Lesson number one: don’t lie to your customers.

So I phoned up Orange last night, having decided I’d give them one more chance to prove their worth before switching my allegance to a provider that didn’t charge me nearly £70 for a slightly-above average month’s worth of usage. Apparently they could add a few more inclusive minutes onto one of those silly animal packages off their web site, but still nothing close to the offer from 3 that I ended up signing up for today.

I explained that if it helped I was happy not to have a new mobile phone from them, if it helped bring down the monthly cost a little. After all, I’d be saving them at least £200 by not demanding the latest N70 from them for free, having only had my current phone for just over a year and quite liking it, thank you very much.

No go, apparently. Something about me being within my contract still and having to sign up for another one if I want to change my price plan before June. New contact equals new phone. Right.

So despite not really wanting a new phone, I now have a new Sony Ericsson K610i sitting next to me on the surface, ready for when my 3 contract begins next month (apparently you can delay the start of it by 30 days, rather like a student wanting to go to Africa before starting Uni, but in this case for me who wants to live out the remaining 7 weeks of my Orange contract before switching). Unfortunately my old Nokia 6230 just isn’t good enough for the blisteringly fast 3G connections required these days…

The new phone isn’t the latest model there is around, but it’s still a phone. I can make calls, receive calls and do a couple of pointless other things with it should I have the urge. It’s not “reconditioned”, as Orange assured me it would be when I spoke to them about disconnecting yesterday, a clear exegerration of the truth that actually made me more determined to leave, not less.

I was reading yesterday in the Observer that apparently people replace their mobile phones every eighteen months. Hardly surprising really, given how difficult it is not to do so. There was a time when wooing me with new shiny things would have persuaded me to put up with the bum price plan I was on, but not any more. Now I get to spend the extra £30 a month on other exciting things, like car insurance. Mmm.

Loving: Sitting on the river, drinking wine. Drinking lots of water now.