Interesting side effect nobody seems to have mentioned is the new T&Cs forbid you from rooting, jailbreaking, debranding, or "Google-Edition"'ing the phone for six months as well.

I don't think that's going to go down too well...

If the phone is legally theirs I don't see why not.

Specially not with XDA'ers and surely they cannot tell if you have modified a rom anyway?

I wonder if they will actually enforce it though.

Orange's CSS system tells you the handset the sim being used was originally paired to. However the S&D or Merlin system can tell you every single IMEI that has been used on your account. I've seen Motorola MR1's listed from 1994 before!!

My list must be massive. I connected on Orange on launch day and must have had hundreds of phones used with my SIM!

They'll have trouble identifying some phones I've previously used on the Orange network with an IMEI of "0000000000000000"

Yes, that did actually work...

I have seen some IMEI's listed before as "000000000000000" and "UNKNOWN" next to it

This sounds like the most impossible thing to enforce in the world. I know a few friends who have contracts for there kids but instead of giving them the phone with the contract they give them there old phone. And swap whenever a new contract is due love see how EE would handle that one.

Example they love iPhones my friend has the iPhone 5S and gave one of his kids his 5. Does sound ludicrous to me what EE is doing as everyone has said to have been priced more competitively but seem to have taken away a lot of advantages and put some weird disadvantages into the mix.

False advertising prices on there website and not honouring them isn't the best move to make either specially with the bad press they been getting recently. They will be lucky if they manage remain the biggest network in the UK by the end of this year.

My galaxy S4 is rooted to the google edition, I did it as soon as I received it. I would just ignore this crap, its my phone and can do as I please with it, if they say send the phone back...oops I've lost it

Problem is, the T&Cs now claim it is *not* your phone, and you cannot do with it as you please, and you're not allowed to lose it either :P

I believe though people are committing a criminal offence if they change the IMEI. I have never heard of anything coming of it, except for stolen phones that are sold on and tracked back, but still worth bearing in mind.

Ofcom's plan to stop price increases within the term of the contract is increasing becoming a joke. I expect Vodafone will be next to do this. Still its all Ofcom's fault for allowing this loophole.

What if u pay for the phone though?

I don't see how the terms and conditions above restrict which SIMs you can put in the phone.

As EE own it, they could report it lost/stolen and block it?

The networks know every combination of SIM/Handset ever used so the actual technical implementation is pretty simple. If during the 6 months, another SIM is used in the IMEI of the handset sold, for a period of time, I.e. to satisfy the "permanently" clause, it could then be be classed as in breach of clause 3.13.1

How that's enforced once a technical decision is made would be the tricky bit.

There's no way they'd do that anyway. The negative publicity from the Daily Mail/Watchdog/Twitter/Facebook would be far too damaging.

It's there to try and enable EE to retrieve the phone if someone defaults on their payments, thus effectively meaning EE won't lose anything. The phone will probably be worth enough to cover the loss, even if sold as a reconditioned phone.

And I am sure that even if you rooted the phone and put on a custom ROM, they'd either not notice or not actually do anything anyway.

Yep. I would guess the main reason is to combat fraud for getting a subsidised handset and then not paying. It also moves that from a non payment/civil issue to potentially a theft/criminal issue.

The question is whether it's enforceable.

I'm sure we'll find out sooner or later.

Well, the networks know every combination of SIM/handset used on their network, if I used an O2 SIM on my EE phone, EE would be clueless to it (except if, say it ran out of signal on O2 and tried to register on EE, that might trigger something).

Then again if I had multiple EE SIMs (e.g. a phone SIM and mobile broadband SIM as I've had in the past) I can't see them conceivably blocking my phone because I swapped them round at some point.

I agree it's purely there to combat box-breaking and defaults.

Has anyone managed to find out if the 6 months ownership clause applies to new customers only or existing customers as well?

Reason why I ask is with EE Swap you can change your phone every 6 months if you so wished so by the time you hit that 6th month according the new T&C's you only just own the phone before trading it in for another one and so the process gets repeated assuming you do it on a 6 monthly basis.

I can certainly see why they are doing it to cut fraud etc but it's really penalising existing customers who may change their mind within 6 months of a new contract etc.

How on earth have you reached that conclusion!?

The terms and conditions don't mention ANYTHING about using a different SIM in the phone.

They can't possibly tell from a different SIM being in the phone that you've done anything against the terms and conditions.

Maybe they meant using the EE sim in a different phone for a set period of time so EE can use that as evidence that they no longer own the phone?

They can certainly use it as implication. It's not concrete or irrefutable evidence, but similarly, credit card companies detect fraud based on implication and "unusual" spending practices which also results in false positives.

Haha no idea how credit card companies detect but it's obviously broke I once got my card locked because I brought a dominos in Manchester. But somehow a 800 euro a night room in Paris went through took ages sort that situation out.