Thanks matey. Very helpful
It’s about a mobile phone tariff, not you and your personal life.
Lots of people pay way over the top for mobile coverage, but just can’t be arsed to check out other deals. The same as other insurance / household bills / car insurance etc.
Off topic, but I have to respond. Some low paid people, as was on the TV today, spend money on takeaways to feed their kids. Total crap that they can’t afford to live. Go to the supermarket and buy veg. It’s cheaper and better for you than a takeaway. Just too friggin’ lazy.
It was about a mobile phone tariff until anyone had a different view to the thread starter then it got personal. The idea people are wasting money on things when they are hard up isn’t always true, many don’t do the things you talk about at all. They do not have the money to spend on take always or they carry a phone they are restricted to emergency calls only because they have little or no credit on them. Many low paid can’t get contracts that are cheaper, or utilities on a pre paid meter are all they can get.
I don’t see it as lazy as many are working damned hard they either don’t have time or understand how to change tariffs.
How do you know they have a restricted phone?..or a phone for that matter as it wouldn’t be pinned to their ears if they couldn’t use them…Do they all shout “Yo Julie, I have no credit and my phone is restricted to emergency calls only”
You always remind me of this joke
A friend of mine named Larry once told me, around the time of Bill Clinton's 2nd inauguration, "You know, President Clinton and I are buddies."
I said, "Sure you are."
He said, "No, really! Just turn on your TV tonight to the Inaugural Ball. You'll see me."
Sure enough, I turned on the TV that night, and there was Larry, talking to President Clinton with his arm around the guy.
Not long after, I was talking to Larry about how much I admired Johnny Depp as an actor. Larry said, "Oh, he's a good friend."
I said, "Noooo!"
Larry said, "Let's hop in my car". He drove me to the bar Johnny Depp owns, and as we sipped drinks, Johnny happened to walk by, immediately exclaimed "Larry!" and fell into Larry's arms.
This was getting spooky. Larry seemed to know everyone! I tested Larry with a few more people. We were back in the Bay Area. Larry was telling me he was buddy-buddy with Jerry Brown. We went to a Press Conference at Oakland City Hall, and just before Brown started answering questions, he said "I see my friend Larry out there."
Same kind of thing happened when we went to Bob Dylan's house and rang the bell. Bob answered the door, said "Larry!" gave my friend a big hug, and invited us in for drinks.
I was becoming a believer, but then one day we were having another conversation and Larry said something about "my friend the Pope."
I said, "You can't know him, too!"
Larry said, "Wanna bet?"
Larry happens to be very well off, so he flew the both of us to Rome. We took a cab to St. Peters Square. We were standing in the big crowd below the balcony of the Pope's apartment. Larry said, "Excuse me for a little while" and disappeared into the crowd.
A little while after that, John Paul appeared on the balcony and started blessing people. And who should be up there beside him but...you guessed it!
I was utterly amazed! I nudged a fellow standing next to me, pointed to the balcony, and said, "Look!"
The guy shaded his eyes with his palm, peered up at the balcony, turned back to me, and said, "Who's that guy up there with Larry?"
All this 1p for this and 1p a minute for that etc, how quaint.
My mobile service costs $25 a month (£12) and includes 1.5Gb data, unlimited texts and unlimited calls to any number including overseas calls to UK, USA, Malaysia and seven other countries.
Suits me, I still have a VOIP line at home for those odd people that won’t call a mobile number but that costs me nothing as part of my broadband fibre. I use my mobile phone for all my calls and is now the only number I give people.
How do you know they don’t is my question. I know some do because I’ve come across so many can’t ring into work or ask me to make a call for them. I work with poorer end of the market I cleaning I guess so I see how many live. I’ve always been lucky I didn’t feel a need to have a mobile before I could afford to use it properly. Others younger than us don’t have that luxury. If you want to ring 999 you had better be carrying a phone yourself as pay phones are very few these days.
I haven’t read your joke eyesight not good enough for long text today so apologies for that.
And your point is ? . . . . . .
It’s actually more like £15 a month in UK money and that means £180 a year !
1pMobile is minimum £30 a year and for that you would get 3000 texts, the equiv of 8 texts per day. Of course if that wasn’t enough you could deposit more money into the account.
