Like a lot of people, with my mobile contract due to expire in the next couple of weeks, I’ve been shopping around for a decent offer.

After slightly less than exhaustive research, I decided a HTC Desire would fit the bill, and after looking round the networks, Orange and Vodafone seemed to be doing the best deals: £30 a month, loads of voice minutes, unlimited texts and 500MB mobile internet.

All of which was easy to see on their websites. The experience on my current network, 3, was not quite so intuitive however, so I rang them this morning and asked what they could do for me. I’m already on a pretty good deal, I think, £15 a month for 500 minutes and another £5 for the web, but by the time I’ve coordinated my weekly 5-a-side football match, I always seem to get stung for loads of out-of-bundle texts.

I explained all this to the guy who took my call, then nearly fell off my chair when I heard what they were going to do for me. Keep the voice minutes, have some unlimited internet, how about unlimited texts as well, and the handset, as a loyal customer, we’ll throw that in. And the price? Well to be honest, the funniest bit of the call was when he asked me not to tell my friends and family about the deal as it was a special for a loyal customer, and as I think of everyone who reads Mobile Marketing magazine as either a friend, or part of a big, extended family (pulls out a small onion), I will honour my promise. Suffice to say, the phone will be with me Monday.

I don’t know what the current churn rate is among UK operators. A couple of years ago, we ran a story saying it was approaching 40 per cent. If more operators took the approach 3 took with me this morning, it would surely be a lot lower. That said, not entirely sure how much money they’re going to make out of me. 

David Murphy

Editor