back to article Tesco touts budget textaholic SIM-only deal

The British press yesterday trumpeted Tesco Mobile for introducing the supposedly the cheapest SIM-only deal in the market, but a little research shows our colleagues are wrong...here's the deal. Tesco Mobile Available online and over the phone, the Tesco SIM-only tariff costs £6 a month for unlimited texts and 100 minutes …

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  1. Chris Eaton
    Thumb Up

    Text addictions

    O2 also now offer a pay and go simplicity tariff for 5.00 /month that gives you unlimited UK text - no minutes though but I think it is a good deal for a fiver (and no credit check)

  2. cmg
    Happy

    Cheaper still

    I have just found a deal, which is a cash back deal, 24 month contract, 23 months refunded, 300 minutes, unlimited text, and 500mb of data, go look on the web it can be found, £25/24=£1.04 per month, beat that? oh and a free tocco lite phone

    1. Robert E A Harvey

      suspicious

      Is that one of those cashback deals where you have to send all the original bills in a green envelope, and then apply online between 23:18 and 23:21 on a wet thursday using the password given to you just once during the registration process by a Bengali whose pronunciation makes you get it wrong?

  3. Chris Hills
    Alert

    Unlimited internet

    If you are looking at the £10 per month tariff which boasts "unlimited internet", be forewarned that "unlimited" actually means "500MB inclusive plus £4 per additional MB".

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    3 sims don't work with all phones

    As a 3 user (happy) I think I'm right in saying that a 3 sim only works with a 3g handset so that rules out quite a few people.

    1. DB2k

      correct

      yes, but then the tesco deal is probably only for people with a tesco handset, or at most an O2 handset (who tesco use for network).

      1. Dave Bell

        Unlocked Handsets

        The Tesco SIM-only deals will work with unlocked handsets. And there are other supermarkets which sell cheap handsets, without a SIM.

      2. JAK 1

        they work on vodafone branded phones

        as I have a SE C905 vodafone branded phone in front of me with a cheapo tesco sim

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    the important thing here is...

    the definition of 'unlimited'

    i think the 3 deal is probably better

  6. I've_got_a_ruddy_gun

    GifGaf

    GifGaf have a goodie bag for £5

    100 minutes

    Unlimited texts

    Unlimited Internet

    http://giffgaff.com/index/pricing

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Unhappy

      for another month

      reality: giffgaff have a half price sale till Aug31, what's described above is the £10 goodybag, it's only available for £5 for the next 2.5 weeks, though you can buy 2 months worth.

      Now the competition is beginning to kick in giffgaff's edge is rapidly vanishing so maybe they'll be forced to extend the sale or reduce prices more.

  7. Nigel R

    but thanks for the ad anyway

    erm.. GiffGaff "Unlimited Internet"... until October that is.

  8. Mark Jan
    FAIL

    Good Luck With Getting Your Cashback

    @cmg Good luck in getting any more than a month or two of your 23 months worth of cash back!

  9. kwhitefoot
    Coat

    The UK market only looks as though there is competition

    My tariff here in Norway with Tele2 lets me use up to 170kr (about 19GBP at current exchange rates) a month of talk and text without paying anything. OneCall has a plan where you get 120 texts and 90 minutes a month for nothing except the 0.59kr (about 7p) start fee for each call. And so on. So Tesco and the others might look good in the UK but I think they might find it a bit harder to compete here in the original home of the GSM mobile.

  10. Richard Lloyd
    FAIL

    Tesco SIM deals have a fair use policy

    Just a note that "unlimited texts" does *not* mean unlimited in the dictionary sense, but "limited by our fair use policy". Yes, Tesco SIM deals are subject to a fair use policy, but good luck finding what that policy actually is!

    Best I could find was on http://www.tesco.com/mobilenetwork/content.aspx?page=37 - which reads:

    "Fair Use: Tesco Mobile is a consumer service. Profligate use of the Tesco Mobile Network and Services is prohibited."

    I think it's horrendous that Tesco use the vague "profligate" wording - we need to know exact figures of "unlimited" w.r.t. text/calls/data, otherwise Tesco could cut you off for one text or call!

    So the 6 quid deal says "unlimited texts", but are restricted by "profligate use". How many texts make up one profligate unit then? 100, 1000, 10000 a month? It's clearly a ridiculous policy that Ofcom should tackle - disallow the word "unlimited" if there is a fair use policy and force providers to actually exactly spell out the limits of their fair use policies. Ofcom should hang their head in utter shame in not doing this for Net/mobile contracts.

  11. EvilGav 1

    Or . . .

    . . . t-mobile SIM only PAYG, top up £10 per month for unlimited texts, text MONTHWEB or something similar once a month to get unlimited interent for a month, spend remaining £5 on whatever calls you want to make, foreign texts etc etc.

    No contract at all.

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