1pmobile PAYG on EE network recommended

[armalites]

We have a controller in our Discovery 3 that allows us to fire the fuel burning heater remotely so the engine is warm on a winters morning

We always run an EE PAYG sim as that's the best network where we are. The device uses very little and I got fed up with credit expiring every month.

I found these people

https://www.1pmobile.com/

£10 top up covers you for 120 days and calls are 1p/min and data 1p/meg. The other benefit is if you top up another £10 it doesn't just add to your credit it adds 120 days.

Ordered the sim 16:30 Monday and had it in the post Tuesday.

For some reason I didn't get a confirmation email with my set up password. I rang them, got straight through and the lady I spoke to checked the settings on my account(typo in the email address) and activated the sim for me.

In ideal world we'd have a PAYG sim on EE that never expired, I know Giffgaff PAYG don't expire but they use O2 which is no good for us.

I understand that people have PAYG for many reasons but all this topping up stuff is a pain.

 

[Bobtail4x4]

we have 4 1p sims (2 trackers and two phones), plus one for the mother in law.
if anyone takes your reccomendation, they give you a code that adds £5 on their car and the same on yours,
the 1p website, gives great detail of usage,

 

[julianf]

can you get three where you are? their credit does not "expire" (into someone else's pocket....)

 

[R-D-R]

Does your fbh controller trigger by a call/sms or over data?

if data I just replaced the sim in the disco 5, Amazon had a deal for a EE 12gig data sim that lasts a year for £10

 

[armalites]

It can trigger by all three, we generally use data but we were previously using sms. It does send errors via sms and sms is needed to change settings. In the last month on the EE sim it's used 100mb of data and a handfull of texts.

We generally only use it in the winter but it is also a GPS tracker.

If I could buy SIMS with a £1 credit to test them I'd grab some of the non expiring ones and try them but you have to top them up. Sometimes these kind of devices will get a signal when a phone won't so I may get away with a different network.

The most important thing is it works when we are at home.

In doing the research most sites only ever list the major players, my father in law is on a contract with a company that pays him back for any unused credit who I had not heard of before but again I thnk they are on O2.

All of our phones are on 1 month contracts, even the kids so all this PAYG stuff seems like a chore.

 

[julianf]

O2 does some odd thing with PAYG data - they have a minimum charge per "session" but it's not entirely clear what a "session" is.

From reports, it may be that a new session is started on every fade in and out of signal... Which would rack up data charges quickly on an O2 SIM in a flakey signal area.

One to watch out for....

 

[armalites]

These are little snippets that are really important but never focus in any reviews.

The three majors all seem to claim to be the best network but if they don't work where you need them to work it means nothing.

When we lived in Berkshire my wife was on Vodafone and my work phone was on O2. We had similar signal at home but if we rang the home phone and both pressed dial at the same time then without fail the Vodafone got through first. That is a seemingly meaningless test but it shows there is something different in the way the networks worked.

The bit that's annoying is when you go abroad what ever sim you have will connect to whatever network it can find. There no reason why we can't do that in ths country other than the networks would have no advantage over each other and would all come down to price. I would happily pay a bit more for calls/data on one of the other networks if I had no signal.

 

[graffian]

There are some Virgin payg sims that don't need using and always work.

 

[armalites]

This is the problem, they don't all do it and the language used is ambiguous at best. I had a quick look at the Virgin site, they use EE which is good but I found this text "refresh automatically every 30 days, as long as you have enough top-up credit in your account." . I read that as if you have any credit left it will carry on. If that's what it means then that could be the way forward. I will give them a ring.

 

[graffian]

Mine may be an old deal, I have had it a while.

 

[Bobtail4x4]

On the 1p sims, the £10 top up lasts 120 days, and is carried over to the next period, they add another £10,
if your credit drops below £2 it will add £10 automatically.
or you can buy extra credit that works out cheaper,

£3.33 a month?

 

[armalites]

I am totally ok with the 1p sim, the benefit it provides is worth every penny. 120 days is much better than the 30 days we had before. It will most likely use £1.20 in the 120 days because although data is 1p/mb there is a minimum charge of 1p in any 24h period.

It only gets used for about 3-4months a year but I will still need to keep it topped up or they shut them down.

£30/year for a preheated engine and live tracking is a good deal.

 

[Bobtail4x4]

never had a minimum charge taken off any of the cards,

 

[armalites]

never had a minimum charge taken off any of the cards,

This is from the website and ties up with my usage

A data charge starts as soon as the first packet of data is used. You are then allocated 1MB to use before the next charge occurs. If any data is used in a 24 hour period there is a minimum charge of 1p.

 

[Bobtail4x4]

ahh if data is used,
I read you as it takes 1p a day whatever you do,