Mobile phone sim-only deals - what do you recommend?

Philtre · October 2023

I thought I'd get up to speed and and invest in a monthly sim-only deal for my iPhone SE, having been a tightwad on PAYG for years. Turns out that if you go directly to the main operators (EE, O2, 3, Vodafone) the deals are incredibly expensive and you need to get a deal via one of the compare sites (Money Saving Expert, uSwitch, etc).

So I found a cheap monthly contract (3gb data, unlimited calls and text) with LycaMobile for a silly price (49p for first 6 months, then £4.95 a month). Signed up and transferred number and all seemed good. But last week Lycamobile apparently got hacked and their services have been down for a week, users can't access the web portal and no-one can get PAC codes to leave. See this for example - https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.lycamobile.co.uk?sort=recency

When I can get a PAC I'm leaving them and signing up for a new monthly contract.

But all these providers seem dodgy. What have your experiences been like? I need a provider that runs off of, ideally, EE or 3, or O2 at a pinch. Can't get good Vodafone where I live.

Ideally I'd like around 3-5gb of data, unlimited minutes and texts for up to £6 a month.

bloodandtears · October 2023

I was on Plusnet (EE) for years but they have recently announced they are moving everyone over to EE, and whilst the initial transfer packages being offered aren't badly priced they aren't great either...

I've moved 3 of the 4 Bloodandtears tribe to ID mobile (3 network).. seems ok so far.. granted it'll never be as fast as EE I reckon but it seems to be satisfactory thus far..

theatreanchor · October 2023

Been with EE for 10 years. It was difficult to get them to shift me on to a decent SIM only deal, but managed to do it. They are a fast network and there is someone on the end of a phone should you need - but it is tricky. Check out Smarty, gif gaff, or ID - they’re new and award winning etc.

Philtre · October 2023

bloodandtears said:

I was on Plusnet (EE) for years but they have recently announced they are moving everyone over to EE, and whilst the initial transfer packages being offered aren't badly priced they aren't great either...

Mrs Philtre was with Plusnet for years and recently got a transfer deal to EE for £6 a month. Don't know if that'll last forever, though.

roundthebend · October 2023

I like giffgaff. There's no contract, it's PAYG, but I choose to always buy a monthly goodybag because it's good value and plenty for my needs. I like that they review my usage every month and advise me whether to change my goodybag - usually they say I can go for the cheaper option.

RaymondLin · October 2023

Been with 3 for like 15 years+, was on Orange before that. £16 a month for 100G (don't need this much...i was on unlimited data before) and unlimited voice and text (never use). I could and should get a package with 20G data and still be fine....but contract still has 6 months to run.

steveledzep · October 2023

Philtre said:

bloodandtears said:

I was on Plusnet (EE) for years but they have recently announced they are moving everyone over to EE, and whilst the initial transfer packages being offered aren't badly priced they aren't great either...

Mrs Philtre was with Plusnet for years and recently got a transfer deal to EE for £6 a month. Don't know if that'll last forever, though.

That's exactly what I and MrsLZ have recently done. Works great.

bloodandtears · October 2023

Philtre said:

bloodandtears said:

I was on Plusnet (EE) for years but they have recently announced they are moving everyone over to EE, and whilst the initial transfer packages being offered aren't badly priced they aren't great either...

Mrs Philtre was with Plusnet for years and recently got a transfer deal to EE for £6 a month. Don't know if that'll last forever, though.

That was my conundrum.. the sceptic in me thinks not so I incrementally moved us away.. one SIM at a time.. with the highest data user last.. the package with ID was simply better value.. and whilst the speeds might not be the same.. it does work well enough for everyday use.

Dav275 · October 2023

Been with Vodaphone for a while (£6.68/month, SIM only). Someone just recommended Lebara to me , so about to switch to them (£5/m, 5GB data, 1000 minutes calling). I don't use data my phone, so it seems a good deal for me.

guitars4you · October 2023

Philtre said:

bloodandtears said:

I was on Plusnet (EE) for years but they have recently announced they are moving everyone over to EE, and whilst the initial transfer packages being offered aren't badly priced they aren't great either...

Mrs Philtre was with Plusnet for years and recently got a transfer deal to EE for £6 a month. Don't know if that'll last forever, though.

I was offered £6 month only this week with EE or £12 with a larger data option

fretmeister · October 2023

GiffGaff for me with an auto renew monthly goodybag for £10.

strumjoughlamps · October 2023

Voxi by Vodafone for Me, Missus and Youngling, we have no problems..

wibble · October 2023

I'm with Smarty (uses Three network) - no complaints. One month rolling PAYG, you can swap plans or leave after 1 month.

They currently have a 40GB data, unlimited calls and texts for £10, other cheaper plans are available depending on your needs.

They have a 5GB for £6 with unlimited calls and texts but the £10 plan offers better VFM if you find you end up using more than 5GB data a month

Use this referral link and we both get a £10 gift card...

https://i.smarty.co.uk/q7eTpNx

horse · October 2023

I get 100GB with unlimited calls and texts for under a tenner from O2. Unused data rolls over too.

