Can one get an idMobile PAYGO SIM without buying a bundle?

[Chris Green]

I'm about to move to idMobile and want a pay-as-you-go SIM. It
doesn't seem to be possible to get a SIM without a bundle initially,
is this right?


--
Chris Green
·

[Woody]

On Thu 26/08/2021 18:47, Chris Green wrote:
> I'm about to move to idMobile and want a pay-as-you-go SIM. It
> doesn't seem to be possible to get a SIM without a bundle initially,
> is this right?
>
>

On the front page go to Shop and choose Pay As You Go SIM only in the
second column.

It looks as though the requirement to keep the SIM active is £10 top-up
every two months: if you use 1p mobile its £10 top up every 4 months- ip
mobile is on the EE infrastructure.

[Chris Green]

That's where I think it is all very misleading and confusing. You
don't have to buy a £10 top-up (i.e. a 'bundle') to keep using the
phone but it would appear that you *do* have to buy a 'bundle' to get
a SIM to start with.

--
Chris Green
·

[MikeS]

The iD Mobile website is much less helpful than the giffgaff one but
appears to use the same model. Its all explained if you find the right
pages.

A SIM is free but using it requires online registration and that means
adding credit to your new account. Adding credit is different from
buying a bundle. Bundles expire after a month but credit lasts
indefinitely provided you make a paying call or send an SMS from time to
time. You don't have to buy bundles but they work out cheaper unless
your SIM is for a backup or emergency use phone. That is how I use
giffgaff and so far it has only cost me £10 (minimum credit on the
initial topup). Will last for years at my present rate.

[Woody]

From the bundle aspect GG is also one of if not the best.

[tim...]

"MikeS" <Mi...@fred.com> wrote in message
news:sgbgms$1fsh$1...@gioia.aioe.org...

That's a bit patronising

telling me that because I use my mobile as a "main" phone, I will always
spend less with a bundle than using true PAYG

I assure you that you are wrong

[Chris Green]

I simply don't use my phone enough to make use of anyone's bundles.

--
Chris Green
·

[Woody]

He is not wrong. Have a look at Pete Forman's excellent page here
https://payg.pythonanywhere.com/
and see what you will pay for each SP on straight PAYG rates - typically
between 4p and 35p a minute, or if you go on VF its £1 per day unlimited
for every day you make a call!

Per the previous comment bar one, 1pmobile requires a £10 top up every
4 months but the credit does NOT expire, so if you sent one text in each
four month period at the end of the year you credit would be £29.97

If you only require speech and texts but no data, Asda (which is on the
VF network) will give you unlimited calls and texts for a £4pm bundle.

[Chris Green]

Woody <harro...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Per the previous comment bar one, 1pmobile requires a £10 top up every
> 4 months but the credit does NOT expire, so if you sent one text in each
> four month period at the end of the year you credit would be £29.97
>

But is that actually true? The idMobile site has an almmost identical
paragraph but it also has a set of rules for using top up (as opposed
to buying bundles) which has different rules.

--
Chris Green
·

[tim...]

"Woody" <harro...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:sgicol$2s3$1...@dont-email.me...

oh yes he is

> Have a look at Pete Forman's excellent page here
> https://payg.pythonanywhere.com/
> and see what you will pay for each SP on straight PAYG rates - typically
> between 4p and 35p a minute, or if you go on VF its £1 per day unlimited
> for every day you make a call!

I pay 4ppm and per text

I use perhaps 20-30 minutes per month and half a dozen texts

so that's about 1.20 -1.50 per month

> Per the previous comment bar one, 1pmobile requires a £10 top up every 4
> months but the credit does NOT expire, so if you sent one text in each
> four month period at the end of the year you credit would be £29.97

but I don't have a contract that requires that.

> If you only require speech and texts but no data, Asda (which is on the VF
> network) will give you unlimited calls and texts for a £4pm bundle.

that's still more than I spend PAYG each month

I've only just started using my phone for mobile data, so I have no idea
what I need data wise.

[Woody]

There is one thing I'm suspicious about in the rollover that I have seen
in the past.

Suppose you have 40% of month 1 data left at the end of the month then
it rolls over into month 2. Month 2 now has 140% of a month, and the 40%
rolled over is used first, ergo if you only use that 40% then 100% of a
month rolls over into month 3. However suppose you only use 20% of a
month in month 2 then what rolls over? Is it 120% of a month or 100% of
a month, i.e. is the 20% still remaining from month 1 forfeited or
carried over into month 3? On some earlier contracts it was lost, and
the idmobile web site is not quite clear how that works.

However 1pmobile makes it very clear - everything you have paid for and
not used is still there to use when you need it even at day 364 of a year.

[Roger Mills]

OK, you can end up with a balance of nearly 30 quid after a year if you
make very few calls and send very few texts. But what good does that do
you? How can you use it?

