Hi from an EasyMobile refugee!

14/11/06
Hi, now that EasyMobile have dumped me and my entire family and about 80,000 others, (thanks for now't Sir Stelios ) I now have to find a good value PAYG operator for 5 before December. I am thinking of switching us all to Virgin, unless anyone out there can make a good case for any other operator. We text each other a lot and make a few calls a day to other mobiles, what do you recommend? Thanks J.

In one of the 'network' threads there's a great link to a comparison of all the services ...sounds like it might come in handy for you right now.

Good luck with the search!

thudd - I'm also an easyMobile customer along with some others in the family. It's pain in the posterior to have to make a quick decision on choosing a new operator but c'est la vie.

I've taken a quick gander at the pay as you go offerings on the main networks (Vodafone, o2, T-Mobile, Orange, Virgin) as well as Fresh. All the relevant information is on the respective websites but it does take a bit of decoding.

The critical thing for me is the cost of texts and of cross-network calls (calls to other networks), both of which can be a lot more expensive than the 5p and 15p/min respectively that I'm used to paying with easyMobile (and which currently cost just 1p and 3p/min between easyMobile customers!).

Some of the current PAYG plans muddy the waters somewhat by offering a free bonus such as a number of free minutes or free calls at the weekend dependent on how much you'd topped up your phone by or how much you've spent over the past week or month - see the respective price plans for details. Whilst this I'm sure is up some peoples street it's not really what I want - I don't want to get into the situation of spending to save (i.e. making expensive calls to qualify for free calls), I'm after a cheap and simple tariff.


Virgin PAYG is a bit pricey with regards to cross-network calls at 35p/min, (texts are 10p or 3p to other Virgin mobiles).

T-Mobile's Everyone PAYG tariff looks pretty good - just 12p/min for any mobile or landline call at any time (texts are 10p, and unlimited texts are 'free' during evenings and weekends if you top up with a minimum of £10 a month).

Vodafone's Anynet PAYG tariff has mobile and landline calls at 30p/min weekday daytime and just 10p/min evenings and weekend (texts are 10p). Vodafone also offers "Free Weekends" - if you spend £5 during monday to friday you get 'free' calls and texts to any network from 7.30pm on friday for the rest of the weekend.

Orange do two different PAYG tariffs, one rather confusingly called "Free Text Top-up" (the idea being that the number of 'free' texts you get relates to how much you spend on topping-up each month). For either of the PAYG tariffs you can also get 'free' evening calls (7pm to midnight) to other Orange numbers for two years if you to-up by at least £10 a month.

o2's PAYG tariffs seem a bit pricey to me. They've various "Bolt Ons" that might make the difference to some people though.

Having said all that I think I may well go for Fresh Mobile - 15p/min calls to all mobiles and landlines and 5p texts. I'm not sure about the international roaming situation though, I have to look into that a bit more.


One thing I really liked about easyMobile was the auto-topup facility - as far as I can see on all the other networks you have to make a positive action to add credit, though this can be as simple as sending a text message to authorise money to be taken from your credit/debit card or directly (via Direct Debit) from your bank. Nonetheless it doesn't appear anyone has the silent auto-topup facility that easyMobile has.

Thanks Binary! Just checked out the Fresh link via my easymobile account page. The free sim and £10 free call time swings it for me plus its seems to be a staight forward tariff. Maybe not the ultimate in good value, but I would have enough trouble trying to work out what I need to topup each month to get such'n'such benefit for myself let alone work it out for the kids too

BTW, I wasn't really Easy bashing. I found their customer service to be superb, and at least they have tried to soften the blow by making the change over relatively simple. I just didn't like being dumped by text.....what am I, a popstar? J