50 minutes of the girlfriend everyday! (Orange Tariffs)

Member Name: chembleton

Product:	Orange Tariffs
Date:	03/07/02 (487 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 50 free off peak minutes, Choice of phones

Disadvantages: Free minutes limited to same network or land line, 10p per message would be better at 5p

When I first met my girlfriend, I used to own a cheap pay as you go mobile on BT Cellnet.
She lives away at university some 160 miles away so we spend most of our time chatting on the phone, as I see her only at weekends.
Phoning national rates every night often for an hour soon left the house phone bill very high much to the annoyance of my mother!
Looking around the national press for a phone with plenty of free minutes, I discovered Orange Everyday 50.
Everyday 50 offers 50 minutes of free calls to UK land lines or other Orange mobile users, and seeing as she is on Orange also, it seemed ideal. The basic cost of this is 50p per day.

Calls charges outside your talk plan vary.
Calls to standard UK fixed lines Peak 35p
Off peak 1p
Weekend 1p
Calls to Orange phones Peak 35p
Off peak 5p
Weekend 5p
Calls to other mobile networks Peak 40p
Off peak 25p
Weekend 25p
Answer Phone Peak Peak 10p
Off peak 10p
Weekend 10p

Text messages are charged at 10p per message.

Calls after the inclusive minutes have been used are charged at off peak cost.

I never really have any problems with Orange as a network operator. I can always get good reception be it at home, or on the road, on my Nokia 8210 which came free with free connection from clubmobile.com . I occasionally suffer from a lost call where it just suddenly disconnects. When that happens I get one minutes worth of extra time next month.

Connection was quick and easy by simply calling Orange as described in the instructions with the phone and setting up a direct debit (optional) for payment of bills was easy also with a choice of dates when it's withdrawn from the bank.
A free full itemised breakdown of calls comes in the post with your bill each month.

Orange Extra Care (insurance) is optional and costs £5 per month. I've never had to use it yet but I know others who have. One guy phon
ed at 9pm on a Saturday night to say his phone was broke. After a quick diagnosis they agreed. By 3pm Sunday a courier came to his door and exchanged the phone free. Good service or what?

Orange customer services are friendly and knowledgeable. You do spend your time going through a lot of 'press 5 if you have a billing enquiry' etc but you do get through to the right person and they have always sorted out any queries I've had.

I would recommend Everyday 50 to anyone who spends a lot of off peak time chatting to other Orange users or to land lines. My only problem for me personally is that 50 minutes is sometimes not enough. I did get Everyday 50 thinking I would just spend the 50p per day and the odd text message, making a bill of around £25 with Extra Care included. My bills regularly come to around £35 as I send more messages than I anticipated and do use more than the free minutes sometimes. It would be a bit more attractive if texts were 5p each.

All in all, a good tariff for the off peak user.

Summary: