Mobile Phone - Contract or Pay as You Go at Uni?

Former Member

I'm thinking of getting a new phone. I'm going to uni in September and currently my phone eats nearly £20 a month on pay as you go with 3 - and last month (because the vouchers expire) they took £8's worth of credit off me because it expired. I'm considering going for pay monthly £19 - 60 mins (not a talker me!) and 1000 texts per month. But then there's the perspective that irrespective of how much I use - £19 automatically goes out my account per month, whereas if uni money wise doesn't go well for me...they I probably wouldn't fund my phone's credit if money got tight.

What have others chosen to do? This gives me a top notch handset for free and £19 a month for the above deal. To buy the same phone, pay as you go is well over £175. I bought a cheaper phone last time and it's practically conked out on me. But then there's is the choice as to whether to top up or not.

Thank you for replies

Former Member

Personally I'm sticking with my contract, that has minutes and texts included. That way I know how much money to budget for.

Former Member

Scarlet wrote:

Personally I'm sticking with my contract, that has minutes and texts included. That way I know how much money to budget for.

Without meaning to be too nosey - what do you currently pay for your contract and do you solely pay it. One of my friends has kept on about me getting a contract but mummy and daddy pay his phone bill for him :yeees:

Former Member

I have a contract with 120 minutes any time, any network, and 1000 texts a months with half price calls when my inclusive ones run out, it costs me £25 a month, and I pay for it myself. Like Scarlet said, I like knowing how much to budget, and not worry about running out of credit and things like that. Thats Orange student package I'm with.

Former Member

MoonArcanum wrote:

I have a contract with 120 minutes any time, any network, and 1000 texts a months with half price calls when my inclusive ones run out, it costs me £25 a month, and I pay for it myself. Like Scarlet said, I like knowing how much to budget, and not worry about running out of credit and things like that. Thats Orange student package I'm with.

Ooo it's actually the orange one I'm looking at - you've obviously got the contract just above mine with the more mins - do you find you eat into your inclusive minutes a lot or no?

Sorry for the questions and noseyness - just found a handset I'm interested in and the such and seems like a bargain

Former Member

I've only been on it a couple of months, and I have done both months, but then again I do have lengthy phone calls with my mum a lot, and have been calling job agencies/my letting agent quite a lot. The good thing is if you do go over your minutes then its only 5p per minute afterwards. If you sign up now though, don't you get double minutes for life or something? I know I didn't because I upgraded, and chose to have a new phone rather than double minutes because I have a BT line too.

Former Member

Orange do a student contract, my friend has it and says its good

im on orange off peak 1000, 150 texts included and i pay for an extra package of 100 messages for £2. Its £21.99 per month

Former Member

I'll still have my contract with Vodafone.

But, my Dad pays for it.

Former Member

I'm on 02 Pay as you go with the 300 free texts thing. I very rarely talk and barely text people much. £10 can last me a month or two.

Former Member

I have a contract, because I get it to suit the way I use my phone, which is usually not possible with PAYG. I talk more than I text, but have friends on many networks, so I have 500 off peak any network mins a month, and 100 texts a month. And with the other little things I do, like peak calling and VAT comes to about £30 a month.

So, either find a contract that suits you and pay exactly that much a month, or get PAYG and learn a little restraint...

Former Member

Please please tell me you dont use all those 1000 texts in one month, surely no one can text that often?

Former Member

bongbudda wrote:

Please please tell me you dont use all those 1000 texts in one month, surely no one can text that often?

I personally don't. I use abut 30 of them a month.

Former Member

bongbudda wrote:

Please please tell me you dont use all those 1000 texts in one month, surely no one can text that often?

I don't think I would use all 1000 but it's just something that comes with the student package and I do text a lot more than I talk on the phone and obviously with an abundance of new uni friends I'll be texting a lot more.... ok so that's a joke but a lotta text is more use to me than a load of mins.

Former Member

Its just that you'd have to send more than 30 texts a day to use that many, I dont think I send that many in a couple of months.

Former Member

Do you have company which operates from online?

Anyone here by any chance knows which company is best for oversea calls and texts?

(Sorry for hijacking the thread. Just thought it'd be stupid to start a new one).

Former Member

Dear Wendy wrote:

Do you have company which operates from online?

Anyone here by any chance knows which company is best for oversea calls and texts?

(Sorry for hijacking the thread. Just thought it'd be stupid to start a new one).

Which (the company not the word) might give you online comparisons for price and that.

Former Member

i've got a contract phone. i'm on o2 online 500 and get 500 messages and 500 any network minutes after 7. i pay £25 a month for this. up until a few months ago, my phone bills were around £80 each time. and this was while i was at uni. so as you can imagine it wasn't what i needed! i then got a £215 phone bill in december and rang up o2 to terminate my contract but that was going to cost me a few hundered to do so i decided to buck my ideas up. after that i got them back down to about £70-£90 and since march they've been under £40 and i even had one that was £30.

i know that might seem like a lot still but i think that's quite good to say the use i get out of my phone. i'd only say give contract a go if you think you can keep within your limits. the thing about pay as you go is when you haven't got any money, you can't top your phone up. end of. whereas with contract you can go over your limits and spend more than you can afford. i know with some contracts you can put a limit on your bill so you can't use it after you've reached the limit you set.

eta: might you want more than 60 minutes? you might want to be ringing family/friends etc.

