Cheap Mobile Phones - The Internet Search

Now, this is my idea of shopping – sitting here in my pyjamas with a steaming mug of coffee and no pushy sales people to contend with!

Remind myself of what I’m looking for and away we go…first of all…

I check out the big six –

Virgin – www.virginmobile.co.uk
T-Mobile – www.t-mobile.co.uk
Orange – www.orange.co.uk/shop
O2 – www.o2.co.uk
Vodafone – www.vodafone.co.uk
3 – www.three.co.uk

This is Money’s money saving tips suggest a Pay As You Go (PAYG) as a cheaper option, so I check these out first. The way PAYG works is different on each network which somewhat confuses Babe! Using my ‘phone behaviour analysis’ I work out how much credit I would need to buy in order to facilitate my average monthly amount of chatting and texting. In most instances this works out as a rather costly amount – and that’s without even paying for the handset. T-Mobile offers the best deal based on my phone usage, but I’m not too sure about the handsets, they’re a bit basic even for this technophobe – or at least, the free ones are anyway. Although admittedly it is hard to tell what you’re going to get from a picture on a website.

Moving onto Pay Monthly (PM) deals and I get a range of different prices. Virgin offers a good value package at £20 for 100 minutes (any network, any time) and 200 texts. The cost reduces to £16 after 12 months. I gave up with 02 as I couldn’t get their PM page to load. Vodafone seemed to put the cart before the horse, so to speak by offering the handset before the package. I want a good deal on my tariff first and foremost – the phone just facilitates that, so I also lost patience with that one.

T-Mobile wasn’t bad – their PM packages start from £20, but I reckon I’d be spending more like £42 with my phone behaviour! Orange are my current provider (and causer of much annoyance). I checked out their new customers section – their Dolphin package isn’t bad, but after my last two phones thought they were aquatic creatures and ended up having to be replaced after they’d got wet I’m forced to have insurance through them, which hikes up the monthly bills!

The Three website really got me interested. Direct Text 675 offers 75 minutes of anytime, any network voice minutes and 600 texts per month for £15 – for life. Fab! The phones don’t look bad, but again it’s hard to tell what they’re like in ‘real life’.

Next I head to two price comparison sites. U Switch offers no results for the kind of package I’m after and Money Supermarket’s deals seem to all be based around cashback offers which is too confusing for my feeble mind!

Check out two of the big High Street retailers, Phones 4 U and Carphone Warehouse and again it’s all about the phone. Good if you’ve got your heart set on a certain model, but possibly not the best way to go about things if you are a babe on a budget.

For me at the moment, it’s between a PAYG T-Mobile or a contract on 3. I’m off to see what the High Street has to offer tomorrow. Check back to see what I find…