For people who need a basic text/call service and who aren’t glued 24x7 to their mobile, then 1pMobile is the cheapest out there. Everyone has different needs.
OH dear, does it have to be explained?
I am taking part in a forum and my point is that I don’t have to worry about my phone costs because they are fixed. If I ring a government department or a business and they keep me waiting for 50 minutes I am not worrying about the cost. I can ring my brother in the UK or my friends in Malaysia and chat for as long and as often as I like.
As for the data who doesn’t need data? Your phone is your diary, GPS, ATM etc perhaps importantly your phone is your wifi; all my travel blog posts were uploaded from my computer using my mobile phone as a wifi hotspot.
As for the money yes that is more accurate I just divide by half for simplicity but £15 a month? that is just pocket money… what is it? five coffees? Get some perspective.
I suppose I should have added that if I can get this in a high wage country then you should be able to get the same or better for cheaper by shopping around in the UK. Farting around with saving a few cents here or there is absurd when you can get rid of the expensive landline and have a phone you can take anywhere for far less and not worry about call costs.
Yeah, yeah! I know all the Luddites will come out of the woodwork saying, “I don’t want people ringing me when I am in the park” and other such garbage. A mobile phone has an on/off switch, a silent mode, call blocking etc etc. No reason not to have one - far more control than your landline.
All very nice Bruce but the topic at hand was PAYG not contracts.
All you are doing there is making your case that for you a contract better suits your needs. That’s fine, but it’s not the topic of the thread.
In the world of PAYG mobiles, I’m offering the suggestion that 1pMobile is the cheapest offering out there.
I am not talking about contracts. Mine is month to month it ceases, or I can change plan or provider any time I like, unless you are foolish enough to buy a phone (or rather get a “free” phone) off a telco there are no contracts nowadays it’s all pay as you go.
I would like to comment regarding this new 1p mobile because I’m not so sure it’s as good as people are making out. Let me explain. I was with EE PAYG but it was costing a lot for calls. I never used data and had this switched off. I decided to switch to 1p Mobile as it seemed like a good deal and I would still be using EE and I was happy with their coverage. THe first thing I noticed was that the best signal strength I could get at home was two bars whereas before it was usually four bars. Then I found a bigger problem. When the phone is not being used money is being removed from my credits. It’s done in such a way that if you are using your phone on a daily basis you probably wouldn’t notice. I usually find 1p or 2p being removed every day. Now that may not seem like much but if it is happening to everyone they must be making a fortune over a year. Basically it’s theft. I have contacted 1p Mobile regarding this and been told that it’s a problem with EE which to be honest I don’t believe. I think their system is deliberately set up to remove small amounts from customers accounts. So if you have a 1p mobile account and can afford to not use it for a few days can I suggest that you go to their website and take a note of your balance and then check it every day over a few days. Make sure you have mobile data switched on and wi-fi switched on so your phone is using your broadband whilst at home. If you don’t use your phone for a few days and yet your credits are dropping ask why!
This seems a highly unlikely situation TBH but I will happily get repeated account balances using the 150 phone number to check.
I don’t personally use data as my phone is not a smart phone and I have no need to use a phone for connecting to the internet. I have a netbook for that.
What seems far more likely to me is that people with smart phone install no end of silly apps on their phones and just like with software on computers, many of those apps have settings which allow the app to be automatically updated.
When PC/laptop users connect to payable broadband services which operate on a per MB usage rate (such as on some cruise ships) this becomes vitally important. Naive unsavvy users will switch their laptops on and connect and before they know it, before they even start using the machine, the antivirus has gone off to the internet to look for and dowload all the latest virus definitions and a whole raft of other software applications have similarly used the connections to see if there are any software updates available and will go download those too. Windows itself will check for updates and download those too if you have your computer settings set that way.
Thus on a cruise ship, you learn to DISABLE absolutely everything before you ever start using their WiFi service.
I don’t have a smart phone, but I am confiden that all those apps will work in a similar way. Many will be automatically looking for updates, others will be sending data back to base and so on.
Unless you diligently and rather ruthlessly disable all those update aspects, then you phone is going to be constantly using your data allowance in the background and probably without you realising it.
Unlikely though it may be 1p Mobile have admitted that it is happening. this is the reply I got from them today;
Hi,
“It is a problem that, as far as I understand, EE are to blame for. I am still waiting for my superiors to get to the bottom of it. I agree; it is baffling. I hope to discover what the cause is too. I’m amazed its taking so long.”
