best moby deal for limited use

foxie_1968

My 11 year old uses her moby to mainly text us to let us know where she is. We don't encourage her to talk on the phone due to government guide lines on usage for young people.

When in school she doesn't really use her phone but at the weekend may send 10 texts and make the odd call.

She is currently with T-mobile on pay as you go but find it a pain to top up and worry that she may be out of credit when she needs to contact us.

I am with Orange currently but they won't give me a deal for her, only for myself. They do have a good deal at the mo but it ties you in for 3 years and I'm thinking that by the time she is 14 our requirements may have changed greatly so don't want to be locked in to that.

We also have virgin tv/broadband at home and believe they are offering some good deals.

As someone with little experience of all this I'd be grateful for any advice as I have been with Orange for many years and just try and get the best deal out of them everytime my contract is up for renewal (which is in Jan)

Thanks for reading this (oops I did waffle on):o

Stuart_W

Am I right in thinking that you are looking at contract deals, rather than PayAsYouGo to avoid issues with topping up?

There is a £2/month SIM-only from The Phone Co-op. It will not necessarily be money saving (depending what you compare it with) but it works on a monthly bill - like a contract - rather than TopUps.

You don't get anything included for the £2/month fee, but calls are 7p/min and texts are 7p each. The minimum charge for short calls is just 1.175p, most PAYG deals often have a higher minimum fee. I personally like this because I'd rather made a short call than send a quick text (but I'm a dying breed these days!!!)

Just like a contract you get fully itemised billing, you can log in for online call info.

There are no free minutes likes the Orange £5/month deal, but there is no 36 month tie in either. Just 30 days notice and you can move to another deal when something better comes along. Phone Co-op themselves also offer higher-use bundles, too, if that is more appropriate in the future.

The Phone Co-op's service uses Orange signal so that shouldn't be a problem if you are familiar with Orange.

http://www.thephone.coop/residential/payu
They have two slight variations - one offers 7p/min for all landline and mobile calls, another offers 4p/min landline calls but other mobile calls rise to 11.5p/min.

foxie_1968

Thanks Stuart and yes we are worried that if we go with a standard PAYG she'll run out of credit when she needs to use the phone the most.

We do prefer her to text more than call as at the mo because we've been told that her young still developing skull may not cope with the radiation/radio signals that comes off a mobile phone. Although there is no proof yet that this is an issue there is no proof that it doesn't as mobile phones are still quite 'new' in the scheme of things.

Once again thanks and we'll look into that option.

lucylucky

http://shop.o2.co.uk/tariffs/simplicity/12_months

£10 a month gets you unlimited texts and 300 minutes

Stuart_W

For light usage, most monthly deals are going to mean paying for stuff you're not using, which is why the Phone Co-op's £2/month came to mind.

You may also want to consider the option of sticking with what she's got for now, but buying an "emergency" £5 top up voucher (one that has a number to type in, not a swipe card or cash machine top up).

This top-up voucher can be stored as a number in the phone and then retrieved when necessary. Would this be too complicated? I think a printed top-up voucher number like this lasts 12 months, so there is no rush to use it.

lozzaman

I'm fairly sure T-Mobile allows 2 texts out of credit to a number you are trying to call when you run out credit.

billsavings

Orange Payg offer £2.50p emergency credit if needed . Its called the Orange Reserve Tank.

Wintermute

Stick to PAYG unless you're topping up more than £10 a month and as for emergency set her up with a reverse charges service such as http://www.08000mumdad.co.uk or http://www.0800reverse.co.uk (first 2 sites I found), they both seem quite expensive, but if it saves you spending £10 a month on a SIM only contract by just topping up £10 or whatever every few months it'll still be a saving.

foxie_1968

Thanks for your advice everyone

Bettingmad

What about something like this? http://www.tescomobilepaymonthly.com/product-page.aspx?!!!!!f62d9fe2-e915-4d87-a821-3ce89bdc7a13&so=1

You could use this as a bargaining tool with Virgin to see what they could do.

lurkylurky

For my DS's birthday I signed him up for a 24 month contract with Orange through Dial-a-Phone and he's getting a Blackberry Curve 8520 with 300 x-network minutes, unlimited texts, 500 mb of mobile internet and unlimited Blackberry e-mail. It works out at £14.58 a month (after cashback via redemption). I signed up via Topcashback and it's currently tracking at £35 with payment due on 31st October. If Topcashback pays that will bring the cost down to £13.13 a month. And DF will be getting £20 for recommending me to Dial-a-Phone.

The Dial-a-Phone website was easy to use and Customer Services was good when I phoned with queries before placing the order.

The only downside so far was the fact that phone insurance and a subscription to a Gadget Helpline (free for 1 month then £17.94 every 6 months) is automatically added to the order. I cancelled the Gadget Helpline which was easy to do online and phoned to cancel the phone insurance when the letter arrived with the policy details.

So far he's hardly used any of the talktime minutes but makes good use of the texts and Blackberry internet services (twitter, facebook etc). We have registered online so we can keep an eye on his usage. I'm also on Orange and have just been given another magic number so have him as a magic number and he has me as his magic number so any calls we make to each other don't come out of our allowances.

To be honest, like you, I was concerned about signing up for 2 years in case his usage changes. My contract will be up for renewal in February and if need be I could take over his contract and sign him up for something else. But so far so good. He loves it.