o2 stores says iphone 5 not available to payg customers

[Anonymous]

My local o2 stores are starting to get iphone 5 stock in.

Today, I went in to one of the local stores to buy an iphone 5 - only to be told by the salesman that they are not being sold to existing payg customers. Yet, the model on display had a payg price on it.

Does anyone know what's going on? 

[Anonymous]

Very possibly the staff are saying that because they have limited stock, and get decent commision from contract sales but very little if any from PayG upgrades so they'd rather say they have non available for PayG. 

This is just speculation however. And is usually a very small percentage of the staff. But having worked in the industry....

Oh, and it's not just O2 stores that will do that, all the networks and resellers will have staff who still keep the old "phone shop" mentality. Only takes 1 to sour the bunch etc.

sorry to keep editing this and adding to it....

I'm actually amazed they have payg stock in the first place though. Maybe thats what they mean by not available, literally, they only have contract stock. Doesn't sound like it makes sense, but in the mobile business it's like that.

[Anonymous]

Yeah... thanks for that.

Guess I'll just have to wait a bit longer until stocks are back up... but it did irk me that they clearly say on the website that iphone 5 is available to payg existing customers, and the display showed the payg price!

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

I remember when i went to purchase the iphone 4s from my local 02 high street store.

As soon as the employee knew i was buying it on payg the interest drained from his face, and all of a sudden their sales system was down and was told to come back in a couple of hours.

I simply walked around the corner to another 02 shop to play with the shop demo model while systems re initialised. I moved stores as i felt unwelcome in the 1st store, after being approached i was sold a 4s in minutes. While i was waiting for the transaction paperwork, i asked if their system was back up and running fine now. The answer was it had never been down !

CPW were even worse by simply using a marker pen to rub out the payg price !

The employees are targeted by their upper management to hit contract and upgrade figures and are rewarded higher than if selling a phone on a payg term !

At the moment all we are getting is that all iphone 5 payg phones have been snapped up.

>> Edit <<

Finally got my sim free unlocked iphone 5 16gb Black/Slate from the Meadowhall  Apple Store in Sheffield. Sim swap completed in store.

Happy days.