the new 3 pandg tarriff help

stokefan

a friend of mine is looking at switching to this tarriff as its ggreat for her needs

but she wants to know if she can buy minute pack, eg, 200 mins for a tenner bolt on or anything.

also if she can use the skype to call landlines for free too, (the ones when you get a skype number not just an email address)

also if she tops up a tenner, and gets 300 txts, then tops up another tenner 20 days later does that give her 300 txts on top of original allowence. and does the bolt on go on straightaway or after the 90 days are up(from original free xtra)

peregrin

You can't buy minute packs on the new 3 PAYG tariff, you could on the old one (the "Stretch" bundles) but these are not available to new customers any more IIRC.

Skype on 3 cannot be used to call landlines in the UK - you can call overseas numbers but you will need Skype credit or a Skype subscription to do this. I guess this is to protect 3's revenue.

When you top-up, it resets your allowance immediately - so for instance, if on day 1 you top up £10, you get 300 texts, 150Mb internet etc. If you use 150 texts and 75Mb Internet and on day 7 you top-up another £10, it goes back to 300 texts and 150Mb internet straight away. If however you topped up £15 on day 7, it would go up to 500 texts and 150Mb internet because you get 200 more texts when you top up £15 as opposed to £10.

Remember to tell your friend that you get 2x as many texts when topping up online - a good thing to do!

So basically when you need more texts/Internet you can just top up immediately and you'll get the free stuff immediately.

It's not such a good deal for x-net phone calling because the price of standard calls to all networks have gone up from 12ppm to 20ppm and minute packs are not available. But you do get free 3 to 3 calls instead. And 20ppm is still better than, say, O2's xnet rate which is 25ppm!

stokefan

it does seem very good deal, when my contract is up i might just stick a 3 sim in it as well

cheers for the info

do you know if the usage on 3 shows up as used straight away, so you always know how much data you have used?

thanks again

peregrin

Well I mean it's a good deal as long as you're not a heavy x-net or landline caller. A £10 top-up will only buy you 50 minutes. I think it's aimed very squarely at the "digital generation" who type rather than talk, what with lots of free texts, internet and so on. This stuff is dirt cheap for 3 to provide, no paying termination charges etc, bandwidth is cheap.

I also think the free 3-3 calls are so people can get all their mates signed up for free calls too.

My experience with mobile broadband is that the My3 usage trackers are fairly real-time, yes. No reason to suspect that it would be any different