Cheapest PAYG Mobile? 1p

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41

I was talking about “For low users”, in response to shropshiregirl’s post.
So perhaps you could explain how £30 per year is less than the £5 (or maybe even less) that Three’s 1-2-3 would cost if you only use the service rarely as shropshiregirl’s post would suggest? Read post two in this very thread for confirmation. :wink:

In the case to which I was responding the smart phone or old-style phone debate is irrelevant; it would appear that if shropshiregirl’s husband would continue using a mobile phone it would be a basic model for emergency use only.

I appreciate that your OP recommendation may be appropriate for some despite even the reported problems with this MVNO as shown earlier in this thread; not however in this case it would appear.

FYI and just as a polite pointer I note that 1p Mobile were reprimanded by the Advertising Standards/Ofcom:

The Advertising Standards Authority ruled that two adverts on 1p Mobile’s website and Facebook page broke the rules around fair advertising.

But it’s possible for consumers to buy £10 top-up deals from elsewhere that would work out cheaper than 1pMobile, Ofcom said.

http://simonlydeals.co.uk/1p-mobile-told-pull-uks-cheapest-claim/

42

ShropshireGirl’s situation came in 2 parts.

Firstly she wants to renew her own phone which is currently contract. Secondly her husband is thinking of not having a phone at all and sharing the one phone with ShropshireGirl.

Taking the first of these. ShropshireGirl says she loves to text and is pleased to get loads of “free” texts with her current contract. Of course they are not in the least bit free as she is paying a lot of money for the overall contract.

1pMobile, charging just 1p per text, 1p per min for calls would be the cheapest PAYG offering for her imo. THREE charge twice that amount for texts and three times as much for calls. As a heavy text user she would pay far more with THREE than she would with the 1pMobile minimum yearly topup of £30.

Alongside that is the core issue of THREE’s coverage which for me has always been dire. I remember buying a THREE dongle for my laptop some years ago and I had to return it fairly quickly as the network coverage was just so useless.

I recently bought a THREE PAYG sim for my phone (before I learned about 1pMobile) and again the network coverage was dire. I have a dual sim phone and have kept my old Vodafone PAYG sim in there and my wife was having to send texts on that sim because they often wouldn’t get through on the THREE number.

I ditched the THREE sim as soon as I took receipt of my 1pMobile sim. I get 3-4 bars of signal strength with 1pMobile (EE network) whereas I get 0-1 with the THREE network.

It’s a no brainer for me with the cheaper 1pMobile tariff.

On the second issue, ShropshireGirl’s husband we appear to be talking about an emergency phone that would hardly ever get used (though in practice I’m doubtful whether that would really be the case)

But if so, I would say that he should get a Vodafone PAYG sim for that. The costs to text are hugely more expensive at 14p per text but provided you’re never going to use that facility except in emergency then it doesn’t matter. What does matter is the coverage. You will simply not beat Vodafone’s hugely strong and widespread signal giving you 4 bars of signal even in buildings and car parks.

For an emergency phone, that would be the highest consideration.

Overall for ShropshireGirl herself, as you already highlighted, it’s difficult to assess without understanding exactly what her phone usage habits are. I assume she has a smart phone so she may be best with a contract if she intends on using a lot of data for apps and GPS related stuff like maps.

I recommend 1pMobile for those people who want to stay simple, with a non-smart phone and who just want to call and text very cheaply.

43

Oh dear, I seem to have hit a nerve although that was not my intention - and sadly now you are providing what may be erroneous advice.
As I very clearly say right at the beginning of my post: “It’s a tricky one to answer accurately without knowing exactly what you use and what you need”.

I think we all get by now that you’re a fan of 1p Mobile.
Yet again if it suits you and some others, fine.
I have no problem with that.
But it will not suit everyone and if even Ofcom say that cheaper can be found, to refute that possibility seems nothing more that either denial or argumentative.

Just for example - Virgin’s £9/month bundle I describe in my earlier post with 1500 minutes, 4GB data and unlimited texts.
On your 1p Mobile tariff the data and calls alone to cover that usage would therefore cost £15 + £40 = £55 - and this before any texts! 900 as a mix of minutes/texts/MB data is not enough for many people. :wink:

Now I’m not suggesting that either Virgin or Three are necessarily the way forward for Shropshiregirl. I am however providing options and examples rather than recommending something which may well not be appropriate to their needs.

