Pay & Go - how do people survive!?

[Andeh13]

How do people honestly surive pay & go services? trying to top is beyond infuriating, with their automated phone services and excessive hoops to jump through.

Vodaphone....

Simple system, call, enter debit card numbers then top up... except 5 cards (4 debit & 1 credit) spread over my dad & I, (3 different banks and 3 address) all rendered us unable to top due to 'exceeding maximum top up amount' - £15 and £10 in our case. When suggested we top up '£5' the system just informs us the payment has been rejected and sends us back to the base menu.

Calling their customer service team they inform us their system shows error messages but 4 days later they still dont know why we are not allowed to top up. They suggest it is our branks (all three of them...) preventing the payment! The sim card is useless as we have 45p to top up and 4 days later are still unable to top up.

I move on to Three, where I ring up hoping to top up only to spent 20mins going in circles on their phone system before giving up and googling how to do it... to be informed I have to sign up to their website and register. I type int he mobile number, hit forgot password as I remember going through this weeks ago when I last needed to resort to p&g and it sends me a password via txt messages. GOOD STUFF! I then enter in the mobile number, and the temp password....and it informs me the mobile number is invalid... BUT YOU JUST TXTED ME MY NEW PASSWORD TO IT!?!?


I am sure I am being obtuse or retarded here, but if I live for technology and worship it at every corner... so if I struggle to come to grips with two different companies and their beyond appalling mobile pay&go systems.... how do others manage it!? I am seething, beyond angry with Vodaphone & three atm....

[Dooms]

Happy on Giffgaff.

£12 a month without contract gets me:
O2 network (good signal in my area)
Unlimited Giffgaff to Giffgaff calls
250 Minutes
Unlimited text
Unlimited 3G with no fair usage policy

Everything controlled online, easy to use and can pay via PayPal.

[stevie lee]

im on pay&go, i got a card with it, I take that into o2 shop (I think it also works at other top up points aswell in other shops) hand cashier person the money and card, say "top me up please" , they swipe card, press amount, few seconds later credit on phone with a text message to inform me that its been topped up.

unless they've changed it since I last topped up at the start of 2011 - i've only used £4 since

[technodean]

As mentioned, get a payment swipe card, I don't know if you can still get them at the tills in tesco etc. But easy to top up at almost every shop. If you are toping up every month why not get a sim only contract, either 30 days or 12 months. Just today have got rid of my vodafone sim contract for a T Mobile one (THE FULL MONTY), 2000mins, unlimited txt's, unlimited Data £16 per month.

[fatguy666]

No idea what network my dad was on but he was topping up £40 a week cause he phones his jail pals that much!

My bro has switched him to giffgaff tho

[jimbouk]

unless they've changed it since I last topped up at the start of 2011 - i've only used £4 since

Unless you've made paying calls on it since then you may find out your balance is £0...

I haven't used a PAYG phone since I was a teenager, then it was all about the top-up card (and paying my cash pocket money). These days you can do it in shops with the top-up card, using a cash machine, online, etc. There must be one way that's convenient for you?

[Splash]

I've just moved to GiffGaff and while it took almost a day to activate my SIM and goodybag it's all online so I don't have to get annoyed. £12/month for unlimited data and enough voice/texts for me until someone launches a decent 4G offering and then I might well take up a new SIM only contract for my S4.

[ZaO]

I'm on giffgaff too. It's so easy to topup online. If you have the skills to post a thread on this forum then you can do it lol. Also you can set "goodybags", as they call them, to automatically occur every month. That way it works like contract. But obviously you can cancel it any given moment before it's been charged. I don't think there's much chance of me being on contract again any time soon. Already got a nice phone to last me a few years or so

[stevie lee]

Unless you've made paying calls on it since then you may find out your balance is £0...

I haven't used a PAYG phone since I was a teenager, then it was all about the top-up card (and paying my cash pocket money). These days you can do it in shops with the top-up card, using a cash machine, online, etc. There must be one way that's convenient for you?

once every 6 months on o2, last one was in mid-march.

I know that because the previous sim got cut off, due to lack of use

[jimbouk]

I know that because the previous sim got cut off, due to lack of use

So it's not just me then

[hb904460]

Its just as easy to top up using a debit card when passing a cash machine.

[Agent]

Happy on Giffgaff.

£12 a month without contract gets me:
O2 network (good signal in my area)
Unlimited Giffgaff to Giffgaff calls
250 Minutes
Unlimited text
Unlimited 3G with no fair usage policy

Everything controlled online, easy to use and can pay via PayPal.

Sadly they say they don't have a FUP, but they have banned people very fast when they 'use too much'. They won't say what the limits are for the trigger either.
Many posts on the GG forum about people just being banned without warning, although most do get a text before.

Still, very unlikely to hit it unless doing something crazy.

[Dooms]

The only ones I've read about are people getting banned for tethering with VERY high usage (top 1-3%), but until they kick me off I have nothing bad to say about them

[Agent]

People streaming 1080p videos to their new high end devices have been hit - they use some serious bandwidth!

[Zak33]

you gotta be stood under an 02 mast to do that though, surely?

I've got a vodaphone phone and an EE phone, and you couldn't stream a blummin email to read in most situations

[Agent]

Depends on your signal of course, but compression is very good these days. You only need a few meg to pull down good quality HD.