodafone quite a bit of money.

The network operator won't lose out - they will just pay Phones 4U the commission for whatever was connected as normal.

Sure Vodafone might have subsidised the handset, but they still get the custom, so it's not a biggy.

If P4U staff found a way to sell Vodafone branded handsets with o2 contracts, now that WOULD upset Vodafone!

I did read that article and wondered about it!

I think if I go into P4u in mid July when I've been on the Simplicity tariff for 2 months and they can give me a free Desire - aslong as I carry on paying the £20 a month, I don't mind signing up for another 18 months on that basis!

If they can do it - great - if they can't - the tariffs may have been reduced slightly by then! I think 20 a month is more than enough to pay for a contract to be honest with you!