Orange, at least, have some form of internal point scoring system for customers. They don't divulge how many points you have, but if you push for better deals they'll keep giving you more and more until you use your points up.

I had many hours of fun with them just recently. I've been with orange for many years, and never had an official upgrade. A few years ago there was some unpleasantness involving them putting someone elses new phone on my bill as well as my own, and when the dust settled I have a new 6310i and 100 extra free minutes per month for 18 months. However, I was still on the original, ancient tariff.

Over the last year or so, though, I've been using the mobile a lot more for work, and the bills were getting silly. So I hunted around and found the O2 seemed to have the best published tariff. I called orange and threatened to leave, asking for a PAC code so I could transfer my number. Their retentions department bent over backwards to accomodate me, eventually offering 500 minutes and 250 texts a month, plus a new handset, for £25 pm. That is something like two and a half times the most minutes I've ever used, for less than the original tariff was sans calls! Possibly one could do better somewhere else, but it's a significant saving so I'm fairly happy.

It got very complicated when I accepted the offer though, as at that point they said I was still under contract and therefore inelegible for either an upgrade or to move my number. This was news to me, and I said as much. Loudly. It turned out that some company I had never heard of had applied a miniscule discount to my tariff (about £1 pm) in february, which had apparently locked me into a new 12 month contract.

The next few hours were fun they gave me a number for this company I had never heard of. As it turned out, neither had the phone system. So I called back and spoke to another orange rep. They gave me another number, and a different company name. This one was disconnected. So, once more back through the system, to someone more senior in customer services. She spent some time wading through records and muttering, before announcing that it seemed to have been actioned by an internal operator using a non-existant dealer code!

I was put on hold for about 15 minutes, and when she came back she had apparently talked to the regional systems director about it. The contract was cancelled without another word. I'd guess they had also just fired someone I was put back to the retentions department who proceeded with the upgrade.

Then, as she was just doing the final bit, the phone went dead. I called back, but the number didn't work. Neither did any other orange number. For anyone, anywhere! My upgrade was so complicated I must have broken orange Nothing turned up in the next few days, so a week later I called again. This time the rep found the order had been entered but not completed, so he finished it off. I finally got the new phone the next day.

Oddly enough, I had a cold call a couple of days ago from one of the companies whose name had come up during this fiasco. I was somewhat honest with my feelings toward them...

pca