I think I've seen a suggestion somewhere about using your phone to make
charitable donations. Maybe that's the answer? If you would have made
the donations anyway, doing it this way could mean that you *only* have
to pay for the calls you make, without building up an unusable balance.
--
Cheers,
Roger

[Woody]

No, if you get to the full year with more than one 4-month's credit
there is something that allows you not to pay 4-monthly (actually
120days) until your credit drops - but I'll be blowed if I can find the
details.

[Chris]

Given the ubiquity of "free" wifi you could in theory pay very little for
data, although, it would require careful planning.

TBH in the last 18 months I would have been better off on PAYG seeing as
I've spent 99.9% off my time at home.

[BrightsideS9]

On Mon, 30 Aug 2021 19:24:26 +0100, Woody <harro...@ntlworld.com>
wrote:

There doesn't appear to be anything written about this, but for me
when the regular 4-monthly email reminding me that another £10 was
due, I was offered not to pay but have my credit balance reduced by
£10. I accepted this offer, and when 4 months later, when I was still
well in credit, the email reminding me payment was due contained yet
another offer to take £10 off my credit balance. I took this (second)
offer. Now I know I will have to fork out £10 on the next payment date
as the current credit is reduced to well below £10.

These credit reduction offers have meant that I have not paid anything
for a year.

--
brightside S9

[MikeS]

Before insulting others you might like to get your facts right.

No idea which PAYG service you use but this thread is about iD mobile.
Their standard call rate ("out of plan") is 40p/min. Your monthly usage
on iD would cost you £12 to £15 which is more than buying the cheapest
bundle with free calls. GiffGaff standard calls are cheaper but their
minimum bundle is also cheaper. Their SIM is in my backup phone but if I
remember correctly you only need to exceed 14 minutes a month to make
their bundle the better buy. In all case usings standard data is also
expensive (10.24p/MB on iD) making bundles even more attractive. Hence
my comment about very low usage.

My main phone is on a 1p Mobile SIM which is cheapest PAYG of all
provided you spend £2.50 a month - and their unused credit rolls on for
ever.

[Chris Green]

MikeS <Mi...@fred.com> wrote:
> Before insulting others you might like to get your facts right.
>
> No idea which PAYG service you use but this thread is about iD mobile.
> Their standard call rate ("out of plan") is 40p/min. Your monthly usage

Where do you get that from? Their PAYGO rates (which is where this
started) are 1p/2p/3p for data/SMS/voice.

--
Chris Green
·

[tim...]

"Chris" <ithi...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:sgj7qo$tkh$1...@dont-email.me...

well obviously that's why I don't use much data when at home or visiting
someone or when staying in a hotel or at a restaurant (where up till now I
would have my tablet with me because I use that for route planning using
offline mapping)

but it's not overly useful when I'm standing at the bus stop asking for the
time of the next bus or when using online map access.

But as I'm new to this idea of data roaming with my phone, I have no idea
how much data doing that sort of thing uses.

So far I seem to have used about 1% of the free 10GB that Asda gifted me for
changing network

I simply don't "play" on my phone when out and about, and no amount of
tinkering with reducing the costs of doing so will cause me to indulge in
this habit. The screen's too small and the keyboard's too fiddly. When I
want to "play" computers, I sit at a desk with a 24 (?) inch screen and full
sized keyboard. Nothing else works for me.

[tim...]

"MikeS" <Mi...@fred.com> wrote in message

news:sgleu6$nn4$1...@gioia.aioe.org...

I don' think I insulted anybody

> No idea which PAYG service you use but this thread is about iD mobile.

I think it perfectly reasonable to take the thread onto other providers

I'm sure the OP isn't somehow permanently contracted to idMobil and isn't up
for the possibility of using other providers

> Their standard call rate ("out of plan") is 40p/min.

at the very top end of the range IME

so why would anybody contemplating using PAYG choose this provider?

> Your monthly usage on iD would cost you £12 to £15 which is more than
> buying the cheapest bundle with free calls. GiffGaff standard calls are
> cheaper but their minimum bundle is also cheaper. Their SIM is in my
> backup phone but if I remember correctly you only need to exceed 14
> minutes a month to make their bundle the better buy.

at some artificially inflated call costs calculated to make sure that no-one
uses it

HTH

tim

[Chris]

Biggest hogs, unsurprisingly, are video and audio. If you're simply
browsing the web or using timetabling apps then your usage could easily be
<1GB per month. If it's not asmartphone then <500MB.

For a while I was fine on Three's 3-2-1 on my smartphone as I didn't do
anything fancy.

I'm still not a really heavy user when out and about so am quite happy with
£5pm for 2GB on IDmobile. As it rolls over for a maximum of a month I
usually have 4GB to play with.

The biggest issue is making sure you turn off data hungry apps when on
mobile data. You can do that quite easily on an iphone, not sure about
others.