Contract phone who owns it

Many mobile networks offer a range of extras and free gifts when you sign up for a contract mobile phone with them. These could be hands-free headsets or accessories packs or even PlayStation 4 or Xbox One consoles. This is becoming less common today though and vouchers or cashback tend to be the norm.

Some carriers also offer rewards schemes or value-adding benefits, such as two-for-one cinema tickets with EE or free Spotify with Vodafone. Keep an eye out for contracts with free gifts on our contract deals comparison page. The downside of monthly contracts is that over the course of the contract term, the total you pay out is much more than if you'd bought the phone outright and then signed up for a SIM only contract with the same allowance.

Check out all our mobile phone deals and offers instead. You can also read our guide to the best mobile contracts for more information. There's a common misconception that you can get a mobile phone on contract without having a credit check.

Mobile phone providers will check your credit score before accepting your application to make sure you'll be able to make the monthly payments. You can take steps to improve your credit score if you find yourself turned down for the contract.

Some options open to you if you're looking for contract phones with bad credit is to get a low end handset as providers see them as a lower risk if payments aren't made on time. For more detailed information, read our guide: mobile phone deals for bad credit. You can claim for multiple phones for different employees so long as you do not purchase more than one phone for each employee. However, although an additional phone for an employee is a BIK, it can still be a company expense as well.

With regard to pay-as-you-go top-ups: ensure that you log all calls that are relevant to business. Remember that you should only claim for calls made for business purposes, and if asked, you would need to be able to produce records to prove that the calls for which you are claiming were business related. Purchasing a mobile phone in your personal name means that you cannot claim the cost of the handset purchase as a company expense. If you take on a phone contract in your personal name, you will not be able to claim the tariff as a business expense either.

You can only claim the additional call charges that are business related and you must ensure that all call charges that relate to business are highlighted on the telephone bill in order to make a claim as a business expense.

In order to avoid this situation, if you are thinking of purchasing a handset, you can buy the contract in the business name and use it for business and personal calls. Remember, HMRC does allow one phone and contract per employee, that is, the full cost of purchase and tariff, including call costs. My advice is that, to avoid any hassle, buy the phone and contract in the company name. No problem. Please tell us the mobile number or email address you used to register.

Remember me. I forgot my password. I don't know my username. Re-send the code. Register for My Vodafone Reset my password. Login Register There are 0 errors:. Your password. Password strength. It came in a box, wrapped in plastic, and you probably carried it out in a bag with a receipt inside.

For the most part, the whole retail experience is pretty similar to your weekly trip to Best Buy to stock up on VCRs and keyboard cleaner. You paid money for these things, so they're yours, right? Well, the VCRs and keyboard cleaner are all yours — have fun weirdo. But in the case of that very expensive smartphone, ownership is a more complicated arrangement.

To put it bluntly: Your cellphone carrier probably owns your phone. Even though you paid for it with your own money, chances are the carrier subsidized a significant portion of the sale price as an incentive for you to sign a one- or two-year contract that's a dozen pages long and drowning in legalese.

This is not news. It's pretty much how cell phones have worked in this country since the s, but some recent changes to the laws that govern these contracts mean that you can keep your phone after the contract expires — the physical device, that is — but you lose the right to actually use it.

Over the weekend, it became illegal to unlock your phone.