44

She says it here:
“I am thinking of looking for a better deal when our dual mobile contracts with EE ends in March 2018”

You quoted in regards to Virgin mobile:

"£9/month gives her unlimited texts, 25 hours worth of voice calls and 4GB of data "

Which is a staggering £180 per year. Crazy money. Regardless, that’s a contract deal tariff not PAYG. This is a thread about PAYG not contracts.

You also said that :

“they do a £6 plan with 5 hours of chat & unlimited texts.”

That’s still £72 per year ! And again it’s a contract not PAYG.

Just don’t get your point or intention here. You appear to be arguing for the sake of it. Having to make ONE chargeable transaction (call/text) every 180 days is meaningless. That would be 2 texts in a year at 14p per text. i.e. 28p.

For an emergency phone getting a Vodafone PAYG sim would be a no-brainer. Pretty much guaranteed great reception wherever the emergency took place and only 28p commitment per year to keep that service active. One of the reasons I still maintain my Vodafone PAYG sim in my dual-sim phone. A total no-brainer.

Again what’s your point here? This thread is about the cheapest PAYG mobile. It seems that being unable to stump up a cheaper PAYG alternative you are instead attempting to compare PAYG with contract tariffs. That’s absolutely not what this thread is about. PAYG and Contract are completely different beasts.

If people want to pay huge yearly charges for contracts that’s just fine. Each to their own. Not for me though and equally not for a great many others. I noted that the Virgin T&Cs stated that:

“The charge for your airtime plan will increase with your July bill each year from July 2018.”

Nice !

Nothing you have said or suggested has thus far changed my view on the topic. 1pMobile DOES seem to be the cheapest PAYG option currently on the market. Very happy to be proved otherwise but as far as I can see, nothing currently comes close to :

1p per text
1p per min calls
1p per MB data

With only a £30 per YEAR commitment.

If you think otherwise then point me to a cheaper PAYG tariff.

45

Oh dear, it now becomes apparent that you seek nothing more than disagreement; what a shame.

I have.
Three will cost nothing. No commitment. It depends however upon usage.
:mrgreen:
Your £30 per year commitment equates to a mix of 3000 minutes, texts and/or MB of data per year. Since that is insufficient for the needs of many, there are better alternatives.
But no, you persist in attempting to contradict the findings of Ofgem:

But it’s possible for consumers to buy £10 top-up deals from elsewhere that would work out cheaper than 1pMobile, Ofcom said.

Now, since this risks becoming no more than a disagreeable exchange I will decline further participation.

46

Please don’t, I have just bunged another bag of popcorn in the microwave…

47

:lol:

There is a company called FreedomPop.
Which is (surprise, surprise) free.
Well free for 200 minutes, 200 texts and 200 MB of data every month. :wink:
Mind you, that piggybacks on the Three network too so I imagine it doesn’t count as being the cheapest eh? :mrgreen:

48

ETA - I noted a silly arithmetic error on my part in post # 45 - the annual cost should of course read £480 and not £560.
(£20x12x2.)
Doh.
My apologies for the silly error.

49

One thing no one has mentioned though is coverage, I like three the idea of using it however fills me with dread as their coverage round here is patchy at best. My husbands company used them but unless he was on top of multi storey carpark in middle of Woking he had no calls or data usage, so if you lived in your car up there it was ideal not so much for anyone else :mrgreen:

Many round here have changed to BT as it has excellent coverage dearer but at least we can get what we are paying for. Only other one ever worked was orange but they aren’t around any more.

50

Coverage has been mentioned - though there’s a lot to pick through now admittedly.
Locally Vodaphone are strangely not good in places with zero reception at OH’s place of work in the middle of town.
Three however has good reception.

51

I admit to not having read all of this thread. Husband and I are in the same position that you will find yourselves shropshiregirl.

We share one mobile phone and if one is out we phone the other on the BT landline. The mobile phone is PAYG which I top up online as and when is necessary. We have never had a mobile phone monthly contract so I am unable to advise you. I will say it works for us as my husband is disabled and so we are mostly at home together.

52

The above essentially is admission that in fact THREE’s PAYG is NOT at all cheaper than 1pMobile. Claiming that it is cheaper purely on the basis that there is no minimum topup commitment is frankly puerile.

Let’s just use your own figures there. You’re saying that 3000 texts in a year would be insufficient for most people’s needs. So if we take that as a bare minimum we can assess the cost of that in the THREE PAYG tariff.