Kind regards,
Penny.
I have already had credits refunded on several occasions because they know the problem exists and have known since day one. I have quite a few apps on my iPhone 6s but none of them are of the silly variety. If they are not useful they are not on it. I also have them switched off so that they can only be updated manually or at home using wi-fi rather than my mobile credits. On my laptop everything is set not to update automatically. Basically that is because I don’t trust Windows. I prefer to know what is being updated and have control over it.
So there certainly is a problem with 1p Mobile which they are blaming on EE, and which is happening to all users probably but in such small amounts they won’t notice, unless like me they don’t take anything at face value!
If they are saying EE is to blame then you have every right to demand a refund of the monies lost. Your contract is with 1pMobile, not EE. It’s up to them to resolve the issue they have with EE.
This is the latest reply I have got from 1p mobile which I think is nonsense to be honest. I have had mobile data turned off for days and the money is still dribbling out of my credits!
Hi,
We have finally had a response from EE regarding the daily data usage you have questioned. We can confirm that every day a mobile phone with data capability will attempt to register and synchronise it’s data settings with the network. This is a very small amount of data, but if you are not using data for any other reason this will register as a 1p charge.
Kind regards,
Penny.
So pretty much as I said then. Handshake, updates using data, same as a PC/Laptop.
Here is someone who really doesn’t have a clue about mobile phones, except how to text, call someone, take photos and download apps such as the one that holds my shopping lists etc.
I am thinking of looking for a better deal when our dual mobile contracts with EE ends in March 2018. We have paid £20 per phone for years. I know it is far too much, I love texting on my phone so pleased have so many free texts. Our bill is always only for the rental with no bills for texts/calls.
He who must obey is retiring in November. At work he always uses his work mobile, which not allowed for personal calls, hence always has two phones with him. He feels he no longer has any need for his mobile after November though and we can share my phone. His reasoning is that if either of us is out, we can phone the other on the BT landline which we have anytime free calls 7 days a week.
I am pondering on whether to just take out a pay-as-you-go rather than a monthly contract when I renew (as long as I can get free calls and texts on a pay-as-you-go) or should I look elsewhere other than BT. (Have our TV and Broadband with BT as well) and of course, they have just bought out EE with whom we are with.
the only problem is that I don’t know whether I will use up more in topping it up than it costs for the £20 currently paying for a monthly contract, I have never had a pay-as-you-go phone before.
Any tips please on which is best? Is pay-as-you-go good value or would you recommend a monthly contract?
I haven’t been able to ask anyone as all family members are on monthly contracts,which makes me wonder if pay-as-you-go is good value??.
It’s a tricky one to answer accurately without knowing exactly what you use and what you need (a need being for example a new phone upon renewal of contracts etc.). Network coverage where you are is a major factor in any decision too.
My better half for example has a sim-only contract with Virgin Mobile; that uses the EE network which you currently use so reception should be the same.
£9/month gives her unlimited texts, 25 hours worth of voice calls and 4GB of data - which is TBH more than enough but suits her needs. All this on a rolling monthly plan which is easy to manage online too.
If you don’t use mobile data (much; only a 300MB allowance with this one) they do a £6 plan with 5 hours of chat & unlimited texts.
As I said earlier though - it does depend upon what you use.
Personally there is no way would I be without a mobile as your hubby suggests, and I’m not a lover of the darned things.
For low users there’s a lot of choice which can cost quite literally pennies per month if you’re not a regular user, all PAYG rather than contract AFAIK.
It’s not as easy as it used to be but (again, just for example) Asda Mobile uses EE as their carrier & rates aren’t bad; not the best, but not bad.
If O2 coverage is good there’s Giffgaff, or Three’s rate of 3/2/1 is pretty good, indeed probably the best just now if their coverage is good where you are.
HTH
Errr how is Three’s rate 3/2/1 better than 1pMobile’s 1/1/1 ?
There is (afaik) no cheaper PAYG deal at the moment than 1pMobile which is why I started this thread.
1p per text
1p per min calls
1p per mb data
Only commitment is a topup of at least £10 every 4 months so £30 per year.
Much depends on whether a person wants to use a smart phone or a trusty old style phone with real buttons like the Nokias.