Plan for light user

zagmund

Is there such a thing as "the best value plan for a light user" ?

I'm looking to get phones for the kids and I don't want to enter into a contract which requires monthly payments. I just want to do the traditional "pay as you go" thing. Buy credit, load it on the phone and then let them make calls until they have spent the money.

Looking at the sites now, the PAYG deals all seem to involve having to top up by €x per month to get this deal or that deal. I don't want this sort of arrangement.

I looked at Tesco Mobile and they seem to have a pretty straight forward plan - 20 cents per minute, with no reference to those tricky things like call set up charges, etc . . . I can deal with 20c/minute. It means for the €10 I put on their account we get 50 minutes, no ifs, no buts.

Are there other deals like this, is this the best deal, are there gotchas with Tesco that I haven't spotted, etc . . . ?

Advice welcome.

z

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

loyatemu

zagmund wrote: »

Is there such a thing as "the best value plan for a light user" ?

I'm looking to get phones for the kids and I don't want to enter into a contract which requires monthly payments. I just want to do the traditional "pay as you go" thing. Buy credit, load it on the phone and then let them make calls until they have spent the money.

Looking at the sites now, the PAYG deals all seem to involve having to top up by €x per month to get this deal or that deal. I don't want this sort of arrangement.

I looked at Tesco Mobile and they seem to have a pretty straight forward plan - 20 cents per minute, with no reference to those tricky things like call set up charges, etc . . . I can deal with 20c/minute. It means for the €10 I put on their account we get 50 minutes, no ifs, no buts.

Are there other deals like this, is this the best deal, are there gotchas with Tesco that I haven't spotted, etc . . . ?

Advice welcome.

z

I'm a very light user - Tesco €10 a month is definitely the way to go. You get €20 of credit for your tenner. I then spend €7 on 1G of data, leaving €13 for calls and texts.

zagmund

Cool, thanks for the replies. I think Tesco may well be the way to go.

z

maximus02

Hi

I'm in a similar situation in being a very light user.

At first glance http://wwwo.postfone.ie seem to offer a similar product to Tesco, with no monthly minimum.

Does anyone have experience with them? Operated by An Post.

zagmund

Thanks - I had a look at them just now and it seems pretty similar alright. The one difference that I can see is that they don't offer free "same carrier" calls. If you only have one phone this isn't going to be an issue. With free Tesco-Tesco calls (or free Vodafone-Vodafone calls) we save money when we are on the same network.

My own handset has unlimited calls (some corporate deal with Vodafone, as long as our company doesn't go over something like 10,000,000 minutes a month) so my calls to them will be free. Mrs Zag has 100 minutes on her package with Vodafone so her calls to them will also be free.

z

Oracle

Tesco Mobile would be a good option, another one would be 48 Months. All calls and texts to all mobiles for €10 a month: http://48months.ie/
48 also have a handy data option called the Snacker. Its just 15c for 30 minutes browsing, so very affordable and controllable, although they'd need to top-up to buy that.

zagmund

Hmm.

I bought #2 sons Alcatel OT-585F phone in Tesco last night. So far, so good. I was going to buy #2 son a Samsung Galaxy Y in Tesco as well for €129, but then I saw that Vodafone have it for €99.

This started me thinking, which is always dangerous.

I reckoned I could save the €30, and save money on calls too by getting it from Vodafone and saving on the free VF-VF calls. But now (from what I can tell) it looks like those calls are only free when you top up by €20 a month, so they're not really free at all, at all, at all.

It looks like I'm wavering back towards Tesco, even though the phone is more expensive. Here's my calculations -

* I will pay an extra €30 buy buying the phone in Tesco (bad)
* After using his phone at peak times I will have paid €30 extra in call charges by using Vodafone for 120 minutes (€0.25 * 120 minutes = €30, where €0.25 is the difference between the Tesco rate of 20c and the Vodafone peak rate of 45c).
* To buy 120 minutes of Tesco time at face value (ignoring their extra minutes they give when you top up by €10) will cost me €24 (€0.20 * 120 minutes)

So, if I'm looking at this correctly then €153 is the point at which the Tesco & Vodafone packages meet, and after that point Vodafone just become more expensive & Tesco remain better value.

This is all based on the assumption that we never top up by €20 a month to get free VF-VF calls. If we were doing this then we're looking at an entirely different price range - phone & a years calls coming to €300-€350 and I can't see that happening soon. The other assumption is that data is accessed over wi-fi. I haven't looked at the Tesco data prices, but Loyatemu indicates that €7 will get us access if needed.

Looks like VF have priced themselves out of the market for loyal(ish) family customers. Or am I missing something ?

z

zagmund

Thanks Oracle - I looked at 48 just a little too late. Their €10 deal sounds good, although it still involves a minimum annual spend of €120 at that rate. How sticky are they on their "you must be 18-21" criteria ? It's been a while since I was in that range. They do seem to state it as a basic requirement.

z

cookie1977

New Meteor PAYG plans aren't too bad. Top ups from 5, 10 and 20 euro all get you free stuff

http://www.meteor.ie/pay-as-you-go/

zagmund wrote: »

Thanks Oracle - I looked at 48 just a little too late. Their €10 deal sounds good, although it still involves a minimum annual spend of €120 at that rate. How sticky are they on their "you must be 18-21" criteria ? It's been a while since I was in that range. They do seem to state it as a basic requirement.

z

It's easy to get around the age check. They dont actually check.

Oracle

zagmund wrote: »

Thanks Oracle - I looked at 48 just a little too late. Their €10 deal sounds good, although it still involves a minimum annual spend of €120 at that rate. How sticky are they on their "you must be 18-21" criteria ? It's been a while since I was in that range. They do seem to state it as a basic requirement.

z

They're not sticky at all about the age limit, and they don't check. Anyone outside the age range "adjusts" their date of birth when signing up. There's a huge (65 page) thread over on Bargain Alerts about them, everyone of all ages is with them.

Regarding the €10 per month. Yes you need to buy membership (at €10/month) to make calls and send texts. But I think you can receive calls and texts anytime, without membership. So any month you don't need it, you don't have to buy it. At €10 a month though its a bargain, with any other mobile network this usage would cost hundreds per year, not €120.

Note with 48 Months, only 20 minutes of landlines calls are included per month, and this allowance doesn't rollover to the next month.

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

zagmund

Thanks for all the replies. I ended up getting the Galaxy Y on Saturday evening before reading your post about the Huawei, so that was unfortunate timing.

However #1 son managed to lock it within a few hours. I'm going to open a seperate thread and see if anyone has any suggestions. I've a feeling I will end up bringing it back to the shop (as the man from Tesco support said) and getting a new one. Given half a chance I'll swap it for the Huawei. It's not on the website, but I could have sworn I saw one on the shelf the other day.

z