For those still reading, THREE charge :

3p per min for calls
2p per text
1p per MB data

So 3000 texts would cost 3000 x 2p = £60 !!!

That is of course twice the price of 1pMobile who charge

1p per min for calls
1p per text
1p per MB data

Let’s do the same numbers looking at calls not texts

3000 mins of calls on THREE PAYG would cost £90 !!!

The same 3000 mins on 1pMobile would cost just £30 !!

Really I’m not sure who you’re trying to kid here.

The THREE network is abysmal in terms of coverage compared to most other networks. That alone is reason enough for me personally to stay away from it. Even in some major cities I don’t get 4 bars of signal with THREE whereas with Vodafone and others it is always full signal strength.

THREE PAYG costs 3 times as much as 1pMobile for calls

THREE PAYG costs 2 times as much as 1pMobile for texts

This thread was created to highlight, for the benefit of others, that 1pMobile exists and is very clearly THE CHEAPEST PAYG tariff available on the market today.

I don’t work for 1pMobile, I have no vested interest or profit to be gained by promoting them. I didn’t know they existed myself until I dug around and having done so and having realised it is by a country mile the cheapest, and because it operates on the EE network which appears to have far better network coverage than THREE, I can only recommend it.

BTW you may wish to note that THREE also make false claims on their website. It says:

“We have the lowest Pay As You Go rates in the UK.”

That is clearly Billy BS or else is pedantically caveated with some very unique special circumstance scenario.

3p/2p/1p is NOT better that 1p/1p/1p !

53

I think no two people use their phones same way or on same area so everyone can be right for their own usage and area. Trying to point score is pointless unless you are both using them identically.

54

The usage doesn’t change the tariff Julie. The tariff is what it is and that of 1pMobile is clearly the cheapest of all current available PAYG tariffs.

We can do any amount of scenarios and examples of costs with different levels of user usage but unless we are considering someone who wouldn’t use at least 3000 texts or 3000 mins of calls in an entire year we are always going to arrive at the same conclusion. Which is you can’t beat 1p per text, 1p per min call, 1p per MB data.

Still I am willing to be proved wrong if there is a cheaper tariff.

55

I have.
You ignored it (as I said you would).
FreedomPop:
https://uk.freedompop.com/uk?experience=organic.default

Free is really Free, no gimmicks or games. FreedomPop believes mobile access is a right and not a privilege and is committed to offering basic levels of mobile service 100% truly free. If you need more than basic, we hope you will pay for our bigger plans that are priced well below the market.

Free.
An MVNO using the Three network.
200 minutes, 200 texts and 200 MB of data every month, free.

:wink:

Yes I know “But it’s Three …” - well some people cannot get coverage with other operators too but it doesn’t stop those that do from using the service.

Now tell us how free is more expensive than a minimum £30 per annum?
:confused2:

56

I’m not going to try to go cheaper than zaphod :mrgreen: but to most of us usage does matter if I followed your lead and it cost me more than I pay now it would matter to you too I promise !

57

There are no free lunches.

The following review website (the first I Googled) came up with a plethora of irate customers saying this company is a scam, that it applies lots of random charges to your account and that you can’t contact their customer services.

Not really a worthy recommendation TBH.

Just one of the reviews:

“They ask for your credit card for the “free” service. Sketchy. Then they TRY to upsell you over and over. I carefully declined all upsells - I just wanted to try the “free” service” So I was activated and good to go. Only problem is is that it does not work. At all. I checked my credit card and found they were hitting it with charges - so NO means yes to them clearly. And my phone got taken over with tons of spam and windows popping open trying to get me to download things and install things. And there is NO customer service AT ALL. So I am left with money gone, lots of hours wasted, a phone that is deluged with garbage, and now I have to cancel my credit card because of the scam company hitting it. And the service does not work. I can not make call or get data. It just says I can not make a call from this phone. And no customer service at all means they get away with it. Time for a federal investigation"

58

What a pointless comment - just for example then since you mention “lunch”, try telling that to those using the huge variety of free meals service for the homeless or food banks.

And yet strangely FreedomPop too do offer a free service. :wink:
BTW this is not a “first” here in the UK to offer free mobile calls & texts, either.

I thought you only wanted to disagree and it seems I am proven correct.

