Mobile Contract and cancelling due to leaving country

huliogeordio

Hi, I'm wondering if anyone has any knowledge/experience with mobile phone contracts and if you need to pay off the entire thing if leaving the country or whether you are able to just leave paying your last months direct debit? Any help would be great as dont want to be lumped with a massive fee on top of all the other financial stresses.

Cheers

Procrastastudy

huliogeordio wrote: »

Hi, I'm wondering if anyone has any knowledge/experience with mobile phone contracts and if you need to pay off the entire thing if leaving the country or whether you are able to just leave paying your last months direct debit? Any help would be great as dont want to be lumped with a massive fee on top of all the other financial stresses.

Cheers

You have to pay the contract until you've met the minimum period, be that 12, 18 or 24 months. You can continue to pay it month by month and ask the network if they can downgrade your plan (they may not) or you can pay a lump sum.

garhjw

Well if you signed a contract you should honour it in terms of early cancellation fees. However, if you are leaving the country I doubt they can pursue you abroad for it. However, you will still be liable when you return...

dudara

OP - you should try ringing the network and see what they say. They may have some process in place for dealing with this situation.

dave98

Op, I moved abroad too and had 7 months left on contract, I downgraded and paid those 7 months, otherwise it would go towards your credit history, remember you will be coming home again sometime!!

cookie1977

You'd normally have to pay it off or if you can find someone else to take over the contract this has been known to be acceptable by most networks. As Dave above said, some networks allow you to down grade one you're a few months in to a contract so that the cost of paying the contract off isn't as high but I know for a fact not all networks allow this. Vodafone recently changed policy to restrict this.

Dave is wrong on his last point though. Any out standing debts would not go towards your credit history as the mobile networks are not part of that process.

Yakuza

cookie1977 wrote: »

Dave is wrong on his last point though. Any out standing debts would not go towards your credit history as the mobile networks are not part of that process.

That's a bit of a blasé attitude towards credit history. What if the mobile provider gets a judgement against the person who breaks their contract? That will show up on any credit check. I personally think it's easier in the long run to honour or buy out the contract that would be broken by leaving the country.

OP, contact them and see what they say.

cookie1977

Yakuza wrote: »

That's a bit of a blasé attitude towards credit history. What if the mobile provider gets a judgement against the person who breaks their contract? That will show up on any credit check. I personally think it's easier in the long run to honour or buy out the contract that would be broken by leaving the country.

I was speaking on the point of credit history which it will not affect. Yes they may go to get a judgement if the fee outstanding is high enough but I'm not here to argue the rights or wrongs of the OP's decision.

goz83

Its now very difficult to lower the tariff, because the price of the phone is subsidised, often by hundreds of euros, depending on the price plan. It used to be possible to take out the highest plan, get the phone for nothing and then lower the plan to the cheapest tariff after a single month. This was then pushed out to 6 months and is now next to impossible to do.

OP. more info would be useful.

how long is contract term?
how far into it are you?
how much per month?
and maybe...who is the SP?

dave98

cookie1977 wrote: »

You'd normally have to pay it off or if you can find someone else to take over the contract this has been known to be acceptable by most networks. As Dave above said, some networks allow you to down grade one you're a few months in to a contract so that the cost of paying the contract off isn't as high but I know for a fact not all networks allow this. Vodafone recently changed policy to restrict this.

Dave is wrong on his last point though. Any out standing debts would not go towards your credit history as the mobile networks are not part of that process.

Cookie1977. You are right, I stand corrected on the credit history issue

jessie_pinkman

what if you just stopped paying and left the country (for a long period), they wouldn't be able to catch you

slimjimmc

Mod: Thread has been dead for so so long, no sense in resurrecting it. Closed.