Tesco Mobile UK Shifting All Pay As You Go Customers to New Tariff
Tesco Mobile, which is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) on O2’s national platform, appears to be causing some confusion among their base by informing “all of our current Pay as you go (PAYG) customers” that they are in the process of being “migrated” to the provider’s new PAYG Essentials tariff.
Several of the operator’s customers have contacted ISPreview to complain about the migration, which seems to be making quite a few changes – not all of which may be viewed as positive. One of those customers (credits to Darren) was also kind enough to include a copy of the SMS (text message) they received this week:
SMS: “Pay as you go is changing. Your tariff will be replaced with our new Essentials tariff between 07 Oct and 02 Nov. To help you settle in, your first 30-day bundle is free. Based on your recent usage, we recommend the exclusive £2.50 bundle. You’ll get 100MB data + 100 mins & 100 texts. You can then set it to auto-renew from your top-up balance or use your balance for calls/texts/data at our standard rates.”
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The new Essentials tariff appears to be replacing the operator’s original Rocket Packs, Triple Credit, and Lite plans, some of which have been used by Tesco Mobile’s customers for many years. At the same time, the operator has also introduced a new PAYG App, which is only available to customers AFTER they’ve been migrated (the old app has been renamed to the “Tesco Mobile Rocket Pack and Triple Credit app” – those still on the relevant plans should use that).
The New Essentials PAYG Tariff Options
| Bundle Price | Data | Minutes & texts |
| £30 | 100GB |
Unlimited mins and texts |
| £20 | 50GB | |
| £15 | 25GB | |
| £10 | 10GB | |
| £5 | 500MB | 500 mins and texts |
Clearly, some of Tesco Mobile’s customers are also being offered an “exclusive” £2.50 bundle too, which doesn’t appear on the standard tariff list and is probably being offered to those who only made limited or infrequent use of their old plan (e.g. for emergencies) – most likely impacting older or more vulnerable users (many of these are still on the provider’s flat rate Lite plans – the original style of PAYG).
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Otherwise, each bundle only lasts for 30-days (like the previous Rocket Packs, but different from the Lite plans) and, by default, it will then automatically renew at the end of that period. Customers with older 2G SIMS have also been told that they’ll need to swap to a 4G SIM “as soon as possible … [or we] won’t be able to move your mobile number” to the new plan (related customers will be contacted separately).
The new plans seem to be driving customers toward only managing their accounts via the new mobile App, although Tesco Mobile does state that: “alternatively, if you’ve bought a top-up voucher from one of our stores, you can call 4488 from your Tesco Mobile phone.”
Further details can be found on Tesco Mobile’s Pay as you go Changes (FAQ) page, which among other things notes that the new Essentials plan will no longer be able to store card details for auto or regular top-ups and has discarded the old “favourite numbers” feature. In addition, E top-up cards will no longer work and customers who don’t use their phone for a period of six months or more will be disconnected (not so good for those who only kept it for emergency contacts).
Clearly this will be more disruptive to some of Tesco Mobile’s customers than others, but the changes they’re making do reflect the wider industry tend toward moving away from the older PAYG models and adopting something that is closer to a basic Pay Monthly no-contract style plan. A not particularly popular trend, it has to be said.
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One final point to make is that customers who get migrated should try to avoid buying a new bundle during their first 30 days on Essentials. Doing this will cause you to lose any of the remaining allowances in your free bundle. So, use those allowances up first.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Are they also changing their pay-as-you-use tariff (the one where you don’t buy a bundle and are just spending your top-up credit)? This has not changed since the 2010s.
I believe that’s what they mean by “Lite” and they do say “all” PAYG customers are moving to Essentials.
Yes, and it looks like they’re raising the prices by quite a bit – from 8p per minute on Lite to 25p on their new “standatd rates”, and 10p for 1 MB of data. They must be determined to get rid of their remaining pay per units customers.
The only reason someone would choose PAYG now, would be a dislike of contracts, as far as I can see. PAYG is expensive, and becoming more so, as it seems to be in this case. 12 Month contracts for £5 or less are available, as many on this platform have testified too, although data would be limited at that price off course.
I think you’ve forgotten that some users are just incredibly low usage and don’t use their phones unless necessary. I know someone who knows someone that seems to be on traditional PAYG and they only top up rarely (even with 30p for a message).
@insertfloppydiskhere: Some people, like the person you were made aware off, maybe have a mobile for mainly texting, emergency situations or banking purposes. Still as your last paragraph in your second post says, PAYG, not a great option nowadays.
As always, Different strokes for different folks! 🙂
But you can get rolling monthly sim only contracts that are cheap as chips, so no contract, that is what I am on.
I did not think anyone used PAYG these days, certainly where you can get sim only monthly rolling contract so cheap.
Just for a nose, I had a look at what Tesco offered, they are not cheap compared to others.
For a tenner, there is unlimited text and calls, and 12GB of data, on a 24-month contract, Crazy 24 months for sim only, mind you if you have a Club card you get it for £9 a month and no price rise.
Now, if you go for Smarty 40GB for a tenner, plus unlimited text and calls and you can change when ever you want, there is an offer of double data, at the moment.
I pay a fiver a month for 5GB from Smarty, which is fine for me.
I know they use a different network., Tesco isO2, smarty is 3/vodafone.
Tesco is not such good value as people think phone wise. I suppose people think they get great value because they get some lousy points
Sad old devils like me have been using PAYG Lite for years.
I keep the phone for emergencies & to receive passcodes for logins (the login is on a different device). Data connections are all done from home wi-fi.
Barring emergencies I make one call every six months to keep the sim active.
I am still on my original £10 top-up!
It has been fine up until now but I will have to see how the new changes work out.
The last time I looked RWG did a similar PAYG but they were being panned on Trustpilot.
Any suggestions anyone ?
@Sad Old Devil: I’m sure your not! 🙂 You’re the sort of customer who the networks would like to see spending more money! If it works for you, hang in there as long as they’ll let you, that would be my advice.
@Ad47uk: Tesco, at a time kept their prices the same, after your contract ended, you were then on a rolling monthly situation. Now you have to take out a club card deal, to get that sort of benefit, as far as I am aware.
If you top up every 6 months, Giffgaff is probably a better option than RWG. Although to be honest, if you’re topping up in that time frame and don’t mind spending £5 more, you may as well just stay on Tesco tbh because at least you’ve got some data for emergencies instead of at potentially extortionate rates.
@Sad Old Devil, years ago when I used to be on PAYG, it would run out after 30days, if you used it or not.
I don’t use a lot of data, that is why I went for Smarty.
@Fibre Scriber, Is Tesco the only supermarket now to have their own mobile service? Sainsbury’s got rid of theirs years ago, and I don’t think Morrison’s have any.
@Ad47uk “Is Tesco the only supermarket now to have their own mobile service?” no, Asda do also. Main differences being Tesco Mobile is a joint venture with O2, while Asda Mobile is a standard MVNO on Vodafone.
@Ad47uk oh, also, while not a supermarket as such, Superdrug have their own mobile service too (just remembered).
Known about this for a while, and it’s disappointing that Tesco seems to be causing confusion particularly with the app stuff. I had confidence that they’d actually communicate well, but guess not.
Not really any good PAYG options for low usage but giffgaff is probably your best option now.
There are still some Original O2 PAYG sims on eBay.
3p/min, 2p/txt, 1p/MB
I have a 4g tablet with a Tesco lite SIM that is only used for the WhatsApp connection and for receiving One Time Passcodes. To keep it active I only need to send an occasional 4p SMS. My interpretation of the Essentials T&Cs is that, without a bundle, text messages will be charged at the standard rate of 10p. So, for that extra 6p, I’ll go with the Essentials tariff.
I also have a Tesco home-only phone in use for emergencies. Using Tesco’s lite PAYG it never needed topping up, as it currently rolls over unused credit. I’ll be jumping ship if they force it onto a PAYG requiring monthly top ups.
@Sad Old Devil Rwg still working fine for me.
Been with them since 2019,on a free for life bundle of 100 mins 100 texts and 75mb per month.
The same bundle is now £2 a month
@Ad47uk: Another supermarket that has a Mobile service is Asda, Vodafone is the network provider for them. I believe your not a big fan of Vodafone, from some of your previous posts. 🙂
Was definitely disappointed to read about this. But I suppose it wasn’t entirely unexpected. I do have two Tesco Lite SIMs with a tenner on each for very occasional use in the car. It is (was?) the ideal standby especially as you didn’t have to top it up and only neeeded a six monthly text or call to keep it live.
I’m unsure how the proposed £2.50 option that’s referred to will work and whether that will need a monthly top up. Perhaps it will be that if you opt out of having a bundle things will continue as they are now except the cost per minute goes from 8 pence to 25 and the text cost goes up too?
I do have two Asda Mobile SIMs as a standy (15p per min), one in each of the second SIM slots in our main Android phones, just in case, and they are just as good given that they also don’t need regular top ups… just a call or text to remain live every 6 months.
My husband is 77 and has been on Tesco payg mobile for years. He only has it for emergencies and hasn’t topped it up with credit for years. He doesn’t understand technology at all and we don’t know who still does payg sim only deals, any advice please. Also what happens to the money he still has on Tesco credit?
The O2 network still has (some of?) the best coverage in a few places, and for a while Tesco’s PAYG was the cheapest way to get on it without a long contract. Interesting that this change comes soon after they cancelled their Clubcard discounts for Rocket Packs.
Looking again at the SMS I received, my migration “date” is in a 26-day range that doesn’t include my usual Rocket Pack renewal. Looks a lot like they will just cancel any active pack and replace it with the “free” 30-day pack – which is fair enough, but probably won’t mean a free month.
I wonder if the Tesco staff knew about this,i only have a mobile for emergencies ,the car & off chance landline goes down.I have a ” smart ” phone but i haven’t used it in years,bought a Doro & been using it,had to change it a couple of weeks ago because it was 3G which tesco advised that they were only going to be on 4G & 5G.From what i.ve been reading i guess i will not be able now to just add to my balance,i used to keep about £20 on it as i say didn’t use it a lot.
Anyone know if i would be able to keep my number if i moved to another network.Tesco just transfered my number to the new Doro.
It’s fairly easy to keep your number, you need to request a PAC from Tesco while your account is still active with them. You can request it online via their website.
I bought a new 4G Doro phone from Tesco’s because they said they were turning off 3G. The phone doesn’t connect to the internet so what am I supposed to do when Tesco’s discontinue the online accounts and I can’t download the App? Buy yet another phone from them!
Ronnie, you will be able to top up using a Top Up Voucher. You can buy these online from Tesco or from the large Tesco stores. You get a code sent to you via email then you ring the free top up line and enter the code. I always used to top up like this but then found toping up through my online account easier. As a family with low phone usage, we have four “burner” type phones and two smartphones all currently on PAYG. The two older phones will be retired when the change to Essentials kicks in. One of the other phones has no internet access (an Alcatel) but the other (a Nokia) does. I have a smartphone on PAYG because I don’t use the internet much when I away from home but I am considering changing to a Tesco contract (probably the £9 a month one for 12GB). I would also like to know whether those of us who still use phones that are not compatible with the incoming Essentials tariff and can’t run on 4G will get a refund on our credit balances. I do know that currently WiFi calling is not going to be available to PAYG customers even if their phones are 4G and capable of VOLTE and whether old 2G phone numbers can be transferred to newer phones and their balances transferred.
I have no plans to pay money every month for a service I barely use as it is.
I only have money on mine for emergencies.
I bought my phone from Tesco a few years back. It is a low usage phone and in 2 and a bit years ive only added £20 to it, and still have over £8 in credit. The phone is for emergencies only and to receive confirmation messages. I am not able to work through ill health. This monthly cost is something I just can not afford. The phone was bought with this in mind but now they are changing its function to a pay monthly and lose what you dont use. This is NOT fair or right.
Well that sucks, I just don’t use a mobile phone very much – I would get rid of it altogether if I could. I only keep it in case of emergencies (especially as landlines are going full-fibre, which won’t work in a power-cut), or for things like banks that require a phone number. I guess the occasional call or text.
By the sound of it, it will be possible to stay on PAYG, but the call price will change from 8p/min to 25p/min and the text price will change from 4p/message to 10p/message.
Although, it sounds like action is required to avoid the monthly charge. The Tesco Mobile FAQ states:
“What if I don’t want to be on a bundle?
No problem. On pay as you go Essentials, you can still use for your phone for calls, texts, and data use without a bundle. You’ll just use your top-up credit for any usage and be charged at our standard rates.
To do this, you just need to stop your active bundle and cancel auto-renewal. You can easily do this using the Tesco Mobile app or by calling 4488 from your phone.”
Like many above, I have a phone only for emergencies, which I hope not to have. I didn’t even know that the phone had to be used every 6 months (?) to keep it active. I will try contacting 4488 to see what my options are but I won’t be paying £2.50 a month!
Just called 4488. It said that it didn’t recognise my number and rang off! Not impressed! I guess the next move is to visit my nearest Tesco with a phone department. I think I will be looking for a new provider.
Have been told that you can continue on PAYG with new phone call and messaging rates but no monthly fee provided you do not activate a bundle. Have to see how that works out.
if they are putting me on £2.50 essential tariff a month, exactley, in easy terms, what does it mean