Philtre · October 2023

I'm toying with the idea of a monthly £6 a month 5gb of data deal with Smarty. They use the 3 network, which I've not used before.

revsorg · October 2023

Oh I have so much to say about this. All of this happened over the last two months, and I've been having a very stressful time in my life which my telephony problems have compounded.

When BT put my price up by over 14% - just because they could - I vowed to leave them and never return. I now regret this choice. I was paying £66/month for BT Halo 3 and £22/month for two SIM-only contracts. The first thing I did was move my SIM over to Lyca, through a uSwitch deal, 15GB £2.95/month for first three months, going up to about double that afterwards. I did my research afterwards because there was so much I found troubling about Lyca. Their mobile app is pants, and their password recovery system sends a plain text password over email which is - to say the least - not best practice. Their website is very annoying. Activities that involve a combination of their website on mobile phone and website on PC are particularly frustrating and poorly thought-through. Anyway, my research found that they funded Boris Johnson's mayoral campaign, and Lyca continue to fund the Conservative party. I accept that for some people this would be an absolute bonus but personally I would rather die of cancer than give the Tory party a penny, so I figured I'd live out my first three months and then move elsewhere. Things got a bit tricky after this, and right now I lack the energy to contemplate changing contracts. Maybe if I spend a few months in a silent retreat I will gather the energy.

So, then I moved my wife's SIM to Lebara on a similar uSwitch deal to the Lyca deal I got for my phone. Lebara almost immediately had some technical problems, they piggy-back off the Vodafone network, but the problems passed, and right now Lebara are the least of my problems.

With the mobiles switched to new cheap contracts I then moved our broadband. I should never have done this without doing the necessary preparation, but in my innocence I had no idea how badly Now Broadband could fuck things up. What I should have taken into consideration was that my son's work involves huge amounts of data, and if our broadband should be down for some reason, then it turns out that we absolutely should have unlimited mobile data - not just a big plan, but UNLIMITED. It's not just my son, it turns out all of us use a lot of data, and you only really come to appreciate this when it turns out that your mobile contract exploits this situation.

I used uSwitch to find a £26/month deal with Now Broadband, and I paid an extra £60 to have a rolling monthly contract - Cityfibre are currently digging up our streets and we expect to imminently move over to giga broadband so I didn't want to be tied into a two year contract.

Now Broadband was due to go live on Friday 8th September. A lesson re-learned - never make big changes on a Friday. BT promptly and efficiently turned off their service at midnight of the 7th, at which point the great data drought commenced. I contacted Now on Saturday morning. I say morning, it took 47 minutes for them to answer the phone. They escalated my problem to Openreach, who were committed to fix the problem within three to five working days. Saturday and Sunday aren't working days. I contacted Now on Wednesday and Friday just to make sure my lack of Internet was going to be fixed. Of course it wasn't. At this stage we were burning through mobile data, but you don't know how long it's going to last, so I was buying things like 10GB bundles for our phones, and the cost was starting to mount. By the 10th day when Openreach eventually flicked the switch that gave us broadband we had spent £78.65 on mobile data. I had also bought a now redundant MiFi device because my son had delayed some of his work for a week in the expectation that data would start flowing again.

In this data-drought period I bought some other SIMs in the hope that our spending might be reigned in, while also getting us data as quickly as possible:

- I found an EE SIM in our local Co-op which cost £15.99 (99p to buy the SIM, £15 to set up the account) and this came with - supposedly - an amazing 50GB of data. What a deal! So I plugged it into my phone, set up my account, and obviously made a wrong choice at some stage because I got to what I thought was the end of the process, had paid my £15, and got the message "your SIM will be posted through Royal Mail". I'd ordered another SIM, not activated the one already in my phone. I then spent more or less all day Saturday 16th September on the phone to EE trying to fix this problem. I never got to the bottom of why I couldn't have the 50GB I expected. Out of sympathy they gave my 30GB but there's only so many hours you can spend trying to fix something like this. I thought Now Broadband's help system was dreadful but it turns out EE have set the high watermark for completely unhelpful help.

- I ordered a £15/month idMobile SIM on uSwitch with unlimited data. Unfortunately this didn't arrive before Openreach turned on our broadband so I'll never know what their service is like. They have an easy-in, hard-out system - which is to be expected - so I felt I was lucky to get away with only paying £2.66 for a service that I never got to experience.

Today my mother-in-law contacted me to say Plusnet are closing down their mobile service, which I have organised for them. I really don't know how I'm going to fix this, because I've come to hate all of these providers.

By the way, BT kept texting me to say I was going to have to pay over £100 for all their equipment which they were saying I hadn't sent back. I had sent it back and have a receipt. Eventually I phoned them and they answered immediately, like RING RING "hello, how can I help you?". I said I was finding all their text messages to be very stressful and they fixed the problem there and then. I hate BT for putting my prices up, but I really can't fault their service.

Kittyfrisk · October 2023

I'm bemused that a third party virtual network provider can piggy back onto a main network for less cost than going direct to the network owners.
Seems counter intuitive to me.

RaymondLin · October 2023

revsorg said:

Oh I have so much to say about this. ... snip

I too left BT earlier in the year and it is a FAFF !!!

