UKH

Son wanted his first mobile, so he got one of my cast offs.

Sim only deal seemed good, but he hardly uses it out and about so even a cheap monthly contract seems like a waste of money at the moment.

So I'm looking for a pay as you go sim only.

On the surface it seems like a lot of providers have them, but then I looked at the details. 

Most of them sound like this:

PAYG - top up monthly (auto direct debit) and you'll get x mins, y sms and z data allowance for that month. 

If it automatically bills you every month for a package that expires at the end of the month, isn't that just a contract phone on a 1 month term?

Has anyone got an actual old style PAYG these days?

You can do this will Giffgaff, and also have the option to buy a set of data, calls and texts for a month, or regularly.

They use the O2 network, which isn't the best, but are fine otherwise.

I don't routinely carry a phone and don't want data/media or the like. Mine is PAYG with (I think!) EE. I just top one a year or so. £30 lasts me

I was also going to suggest GiffGaff. You have to buy the first Goodybag to activate the SIM, but can cancel the Goody bag after the first month and then it just runs a sa normal PAYG phone.

I'm the same, think it is EE. Not cheap call rate but I only use it very occasionally, phone wife when away fishing or possible emergencies in the van. Probably £20 -£30 a year, no more.

I put my Dad onto a Giff Gaff this year on his first mobile phone. I think it is (as others have suggested) the closest thing (and very close) to what you are after. I think he has once or twice fallen for an upsetting thing where some ambiguous wording can make the non-savvy believe that they are running out of credit when they've barely touched any. I think he still has the original lump sum credit we put on it back in April!

Tesco Mobile do a PAYG sim

Vodaphone and EE still do the old fashioned payg options. 

Expect them to push for a contract every time you top up, but much better value for a phone which will be 99% incoming calls only (I used to leave a missed call and my partner called me back on his free minutes). Generally you have to make a chargeable call (or text) every 3 months for the sim to remain active but still potentially far cheaper than a contract. 

​

Have a look at '1pmobile'. 1p a minute, text or MB of data. Top up at least £10 every 120 days. Credit carries over to the next period.

Yes, that’s me too.....apart from the fishing😀

Another vote for Giff Gaff.

In the same vein: I am a very infrequent mobile user, but have been using a PAYG arrangement with Virgin Mobile for about 15 years now. It suited my very minimal and intermittent mobile phone usage: literally pay-as-you-go for phone and text, and at reasonable rates. However, just this week, Virgin has contacted me to say that the deal is changing, and the end effect is that the cost will be a minimum charge of two quid per day as a result of any phone or text usage on that day. That's a swingeing and unfair change. Bye bye Virgin - and f*ck you.

Same here.. as soon as my credit runs out I'll be finding another company.. that's a lot of money they'll be taking. My guess is they don't want PAYG customers any more, well that's certainly an effective way of losing customers as most will just quit rather than switch to contract.

Holy smokes! So £60 a month unless you are really disciplined and parsimonious. Effectively you’d be getting “punished” for having “emergencies” needing phone useage 

Exactly.

So f*ck you, Virgin. And f*ck you, that nice Sir Richard Branson. That's how you treat loyal customers.

Yes, I have a Vodafone One PAYG on my spare phone which is a traditional pay per minute one though once you've spent £1 (I think) in a day you get unlimited for the rest of that day.

Richard Branson sold virgin mobile back in 06/07!

Virgin media is a right pain though and personally I wouldn’t recommend them.
 

Three do Payg sims, though I’m with Giffgaff and would recommend them. 

3 PAYG. Use data and phone and don’t spend much.

A curve ball, but take a look at Zevvle. True PAYG, based on EE, I've been using them for about 6 weeks and happy so far. Easy to control top ups, price is reasonable.  They've only just started up (my customer number is 78 and SIM card arrived in a handwritten envelope) but I know the guys running it and all is very much legit.

If anyone's interested drop me a message and I'll do a referral, you can also order direct from their website

Noted.

In general it's hard to keep track of Branson's complex network of wheeling and dealing; a lot of what he does appears simply to be brand licensing rather than anything actually productive. So f*ck him anyway.

With giffgaff you activate the sim with £10 and click the option to continue with credit only. You do not need a goody bag for it to work. Although the £6p/m goody bag is more than enough for me.

If you know someone on giffgaff and they order you a sim card you will get an extra £5 of credit.

I'm with Three. Their 123 PAYG offer is pretty straightforward: 1p/MB, 2p/text, 3p/minute. You can make it more complex by buying 'add ons' which give you X MB or Y minutes, but you don't have to do that (I generally don't). 

Another vote for 3's 3-2-1 thing. Since there are so many alternatives to sms/voice, and more often than not I'm near wifi, a tenner gets me through a few months.

Another vote for Three.  For years now, I have just bought my phone and gone PAYG.  I top up online when needed, so if you scroll past the 'add ons' (which convert your chosen amount into rolled up packages and are time limited), you can just buy credit on their 3-2-1 rates.   Works for me great as I don't make many calls (people call me). and I just text, never using data on my mobile.

Another good thing about the 3 PAYG SIM is that you don't have to remember to make a call every few months to avoid losing your credit.

Yes, I use a payg sim in my hill phone.  It's O2 on their 3-2-1 deal, so 3p a minute for calls,  2p for a text and1p per Mb for data.  You do need to remember to make a call or send a text every few months which has nearly caught me out...

3 also do the same deal but as my hill phone is 2g I can't use 3 as all their sim cards are 4g.

i use 02  3-2-1 deal as well but as my main phone, much cheaper for me than giffgaff who i was with for ages, and better than 1p mobile as no top per 3 months or whatever.  been fine for me