John Rumm wrote, on 12/12/2011 16:20:
On 12/12/2011 12:43, Dave N wrote:
Hugh - Was Invisible wrote, on 12/12/2011 09:17:
[...]
Hospital has reception problems with t-mobile and orange but 02 and
Vodafone based networks are OK

TIA for any replies.

I would recommend a Tesco PAYG mobile SIM card. It is one of the
cheapest services around. It uses the O2 network which, AIUI, is in the

They used to have a low user "lite" package that is still on their web
site if you hunt for it. They try not to sell it to you though. Their
current offering is one of these bonus cridit things where you get extra
credit each time you top up bringing the effective price per min down to
12p if you top up at least £10/month. Their lite package was 12p flat
rate regardless of top up!

Yes, you've reminded me! Indeed, true to form Tesco will continuously
try to "monetise" their customer base.

You've probably realised that I got the PAYG SIM from them some years
ago as the "Value SIM" package which was superseded by their new and
renamed offerings some while later. I had to request a downgrade to the
new "lite" package after it was introduced, otherwise I would have been
paying significantly higher calling costs given my very low use. I
would have been unaware of the change had I not checked their website
very carefully when I was asked to top-up with 10 pounds per month in
order to get the "best" prices. They didn't exactly tell me about the
change of packaging, they simply offered the "best" prices if I agreed
to regular top-ups.

It wasn't an easy process to downgrade to what I had been getting
previously and my request was queried at every stage, complete with
apparent misunderstandings, by their customer service rep. who wanted to
satisfy himself that I really was getting the best deal!

If you register your SIM via their web site it won't show you what
package you are on and is geared solely to enabling you to pay them some
money for top-ups. The only way to check is to calculate the price from
the cost and timing of each telephone call. If you don't register your
SIM, any change will happen without you ever knowing. A description of
"sleight of hand" is entirely appropriate and presumably taking
advantage of the fact that many (most?) purchasers of their SIM-only
packages don't register.

Although it can be cheap to start with, Tesco do always look for the
opportunity to increase their revenue by re-packaging and re-marketing
something without actually changing the service other than increasing
their prices. They achieve this by abolishing the previous packages and
substituting their "new and improved" offerings. As you noted, if they
keep the old packages (presumably only because of some sort of
regulatory or contractual requirement) they will rename them and bury
them so deep that only the most persistent of searches can find them.

/rant

Perhaps I should also check out the IKEA offering.

--
Dave N