SIM only PAYG price comparison

D.Apsley

I'm looking for a SIM only PAYG price comparison website. Yes I have looked around all the Mob-comparison sites but all PAYG comparisons are with a new phone.

I don't want or need a new phone, I've got a Pocket PC Phone. I'm not a big user of air time, 30mins and 10 texts and month or about £7-8 on my old Orange PAYG SIM.
I want to see if I can get a better deal else where, but can not find info on a simple SIM only PAYG tariff with no phone.

xe-cute

I too am after a SIM only PAYG price comparison.
I've got my own phone unlocked and want the cheapest deal best for me.

Like you I have Googled and not been able to find anything (apart from this thread).

I hardly ever use my phone, just for emergencies really or people phoning me.
My last phone actualy got cut off as I never made a phone call in a whole year.
Also it had a lot of credit on as it kept being switched off and not availabl;e for use unless I topped it up with £5 every 3mths... this credit kept building and bulding up.. all lost now.

My new PDA phone though I shall be using for emails when out of the house and also MSN Messenger.

I wish I could find where the information is for how long you can go without using the phone or topping up on each seperate company (Orange, Vodaphone etc) scheme to know which is best for someone like me to have a fully active phone that hardly gets used for expensive outgoing calls.

P.S. I know this is an old topic, but thought it was better to reply here than create my own identical one.

starving_artist

Me too. I've been looking for this information without success. Surely someone somewhere must have done this??

DrScotsman

I was hoping for one too. It seems everyone always wants a new phone, so all comparisons latch onto the phone itself and never the tarrif.

But also...every network has its own deals which can make it impossible to compare, especially because a lot of them expire after ONE month.

Here are the ones I considered.
Asda: 8p/minute, I think that's actually the cheapest pence per minute. If you say "I only use my phone for emergencies" or "I usually only receive calls" then since I last checked this is the clear cut winner.
Tesco: 20p/minute, but 10p/minute for your 5 favourite numbers, and also you get "free" credit when you top up which lasts a month, which makes this cheaper than ASDA for me personally.
O2: £10 gets you 500 minutes made FROM a certain post code for a month, so if you use all of them then it's 2p/minute...plus your actual £10 balance!

It's all each to their own. Maybe MSE should come up with a Pay as you Go MINIMIZER

KeithP

There are some more suggestions on this thread.

Quite old though, except perhaps the last post.

xe-cute

I've seen this is even more complicated than I 1st thought.
I want to use the internet on my phone for emails and googling etc.

I'm finding it extremely difficult to find the rates for these from some companies or to figure out what there jargon means (deal wise as they make it complicated to work out what is what).

Who is the cheapest for emails, msn messenging and internet browsing?

Some charge for each MB downloaded, some charge a fixed rate, some say from 50p to £2 but not tell you why. Some companies even ommits the information completely so you have no idea.

I honestly think I would use my phone in this order (1st being most)

1st For Emails (my main reason for buying my new PDA phone is to access emails outside house - I get many emails per day that I send and recieve)

2nd for MSN Messenger (many friends I text to daily with over MSN)

3rd for Googling/web browsing (my gran always has something she needs me to google for her, also be good to use when bored outside house)

4th For SMS texting (including picture & video messenging - all cost different)

5th For calls to landlines

6th for Calls to mobiles

7th Skype calls


Another thing aswell to consider is such things such as cost for;

voicemail - I can't believe some charge for this service!
answerphone - I can't believe some charge for this service!
roaming
wap
gps
video calls
picture messaging
TV Station Access
Music Downloads

etc

Also the extra fixed 30day extraas you can buy too make it so hard to get your head around.

It's so much to take in and the differences can be vast. Someone really needs to make a comparison.

Heres a few links to direct individual company pages (but tbh they are not much use as half the prices are not shown).

Tesco
3 - Three
O2
Virgin
Vodaphone
Orange (Click on Racoon)

^ As I say though it is so complicated to try and compare charges for so many different things. Also the internet access charges to me are hard to understand....

3/Three Document with charges (Scroll down to Pay As You Go - page 8)
http://www.three.co.uk/_standalone/Link_Document?content_aid=1214305748126

^ Impossible for me to work out all that internet stuff as they have so many different things!



My head really does hurt.

P.S. ASDA does look good at 1st glance.... will check that out more indepth now. Thanks for the tip.

xe-cute

Yeah ASDA definately seems the best for phone calls and text messages, probabaly the best for the internet too but....

I've Just realised MSN Messenger costs money on mobile phones ?!?!?

25p with ASDA (is that per message?!?!?!?!)

Blimey, how can phone companies charge for using MSN messenger? That's just wrong. it is no different to using the internet.

I'm suprised they are not charging 25p per google too on top of internet charges.

Do you get charged for access to emails too by per email? Does that come under the 20p per MB GPRS?

Oh it's all so confusing and bloody expensive just to use stuff that is free on PC.

Waste of money having such a good PDA smart phone when I can't afford to use most of it's online features.

xe-cute

UPDATE: My mistake, I thought MMS was short for Microsoft Messenger Service (MSN Messenger) but it is actualy for Multimedia Messaging Service (Mobile Phone Media with Text Messaging). lulz, silly me.

yup ASDA seems hands down the cheapest and by far... I'm just trying to figure out what the catch is (how can they be so good compared to other brands who sole business is mobile telecommunications?... something doesn't make sense... I see the use the vodaphone netwrok, yet vodaphone renting this network to them charges more for calls etc... weird!... why rent out your network to a company who can undercut you? Also how are they managing undercutting there supplier who is vodaphone?).

zolablue25

xe-cute wrote: »

... why rent out your network to a company who can undercut you? Also how are they managing undercutting there supplier who is vodaphone?).

Probably because Asda give them a large wedge of money for block usage. The Vodaphone network gets used (at no real extra cost to Vodaphone) and Vodaphone can carry on charging their premium rates for existing customers, many of whom wouldn't want to be associated with a budget brand.

sillygoose

Hi,
To throw another twist in it, I have just gone the other way to contract with my wife's phone because the PAYG tarriffs are quite steep, topping up etc.

Take a look at the O2 Sim only Simplicity tariff. No phone, only £9.79 per month and your only tied in for a month at a time so no long term hassle. This includes 150 minutes of calls to landlines or other mobiles and 300 texts per month.

Data (internet) is charged at £2.94 per Mb BUT capped at 98p per day so as much as you want. For just emails its not too bad as its charged by the Kb so 0.29p per Kb, so say a typical email at 10K costing 2.9p When your on the web if you try to use mobile versions of sites like Google, Ebay etc you can cut your data usage right down.

It saves all the hassle of keep topping up and you can monitor your account and how much of your allowances are left online anytime. Also O2 have an excellent 3G and HSPA network and it works really well with something like an O2 XDA Zest.

Dickieburd

For internet,
Asda charge 20p per Mb,

Virgin charge a flat rate of 30p for upto 25Mb,

T-Mobile web'n walk charge £1 per day for upto 40Mb or if you buy a 5 day pass for £2.50 then that works out at 50p for upto 40Mb.