From a pint of milk to transport fares, it seems as though the price of anything and everything is on the rise. And so it is with mobile phone expenditure. Three-quarters of mobile users waste £200 per year by simply being on the wrong contract. Given that we all need to save money, it is understandable why most people opt to use pay as you go handsets. But don’t be fooled: pay as you go phones are a double edged sword and have their downsides. Perhaps you’ve experienced this first-hand? Here’s how you can weigh up the positives and the negatives, before deciding to completely get rid of your pay as you go phone.
Upsides to using pay as you go phones
There are some serious upsides to using pay as you go mobile phones. They cater very well to those whose incomes vary from month to month or those without a regular income, perhaps because they are in between jobs. Such circumstances mean that a large number of calls, texts and data are used in some months but close to none in others, as such using a pay as you go phone gives users the opportunity to purchase what they need, only when they need it.
Probably the most obvious way pay as you go users do benefit is by not being tied into a lengthy contract, with two-year deals commonplace these days. With the availability of so many fantastic sim only deals, users can enjoy the opportunity to replace battered handsets with stylish new models, at any time and on a whim. A pleasure that is virtually exclusive to pay-as-you-go phone users.
It is a fact of life that anything can happen at any given time, so in the unfortunate event of a job loss, there must be some sort of plan to deal with such. Using a pay as you go phone proves to be the best solution. When income suddenly changes or comes to an unexpected standstill, as a pay as you go user, there is no need to terminate a contract, you can literally carry on as you were, albeit at a lesser rate. So without sounding cynical, you might want to hold on to your pay as you go phone, just in case.
With no monthly costs to pay, having a pay as you go phone is the obvious choice for those who use mobile phones (i.e., calls, texts, browsing etc.,) at varying levels from month to month and cannot afford to pay in advance for usage that might be considerably more than they’d use.
Downsides to using pay as you go phones
However, there is always the annoyance of being notified, by a text in the middle of a conversation that you will soon run out of credit and must top-up immediately. This can be a hassle for some users. High-end users, for example business persons are simply worse off by using pay as you go phones. In the case of an emergency, finding a shop to top-up a phone might be completely impossible, leaving the user stranded until there is access to topping up facilities. Such users tend to use such large amounts of data that they may be missing out on fantastic monthly contract deals, where they could actually be saving money instead of under-compensating by buying small amounts of data the sum of which can amount to more than the cost of a constant monthly package.
All in all, the key to making the most of pay as you go phones is getting the right balance between a good handset and even better SIM only deals.
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