Renewing Phone Contract - Tips & Advice

Renewing your phone contract can be a tricky business. It should be so simple but it never is. Cancelling a contract becomes a lot more trouble than you bargained for, and the contract renewal is never what you was hoping for. It does appear that the big phone companies only seem to look after the new customers these days rather than the existing ones. This surely is not fair and everyone would be better moving round from company to company once their contract ends. However they phone companies are very clever because as soon as your contract runs out you then have to give them further notice to close your contract etc... or so they claim. This then leads us in to becoming lazy and we just renew with the same company to stop all of the bother.

If you do want to renew with the same company then you should 100% push for a better deal than the one that you was previously on. Better deals are coming out all the time so they will definately be able to beat your previous one. If they do not offer you anything that you think is respectable then you should threaten to leave. Its amazing how quickly they can somehow come out with a solution which means you saving more money.

Most phone companies will offer you a gift to renew with them. (they will not offer this untill you threaten to leave). The gift is usually pretty good. For example a laptop, bike or a PS4. There is no scams usually attached to these but you should still work out how much money you would be saving if you went for a cheaper contract rather than renewing with the same one and getting the gift.

Getting Renewal Quotes over the phone!

I would always recommend watching out for this, and being very careful. I recently was in the process of renewing my phone contract with my provider and was seeing which options would be best for me. When i phoned them they told me i would pay $45 a month for the first 9 months, but the price would then drop to $25 for the final 9 months. 9 months down the line i found myself in a predicament because the phone company totally disregarded that this was the agreement i had, and explained to me that their sales people on the phone can not make these offers. I will not be falling for that one again.

Watch out for phone companies who call you and offer to renew you mid-contract!

I had trouble a few years ago when a company phoned me and told me that they was in fact my phone network provider. They then told me that they could give me a new phone, and lower my monthly payments. I thought this was fantastic. They said i could keep my old phone and just change the sim, and ring them back to switch over the puc code over once i received the new phone. I went ahead with this.... The new phone turned up looking fantastic, so i decided to ring up my service provider to "switch over" the puc code. My service provider didn't have a clue what i was talking about and i was being scammed. I sent the phone back to the company who scammed me and never heard anything again. However, 3 years down the line when i checked my Direct debits i noticed a charge of $5.99 coming out of my account each month. When i investigated the charge i found out that the phone company who was scamming me set up phone insurance for me and never took it off. Therefore i had been paying phone insurance for a phone i never had for 3 years! I was lucky and managed to claim the money back through the bank, but it just goes to show how careful you have to be.

Check your Direct Debits Before It's Too Late

Don't make the same mistake i made. Make sure that you check how much you are being charged each month for everything!! If there is anything that you are unsure of then make sure you question it and follow it up.