If you are with BT, it is quite reliable but when you try to leave them, their incompetence makes it really hard.

So I had Halo 2 and a land line from them, I was paying like £50 a month for it and the price was going to go up. So I called up to cancel the Halo 2 and repeatedly, at every turn, to reaffirm, that i want to keep the landline.

So, yes, you can see where i am going. They cut off my landline, and i spent hours on the phone, with several operator to get it back. When they first reconnected me, they gave me a totally different number, and then charged me £80 for the pleasure of doing so!

I had to call up again to get my old number back, thankfully it hasn't been reassigned to someone else in that down time, and then took more calls to get that £80 refunded to put it back on my account. But when i sign into their website, it shows I have 2 separate accounts with them, my old one with Halo2 and landline and a new one with just the landline.

Oh, yes, they kept chasing me for the returned equipment!!!!

I sent both the router and the box on the wall back. And when i called up to check if they have received it or not, I asked for another bag, which I put a random 10 year old BT router (not fibre) in there for them. They only "cleared" the account after I gave them the tracking number and the guy manually changed the status for me.

I went with Zzoomm for my internet in the end, £25 a month over 2 years contract, 3x the speed as BT. The landline cost me £11 a month. Zzoomm has been fine the last 6 months, i think it only went down once all that time and it was from like midnight to 8am.

DuploLicks · October 2023

Lebara for my daughter, £4.50 a month. Low usage requirement. No issues so far. I’m thinking about switching from O2 but seeing how it goes for a wee while before I do anything.

crosstownvamp · October 2023

Lebara here too. Has been very good and when I needed support at the start I got to talk to a real human (TM) who also solved my problem quickly.

Compare with ID Mobile who were fine when it worked but when they went wrong it was hell on earth to get it sorted. Worse than that.. hell where it's the political conference of a party you despise and their young devotees are poking sharp sticks at you.

I also looked at RWG Mobile in Wales who seem good and cheap.

trolley · October 2023

I recommend using the one that works for you

My wife left Vodaphone because of cost. We went to Sky and she had no signal in work & barely 3G outdoors in town. So I switched her to Lebara (piggybacks onto Vodaphone) & now all's weel at a fraction of the cost.
I use ID - which uses 3 network. So if there's any issues one of our phones will hopefully work!
Money Saving Expert has a list of who uses what networks and the latest deals

gubble · October 2023

Came here to recommend Smarty which @wibble has already done.

Their £6 a month unlimited calls 5GB of data fits the bill. Personally I'm on a £10 a month 60GB monthly.

Been with them for 2 years on a monthly rolling thing - zero complaints and not had a single issue.

I like that they include roaming so when i go abroad i don't have any extra charges (unlike Mrs Gubble who is with EE).

On 4G i get a fantastic 80MBPS download speed.

Previously with Vodafone who for a similar deal wanted £20 a month !

revsorg · October 2023

@RaymondLin - you reminded me - sometime in the last three years I must have binned the useless BT device that switched me to EE mobile if our broadband went down, and they were going to charge me £63 if I didn't return it so I bought one for £8.50 on eBay, which BT appear to have accepted.

beed84 · October 2023

I'm also thinking of going down this route as I'm currently paying £22 a month with O2 for unlimited minutes, texts and 5GB of data, most of which I barely use. What I don't understand is I can get the same but with 7GB for £10 a month on PAYG. There must be something I'm missing as it seems like a no brainer to me.

Stratavarious · October 2023

Tesco (runs on O2) working here.. decent app, and a range of ‘packs’ for data, minutes, text. £5, £7.50, £10..

I reduced mine from £12.50 as I very rarely used the data even when travelling. Roaming included. Handy with EU travel.

Dav275 · October 2023

Just a follow up to my earlier comment - have now switched to Lebara. Very quick, easy and painless. All good so far.

p90fool · October 2023

Stratavarious said:

Tesco (runs on O2) working here.. decent app, and a range of ‘packs’ for data, minutes, text. £5, £7.50, £10..

I reduced mine from £12.50 as I very rarely used the data even when travelling. Roaming included. Handy with EU travel.

If you know someone who works at Tesco they've got a friends and family deal thing going at the moment, the employee only has to send a text so it's not a big ask.

rustneversleeps · October 2023

I’ve been with Lebara for quite a while now with no problems.I’am a low user.Same network as Vodaphone.Not bad for £5 a month sim only.

stufisher · October 2023

I've been with ID Mobile since they launched ... always found them pretty good. I just increased my monthly charge to £8 to access more mobile data. As you can see I never max out and so with the rollover amount I think it's great value.

sev112 · October 2023

SMARTY , really easy, cheap unlimited , and even cheaper for fixed amounts

been with them for a few years

Nitefly · October 2023

Another vote for giffgaff here.

I don't use much data so I have the lowest rate, and it includes roaming abroad (EU at least) so I didn't have to pay anything extra for two weeks in Cyprus.

Our Maud, who is with Vodafone, had to pay £15 quid for roaming for that two weeks.

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Mobile phone sim-only deals - what do you recommend?

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