Former Member

I went to uni with payg and quickly found the amount I spent went up dramatically adn so got a £20 contract that at the time had 500 off peak mins and 500 texts and thats seen me through the last 4 years now, just changing to the respective contracts that o2 have changed to over the years.

Former Member

At the moment Im on 3 contract, its £25 a month I get 500 texts and 50 minutes to any one at any time.
I usually use 400-500 texts a month so Im more of a texter. There are great deals on o2, £19 500 texts and 50 mins.
They have loads of online deals (free phone ofcourse).
I might get that, but I shall see how I go on pay as you go for a bit.

They are doing a great deal for ucas
www.o2.co.uk/ucaspromo where you can have a free sim (pay as you go) top up £15 a month get 150 mins any network off peak and 300 texts!
or a free sim on contract, but its not 12month! £25 a month, you get 1000 texts, 200 any time any network mins. (these ucas ones are for your existing handset)

Former Member

Contract is better, you just need to be more weary about how much you're spending.

On 02's Online OffPeak 300, which offers 300 minutes and 500 texts a month. I'd temporarily gone to pay as you go and found myself spending way over the monthly £20 charge anyway so I thought at least with the contract you're not forking out hundreds extra for the phone.

Former Member

I personally havent been Uni - I'm not even old enough! ButI've been looking into going on contract as a general thing, but if like me you have no ability to hold yourself back.... T-Mobile have a reasonably cool contract thing called U-Fix.... You fix how much you can spend on your contract each month, so you jknow what your bill will be and if you do find yourself in the money and want more money on your phone, you can just top up extra like you would PAYG.
It seems incredably easy to me.....

Former Member

I'm with o2, and got a contract because we didnt have a land line in my house and my phone had pretty much died so it solved all my problems. Its 300 offpeak minutes and 500 texts a month for £20. It works out quite well becuase id only ever really call people in the evening anyway, and its good to know exactly how much is going out and when and that i'll always be reachable even if i run out of "credit". That was onbe of the problems of pay as you go in 1st year, because when i ran out of credit it stopped accepting. dodgy plan probably but it was annoying! And now i get a new funky phone because my contract is pretty much up

Former Member

PAYG all the way!
I was (and technically still am) on contract with orange and it was the biggest mistake i've ever made.
Although it is nice to have a brand new top of the range phone that you can use as often as you like, there is the temptation to do just that and end up with a hugh bill at the end of the month (my biggest was £230).
Contract phones are ok as long as you can afford to pay the bill but just think first about how you would manage to pay if say you lost a job or couldnt guarentee having money.
I havent used my phone in 3 months but i still owe orange about a hundred quid because im not working anymore and have no money to pay the bill.

Former Member

I guess it just depends on how much self control you have with that type of thing. My biggest phone bill so far has been £50, and that was only because I had to unavoidably make lots of daytime calls when on a evening/weekend contract.

Former Member

Do you get WAP with contract phones?

I may just get one, but I don't wanna change my number.

Former Member

Renzo wrote:

I'm on 02 Pay as you go with the 300 free texts thing. I very rarely talk and barely text people much. £10 can last me a month or two.

same works well for me aswell, and also saves my boyfriend a lot of money as before he changed to this he was spending £10+ a week on phone credit.

Former Member

Check out Carphone Warehouse they have some really good deals on contract phones, I've recently got a Nokia 6680 on 3 500mins 100txt a month. Which after all the cashback etc only works out me having to pay out about £100 all together and the phone itself costs about £300?

The clearance section is where you get some really good deals. I can't stand pay as you go the charges for calls and texts are rediculous esp. considering a lot of people are on different networks. It's not like a few years ago when nearly everyone was on O2.

Former Member

Im gonna go on o2 online1000, u get 500 texts, 1000 offpeak mins to o2 numbers and landline numbers! all for £20 a month!

Former Member

billybob87 wrote:

Im gonna go on o2 online1000, u get 500 texts, 1000 offpeak mins to o2 numbers and landline numbers! all for £20 a month!

you're really going to use 1000 minutes?

why not go for online500 and get 500 messages and 500 evening and weekend to any network?

Former Member

I have a genie sim card, don't see why I should change it for uni

Former Member

you can go through texts really easily, plus when you go over your limit its around 10p a shot, no matter how short your text is, so your bill can easily mount up

for £20 a month i get 750 minutes (of which i use about 2/3 of that)
and 150 texts, from the fact that my last bill was £24.10, i had another 40 messages i had to pay for, so i use around 200 texts a month, seriously tempted if i go over the limit well before the first half of this billing month, to get an add on