phone on contract but too expensive....

Deals_2

should we go on contract again. we tend to use sporadically a lot for family and friends and the odd call for other things when we are out. we have been on contract but it feels as if we are spending a lot of money on pay as you go along. what the best rates and should we go down the route of contract again? i find it such a pain to have a bind to a provider again as we had so many problems with carphone warehouse. thanks in advance.

Kerr_Avon_2

There's no real answer to your question... but I'll give it a go anyway!

There are only two reasons for going down the contract route.

1. You want one of the latest handsets that would cost hundreds of pounds sim-free and/or 2. You use a lot of talktime and/or texts (and possibly data transfer as well if that's an issue, though even with contract I think in most cases you have to pay extra for anything above minimal internet usage).

If point 1 is a factor, then your usage is pretty much irrelevant, as it will probably work out cheaper to get the phone on a contract, tailoring said contract the minimum possible tariff to cover your usage needs.

If you are not bothered about a fancy phone, then you need to do some sums and work out a rough average of your usage over a few months (how much have you spent on top-ups, how many minutes did you talk for, how many texts sent, etc). Then have a look at the online tariffs and see if they work out better value than PAYG.

I can only talk for my own experience - I finally caved in about seven years ago and got a cheap PAYG purely cos I was freelancing in my job at the time and was missing shifts when I couldn't be contacted. I rarely used it to make calls. Just the odd text and receiving calls. Only had to top up by a fiver or tenner every three or four months.

Then after a couple of years, phones started getting much nicer and the features were improving, so I got another PAYG, bit more expensive, more features, but still the same usage pattern.

A couple of years on and there had been a huge leap in phones - color displays, cameras etc, which were just starting to get common at the time of my previous purchase.

And this time, I decided I wanted a (relatively) fancy handset - plus I was now a lot more dependant on my mobile than I used to be - and so opted for the contact route to get the handset I wanted plus enough minutes and texts for my needs. Was £19 a month, a lot more than I had been spending on PAYG, but I offset the cost (in my own mind) with the realisation that the inclusive minutes would be enough to mean that I could stop using my home phone almost completely and reduce the bill on that to almost zero.

Now, it's upgrade time again and I'm looking for the cheapest way to get an N95!

So, anyway, back at the point of this post, work out how much you use in a typical month and take it from there.

From your post, I'd guess that a PAYG is fine, so long as you don't want the fanciest phone.

Kerr_Avon_2

oops. Accidental doublepost. Sorry!:p