Phone contract. Help!

[kernowcat]

I have recently become unemployed. In a bid to reduce my outgoings I contacted orange to change from a contract phone to pay as you go. I was told I would have to buy my way out of the contract £286.79.
This I cannot afford. Any suggestions please?

Lower your price plan is your only option, so you will have less to pay

I work for vodafone and deal with this every day

I know its hard but try pay.

only thing i can suggest is reduce your tariff to minimum one or maybe ask a friend family member if they are looking for a phone ask see if they want to take yours over?HTH

You could do transfer of ownership aswell, give it to someone else and put it in their name

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone I know has a phone. The next tarrif down is still £25 pmnth. Struggle is not the word!!!
Thaks though.

£25!..can you ring service provider and explain, maybe they could help lower it one of mindees mums has just done same cos had to buy new one after breaking first one and she now only pays about £9-£10 for first lot of line rental?!

Not the idea solution i know but dp and i had similar problems with 3. We wanted to get out of the contract as everything about it was rubbish. they basically told us it was tough and had to stay for the full lenghth of the contract. So we didnt pay the bill, they suspended our contract as no payment recieved and we waited for them to write and demand the balance.. . . . . . . . left it for a couple of chase up letters and then paid outstanding balance. AS they cancelled the contract there was no penalty to us. This did not affect credit history so did the same with our second 3 contract! Even told them exactly what we were intending to do and gave them the option to let us out of the contract immediatly, they declined so we did it again! Now happily with vodafone.

Thanks CB I was thinking of canceling DD. Its crazy that they make it so hard to try to sort yourself out.

I think I'll ask for a P A Y G sim for Christmas.

i'm just trying to get my lowered to £19 a month. i need the contract phone because of dh, but was o na higher contract as was using it a lot. now i barely use it.

Just curious chocolaterobin so feel free to ignore but how do you know it hasn't affected your credit rating or won't do so in the future?

If the mobile phone company send the debt onto an agency, then it affects your credit rating

Try not to leave it get that far though

Would just like to say it will be noted on your credit file as a default even though it's settled. If you're struggling you want to avoid having that kind of thing if at all possible. Moneysaving expert has loads of stuff on the forums about lowering your mobile bills/tarrifs might be worth a look.

Dp got his credit histoy from expedia and not a sniffter of it on there. We waited until we had been cut off and yhey asked for the balance a couple of times then paid. It didnt go far as collections agency so i think its just classed as late payment not default? Its not an ideal thing to do but worked for us, i am sure not all companies would be the same. Got a contract with vodfone after.

Not really bothered as EX P mucked up my credit rating for a long time anyway.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

PS. I consult 'Martin' before any financial decisions are made!