Dumb question probably about mobile phone contracts

Spudsey

I have a very basic nokia mobile on payg. I pay £10 every month to enable me to get free texts the next month. I also spend £5 of that £10 to enable me free web for the month. I tend to use the web quite a bit in the evenings, searching for recipe inspirations for dinner, bit of facebook and internet forums. My nokia doesn't display the web very well as its such a tiny screen and after looking on t-mobiles website and finding out I can get a decent HTC (??) phone for £10.50 a momth for free calls, texts and so much internet I'm thinking it might not be a bad idea after all to do a monthly contract.

So my dumb question??? When I pay my £10 on my current payg I get free texts except when I'm entering text comps which are obviously higher rates. So I pay for these plus any calls I make. I still end up with quite a bit of credit remaining at the end of the month which gets carried over to the next month so I've usually got about £15 ish on there sometimes.
If I pay £10.50 a month on a contract, will I actually have credit on my phone!? Or am I paying this money for my calls, texts and internet and thats it? And if I do have credit that I can actually see will this carry over?

Cash-Strapped.T32

Usually* contracts come with X-amount of inclusive minutes, and a number of inclusive texts.

Note that these are measured in minutes, not an amount of credit.
Same goes for texts, they're measured by how many you send, not by how much money you "spent" on them.
And as a rule, they only apply to standard-rate numbers.


When it comes to prem-rate numbers and texts, the cost will be added to the monthly bill, so in practice you'd pay £10.50, plus however-much you'd spent on comps.

My £10 30-day rolling contract works like this; If I were to ring a premium rate number I would end up paying my usual £10, plus the cost of the premium rate call, which often might come to several pounds on a mobile, hence my love for say no to 0870 to avoid these numbers.


* Some contracts might make special provision for such premium-rate numbers & text-numbers, letting you use your inclusive mins & texts on them but usually this is a specific feature of the contract & will be made obvious as part of the blurb.
If no mention is made of this, safest to assume you'll be charged as normal on-top of the regular charge.

Spudsey

Thank you will check t-mobile on texts. all makes sense now....I think!!!!

Buzby

In your situation, I'd just buy outright your preferred handset (much cheaper when secondhand) and put your old SIM into it. This means you have no other financial commitment to worry about (2 year lock-in, credit file being ruined etc).