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 …

[Chris Eaton]

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)

[cmg]

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

[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?

[Chris Hills]

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".

[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.

[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).

[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.

[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

[Anonymous Coward]

the important thing here is...

the definition of 'unlimited'

i think the 3 deal is probably better

[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

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

[Nigel R]

but thanks for the ad anyway

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

[Mark Jan]

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!

[kwhitefoot]

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.

[Richard Lloyd]

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.

[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.