Nice review link and selective quotation; anything to prove negativity towards whatever you do not approve of, eh?
Did you not note that the majority of reviews there are from outside the UK - or did you maybe conveniently disregard that part?
Why did you not tell us what the Trustpilot score was?
Okay, I will:
FreedomPop score on Trustpilot = 5.5 out of 10.
By comparison, EE = 1.5 out of 10 and Vodafone 0.5 out of 10. So according to Trustpilot, which is the worst?
:smiley:

Before you begin (as I know you will) to counter and say “but Trustpilot scores 1pMobile at 8.6” - yes, but you pay for it, as has been said before.

As for coverage - well three has 9.2 million customers as of December 2016 according to their website, plus how many MVNO’s? For example, Carphone Warehouse’s “iD mobile” uses that network too. So as I said yesterday, coverage cannot be as poor as your experience suggests.
People complain about coverage of all the networks. :wink:

Don’t mistake this as a personal recommendation of FreedomPop BTW. It is not. What it is though is proof that you can get cheaper than your recommendation which is, after all, what you yourself asked for.

And:

These statements have conclusively been proven incorrect.

Again, I am not personally recommending FreedomPop; I am showing what is available.
As a free service there are bound to be limitations.
To which end if anyone is interested, here is a 16-odd minute video with quite a comprehensive review.
From here in the UK. :wink:

There would appear to be little point in going further because you seem determined in your personal crusade.

Absolutely so, and this was the point of my initial response.
What a shame that the OP does not recognise this fact when even Ofcom do.

59

You’ve proved nothing Zaphod I’m sorry to say.

I truly hope noone has followed your leads to the Freedompop “free” mobile service. People have had to close down their bank accounts and credit cards to prevent further charges.

You know full well I did not cherry pick one negative public review. The internet is literally littered with terrible reviews of Freedompop and 90% of them are about the same scam which is customers appear to be being routinely charged for things they didn’t sign up for.

Here are some reviews from the actual Freedompop website community forum itself:

I shall leave readers here to make their own common sense judgement as to your “free” mobile service !!

https://forums.freedompop.com/us/categories/freedompop-uk

“I have been charged 12.98 this morning for no reason what so ever want a refund don’t know why this has happened again”

“I don’t know why I got 4 sim cards but I only assigned 1 a phone number and downgraded to the free plan before the end of the trial. Can you please refund the 3 charges and cancel the 3 sims? Also, I didn’t realize I needed to cancel the services that were included in the trial, so I canceled that too.”

“Unauthorized/unexplained charges
My paypal account was charged $89.94 and nowhere on my Freedom Pop billing page is the charge listed. What is this for and how to I stop the charge?”

“Being charged £3.99 for a ‘Free plan’
Received confirmation as follows: ‘This email is to inform you that your data plan has been downgraded to the free plan.’
But being charged £3.99 per month subsequently since October 2016 and have not used the phone and have '0’s shown on my use log. A full refund of the amounts withdrawn from my account would be greatly appreciated”

“I ordered a FreedomPop SIM in June having seen the deal online. Unfortunately the SIM wasn’t delivered and I moved on. I notice, however, that in July and August FreedomPop helped themselves to deposits of £10.98 from my account. Again, I received nor activated the SIM. How can this be?”

“I signed up for the free Freedompop account, which was 99p for the sim. I immediately checked my account and ensured I was registered for the Basic 200 package. I have since discovered I have received four monthly charges of £3.99 for the Premier Service which i did NOT sign up for, consent to or upgrade to.”

“Hi laura,
I had exactly the same problem as you - being billed for service NOT signed up for. Having been aware of this problem, I asked my credit card service NOT to accept any charges from FreedomPop - so no more charges!”

and so on and on and on.

100s and 100s of similar reviews/comments across the internet.

No there is no free lunch. Someone always has to pay somewhere in the chain.

60

Such responses give the appearance of no more than an infantile tantrum.
You’re sore because I provided a service cheaper than you thought available, so proving your statements wrong.

You did not ask for the best PAYG service nor for the most reliable, so the rest of your post is irrelevant.
If you had said for example “still I am willing to be proved wrong if there is a cheaper and equally reliable tariff.” you might have a point.
You did not, though - and the FreedomPop service obviously works for some people otherwise they could not continue trading.
As with much in life these things are relative; if you want the very cheapest there will be an alternative price to pay. :wink:

I proved that there is a cheaper alternative to your option.
It might not be the “bees knees”; it might indeed not the the best thing since the invention of the wheel but it is cheaper.
“Free” beats “£30” every time.
:smiley: