GiffGaff or Three phone for a young teen?

[AdventuresWithVoles]

GiffGaff runs on O2 network, which I'm on too (with Tesco) so I know their coverage is okay locally, Three is ok coverage, too.

The £10-top-up package on Giffgaff looks better, unlimited texts & free phone calls within network for a while after top up, too. Around here more people seem to have Three for their teens & rate it highly. Three means a mere 300 free texts/month with £10 top up; can't teens easily send more than 10 texts a day? That's why I'm thinking to go with Giffgaff (DS is 12, btw).

Thoughts?

We are all on Tescos but I've just got a Giff gaff sim to try out. You can spend as little as £5 a month for unlimited texts. For £10 you get data download as well.

Giff Gaff every time.

GiffGaff is great. Within the £10 bundle they also get unlimited web too.

Giffgaff!

I have switched my whole family (4 teens) as their old contracts ran out...plus myself.. and today my mother made the leap too!

I only put £5 on for myself and my youngest son, the others all have £10 goodybags. Just the free texts alone makes it such a good deal..and they cannot run up any bills! Now and again my eldest runs out of minutes and then tops it up himself. The free data is fab and all calls to giffgaff are free so if you are all on it it really is great.

Another vote for Giff Gaff here. I think you would be hard pushed to beat the offers on their 'goodybags'

Another Giffgaffer here!

A little hint too. If you can get them to be sociable and helpful in the forums, you get payback.

I've got £30 going on as credit in a week as I spend an hour or 2 in the forums giving advice to other newbies!

Some of the hardcore forum-ites get hundreds of payback in a year which they get into their Paypal accounts and upgrade their phone with it!!

Oh and if your DS can convince other to go on GG, all calls and texts between Giffgaff numbers are free. Just as long as you top up by at least £10 every 3 months.

Giffgaff is great DD3 is 20 and is on it. She loves the unlimited Internet and texts. She gets 250 minutes to any network in her package and only pays £10
a month.

Right, so Giffgaff it is! :)
Look, while I have your attention:
How would I best go about buying a Giffgaff phone? I gather they don't have physical shops so have to do it all online? I was wondering about getting an unlocked phone & a Giffgaff SIM for it. Sensible or daft?

Poor excuse for a geek, me.

I'm not hugely knowledgeable, but for DS, we bought a phone that was on the O2 network (as is GiffGaff). I then sweated buckets over this unlocking process & paid £15 or so for an unlock code, that we never needed!
There is lots of good advice on the GiffGaff website & forum.

Any 02 phone will do.. or an unlocked one...I don't think they even DO 'giffgaff phones' per se.

We are using various old o2 and unlocked phones on giffgaff here:)

def giffgaff, does their mobile phone have internet access? DS1 (11) got an O2 phone for xmas and whilst he hardly used minutes and texts squandered £15 in 2 weeks looking online, mostly you tube. We quickly converted to giff gaff, just wished it would automatically dd your account for the payment instead of physically having to buy the goodybag

Oh gawd, I am getting myself in a spin with all the options. So now I realise that I could, for instance, let DS have my current phone with a new Giffgaff SIM. I am literally considering dozens of options for phones & SIMs & deals & such.

The whole goodybag-rewardz-freebies thing mystifies me. Weird system. Part of the maze of so-called choice that paralyses with too many options.

I don't want them to have Internet access at all on the phone!
DS had an old brick right now on 3 network, I don't know if it would be possible to keep same number or even SIM & switch to Giffgaff, probably simpler just to get a new SIM, new number, & a different compatible phone.

Unlocking phones is a whole mystery in itself, to me; I've tried to look it up online but there are too many ways to do it, makes me need to go lie down in a dark room & I'm still none the wiser.

And part of the problem is I'm quite particular about getting only fairly small lightweight flip-phones: I spend a lot of time just figuring out which cheap phones fit the criteria. Too many unintended calls wasting credit otherwise; only yesterday DD accidentally rang our house phone on her slider, for instance, when it got squashed in her pocket. My dad has same problem when he borrows one of our phones; keeps ringing our home phone by accident! Yes I know there are lock options, but these users aren't sensible enough to consistently use them.

Pardon my ramblings, should get off MN & go lie down in dark room to ponder it thru, lol.

Titty

Recurring Goodybags are being brought in at the end of the month and you'll be able to set it up to charge your card/airtime.

If £10 is your target spend, get a Blackberry.

On a limited text contract, they can easily go over, so much better for them to use BBM which is included in a £10 contract.

woo hoo, am looking forward to reoccurring goodybags :)

AdventuresWithVoles I feel your pain. In spite of having two teenage sons and a DH who knows everything there is to know about computers it always falls to me to sort out phones.
I have nearly lost the will to live getting this GG SIM activated. Everyone told me it would be fine on our phones which are Tesco / O2 network. It isn't fine. It seems that 3 of our 4 phones are locked to Tescos.
So now I have to try and unlock DS2s phone. Of course I found this out after I had bought the Goody Bag, which admittedly was only £5 but cost more in my stress levels.

Everyone told me it would be fine on our phones which are Tesco / O2 network. It isn't fine. It seems that 3 of our 4 phones are locked to Tescos.

Noooo!!! I don't want to read that. How DO you go about unlocking them?

If £10 is your target spend, get a Blackberry.

Sorry, can you elaborate, Claire? My actual target is £5/month, but think that's impossible with a cheap texts deal (?). £5/month still way more than my own phone costs (sigh). And wanted to keep to payg because don't trust DC not to lose them (has happened a few times already).

Go and look on the GiffGaff forum. Loads & loads of advice.

Am I right to understand that customer support from GG is minimal, it's almost all community based?

Yes, I think that is why their costs are so low. It really is up to you to sort out your phone so that it works with their sim & then away you go.

Most of the forum is just other customers like me but they do have agents that you can contact with problems.

There is no phoneline/call centres which is what keeps the costs so low.

SecretSquirrel- are you sure the phones are O2/Tesco?? It may be that the sim isn't active or you don't have all the correct settings.
Giffgaff settings differ slightly from O2 ones.

Well we have 4 mobiles. Three bought from Tescos and using their PAYG.
The 4th bought as an unlocked phone but using a tesco contract which we got for £6 a month SIM only . It's DS1s and he gets unlimited texts for that which was a great deal and he doesn't want to change.
His phone works with the GG SIM so I know the SIM works.
Now after wasting years of my life hours on t'internet I have established that Tescos phones are locked. They will unlock them free if they are over a year old. Otherwise it costs £20.
I have paid £11.99 to a website recommended by GG for a code and am waiting for it.