Is £11pm worth staying for?

HoplessCase

Hi everyone,

I am currently with Virgin Mobile and have been for 16months on my 18month contract. I was planning on cancelling at the end of the contract and moving to GiffGaff PAYG. The deal with Virgin is £18pm and was meant to have a daily cap on internet cost but they kept seeming to charging me a fortune and I was paying much more than the £18 quid so wasn't impressed.
Current Deal: 200 mins, 500 texts

I have just bought an iPhone which I have a GiffGaff sim in and have basically been waiting to finish my contract so can move my number across. However Virgin phoned today and offered me:
500 mins, 3000 texts and unlimited data and as I don't know need a phone all for £11pm (they said it would normally be £25 but I kept a loyalty discount as don't want new phone).

So does this sound good? I imagine I would be unlikely to go over it which is the risk with their pricing. Also they said I was using only a small amount of data atm - I shouldn't be using any, the sim is in a phone that doesn't have web acess!!!! So that worried me, do you think it would matter if it was unlimited though? Must check what the fair use policy is...

Have 28 days to try it so maybe just try and use it loads and see what that adds up to?

Any thoughts would be welcome

Exhortation

What's the FUP on the "unlimited data"?

They aren't really giving you a "loyalty discount", are they? All they've done is knocked off the portion of the tariff that would normally cover the cost of a new phone and then dressed it up as something it isn't. Having said that, if the FUP is decent (1gb or more) then I'd say that's a good deal.

Oscar_The_Grouch

Virgin's FUP is 1Gb, but do you really want to be signing up for a 12/18/24 month contract without a phone? Three give you 100 minutes, 3000 texts, 2000 three to three minutes, 1Gb internet, free Skype and MSN for £10 on a rolling monthly contract. Add more minutes for £5.

HoplessCase

Thanks guys.

I have just bought a new iPhone 4 so don't really need a phone anyway. I suppose if I found a comparable deal with a phone I could sell it but I have heard Three don't have very good coverage and have only ever heard negative things about them in which case even for a free phone I don't want to be locked into a long contract with them.

With regards to the loyalty thing, I used to be with TMobile and I am sure they did something similar - even if you got a new phone you got a discount on the standard tariff. But as was mentioned, if you don't get the phone the extra money gets knocked off the tariff too.

Exhortation

Three have more 3g masts than any other company and that network is backed up by sharing Orange's 2g network where there is no 3g availability. Much of the bad press about Three is to do with snobbery since they have set themselves up at the "cheap" end of the market. I have been with them for just over a year and have been so happy that I persuaded my wife to move over to them, too. Their sim-only plans for both the 3GS and 4 look very good, to be fair, and are possibly worth consideration in your position.