MSE News: Plusnet Mobile customer? You need to switch provider as it's closing down

Murmansk

I don't think it does have to be a bundle of £10 or more, once you have obtained the SIM having paid your £10 you can use that £10 credit to buy a bundle ("Boost") that costs less than £10 if you want - I did anyway. 

ripplyuk

Murmansk said:

I don't think it does have to be a bundle of £10 or more, once you have obtained the SIM having paid your £10 you can use that £10 credit to buy a bundle ("Boost") that costs less than £10 if you want - I did anyway. 

Thanks, but that’s what I was trying to avoid. I don’t want to have to top up £10 and then buy a bundle. I just want the £5 bundle as a rolling 30 day contract, like my current plan. It seems that 1p want customers to pay for a recurring bundle but also buy credit as well. Unless I’m misunderstanding something. 

tinker411

ripplyuk said:

tinker411 said:

ripplyuk said:

I’m confused about 1p mobile too. On their help page, it says to join and get a new sim I have to top up by £10 initially and then top up again every 4mths. The bundles seem to be something I’d have to buy every month out of this credit. Is that how it works? I can’t be bothered having to log in, top up and buy a bundle every month. I just want a 30 day rolling contract. 

No.

How it works is - when you sign up you can either:

topup £10 and go payg (at 1p per minute/text/MB), topping up at least £10 every 4 months after to keep the sim active

OR

buy your preferred bundle (£10 or more) then when your sim arrives and you activate it your bundle is ready to go (you'll get confirmation texts, one for calls and the other for data, to say when the initial bundle is applied - subsequent confirmations will be by email, mine have been anyway) and it will renew automatically each month, taking the charge from your debit or credit card. I've got the £20 monthly bundle on a sim in my mobile router and it's running like clockwork.

Why does it have to be £10 or more? The bundle I want is only £5 a month. 

Quirk of the system as far as I can make out, as bundles of £10 or more are charged to a card while bundles under £10 are charged to credit balances.

That said, according to https://www.1pmobile.com/order-your-SIM.taf?simtype=sb1 you can order the £5 bundle directly, for £10, then they'll take the £5 bundle out of your credit balance each month going forward. You won't need to log in to top up each month though, they'll do an automatic topup of £10 each two months instead.

savergrant

To my understanding a topup of £10 extends the service period, a smaller topup does not. It may simply be that 1pmobile will not process a credit card transaction for under £10, so to buy a cheaper bundle you would need to add £10 credit and then run it down. This would complicate auto renewal as some months you would need to make a topup in order to have sufficient credit balance to purchase the bundle.
But I might be wrong on this.

Murmansk

I've pasted in below some text from the My Account area of my 1pMobile account which might help clarify things:

Use credit to extend your top-up date
Your next top-up is due on Tue 23 Apr 2024 and you currently have £18.97 in your account

You can use £10 of your credit to extend your next top-up due date by 120 days. This will leave you with £8.97 of credit and extend your top-up due date to Wed 21 Aug 2024.

Please deduct £10 from my credit and extend my top-up date by 120 days

Add credit to your phone

Murmansk

savergrant said:

To my understanding a topup of £10 extends the service period, a smaller topup does not. It may simply be that 1pmobile will not process a credit card transaction for under £10, so to buy a cheaper bundle you would need to add £10 credit and then run it down. This would complicate auto renewal as some months you would need to make a topup in order to have sufficient credit balance to purchase the bundle.
But I might be wrong on this.

Seems to me that if you want a simple life you can set up auto renewal of a boost and auto topups and leave it without ever needing to adjust anything unless you need a bigger boost one month for example when going on holiday. 

For those who want to make more use of 1p's very good website you can adjust your boosts and see details of how you've used your allowances right down to hourly records of texts sent, numbers called and data used if it's of any interest. 

ProDave

MissLFC said:

Cannot sleep after reading virgin mobile reviews on trustpilot! The app is also quite invasive in regards to data collection compared to plusnet so I'm going to cancel it.

With 1p mobile -am I being dumb, if you have unlimited calls & texts & more than enough data what would you spend the top up on? Wouldn't credit just keep accumulating if you have to keep topping up every 4 months but not spending?

If you pay for a boost, like I have for a inclusive calls and text deal, there is no requirement to top up during that period.  e.g I have paid for 12 months calls text and data so I don't have to top up anything for 12 months.

If you use it purely as a PAYG and don't use much you have to top up £10 every 120 days.  So potentially you could just accumulate a big credit.  However when i had mine as a PAYG to start with, they offer you the chance to "top up from your credit"  So you could spend £10 of your unused accumulated credit to buy another 120 days of use.  I have not done the maths to see how low you could get ongoing bills as a low user doing that.

savergrant

The only issue with using autotopup is that you lose control of your spending, in that if you blow your allowance it will use up your credit and then keep topping up your credit. It is particularly an issue if you are abroad, or making international calls.

Murmansk

savergrant said:

The only issue with using autotopup is that you lose control of your spending, in that if you blow your allowance it will use up your credit and then keep topping up your credit. It is particularly an issue if you are abroad, or making international calls.

Fair point, I'd be inclined to turn off auto topup prior to a foreign trip

savergrant

Slight tangent but is there a good reason why lebara hasn't been mentioned yet? Would fit the bill of regular payment from credit card each month.