They used to have a low user "lite" package that is still on their web site if you hunt for it. They try not to sell it to you though. Their current offering is one of these bonus cridit things where you get extra credit each time you top up bringing the effective price per min down to
12p if you top up at least £10/month. Their lite package was 12p flat rate regardless of top up!
In the end I found Ikea's Family Mobile was a better deal. 8p/min flat rate, a 4p text. You can have multiple phones on one account, and specify auto top ups, and also control the credit handed out to other phones on your account. What is even better, when I phoned them, a uk based call centre, with a chap who was helpful, knew what he was doing, and got what I wanted right first time!
Yes, you've reminded me! Indeed, true to form Tesco will continuously=20 try to "monetise" their customer base.
You've probably realised that I got the PAYG SIM from them some years=20 ago as the "Value SIM" package which was superseded by their new and=20 renamed offerings some while later. I had to request a downgrade to the =
new "lite" package after it was introduced, otherwise I would have been=20 paying significantly higher calling costs given my very low use. I=20 would have been unaware of the change had I not checked their website=20 very carefully when I was asked to top-up with 10 pounds per month in=20 order to get the "best" prices. They didn't exactly tell me about the=20 change of packaging, they simply offered the "best" prices if I agreed=20 to regular top-ups.
It wasn't an easy process to downgrade to what I had been getting=20 previously and my request was queried at every stage, complete with=20 apparent misunderstandings, by their customer service rep. who wanted to =
satisfy himself that I really was getting the best deal!
If you register your SIM via their web site it won't show you what=20 package you are on and is geared solely to enabling you to pay them some =
money for top-ups. The only way to check is to calculate the price from =
the cost and timing of each telephone call. If you don't register your=20 SIM, any change will happen without you ever knowing. A description of=20 "sleight of hand" is entirely appropriate and presumably taking=20 advantage of the fact that many (most?) purchasers of their SIM-only=20 packages don't register.
Although it can be cheap to start with, Tesco do always look for the=20 opportunity to increase their revenue by re-packaging and re-marketing=20 something without actually changing the service other than increasing=20 their prices. They achieve this by abolishing the previous packages and =
substituting their "new and improved" offerings. As you noted, if they=20 keep the old packages (presumably only because of some sort of=20 regulatory or contractual requirement) they will rename them and bury=20 them so deep that only the most persistent of searches can find them.
Perhaps I should also check out the IKEA offering. :)
To be fair, their new package was ok for moderate level users - the double credit in effect made their data charge half the price. But for low users its not as good.
Only down side for some may be that they are a MVNO running on top of the TMobile/Orange network.
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it entitles you to a free cup of tea/coffee when visiting one of the shops as well!)
ISTR 50ppm but I did not often phone her. My Mum was in the hospital next to the hotel that I was rewiring and I used to pass the hour between finishing work and start of visiting hours in room 42 of the hotel with one of the waitresses.
I was rather disappointed when the hospital decided my Mum was fit to return home:-)
And may I offer your mother a fast recovery whatever SIM you get.
Easily fixed in 2 mins with a printer and a sticky label.
That by the way, is now the standard approach after a volunteer group were prevented a few years ago from using their brand new mains multiway sockets, and nearly new extension leads at a function to which they were one of the invited guests.
Now they go equipped with freshly printed PAT labels.
"Of course it has been tested, just last week, here look at the label"
I would agree, but I'm on a low user tarif at 8p/min for phone and 4p for texts. I don't think this is still available, but network availability is good, and 3g is also usable where it is available.
I believe voda and 02 have some weird thing where a call has to be made to a pay number every couple of months or so, or the system swallows the credit and stops the sim. Brian
Oh, I don't know. They were very upfront in telling me about the Lite package and offering to switch me over. But only AFTER I had phoned to request a PAC in order to transfer my number.
I have a relative who had over 2-years-worth of photos just on her camera (including 2 weddings), I asked what she would do when the memory card was full; she said "buy another one".
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