My contract is coming up for renewal with EE and am thinking of trying a sim only package for myself, wife and daughters phones. EE' costs have been on the up over the 6 years have been with them and am fed up with Foreign call centres when needing help and constant 3rd party callers. May consider Virgin as we have a home broadband contract with them but have heard Giff Gaff offer good deals also. what do you guys recommend?

three are good, very keen pricing and excellent customer services.

Giffgaff is good and operate on the 02 network., I have a sim only deal.
www.giffgaff.com

Virgin is EE network and works in ee phones if yours are not unlocked
My daughter has a £10 sim only but only 1gb a month think it was a 12 month contract

3 are very competitive and also offer the ability to cap the tariff, which you can't do on virgin

Was doing a bit of Internet trawling on Giff Gaff and the lack of a coustomer/ tech services facility has some people unhappy when things go wrong, have you had any issues Pete?
Have to say their sim only deals seem to knock most of the usual players for six particularly if calling abroad as I do for business on occasion.

Not had any issues with giffgaff Ashley, nor have Barmybob or Bockers to the best of my knowledge.

There is a forum where people interact with giffgaff, I have never needed to post there. The way it is set up is a bit like a cooperative.

Not really a huge worry to me frankly as it is just a rolling 1 month deal that I have, I bought the phone elsewhere for cash.

I like the way I get minutes credited to me each month equivalent to incoming calls from other non-giffgaff members. Nor do you pay for calls to other members if you use the goody bags.

I found giff gaff terrible for mobile internet. Speeds were terrible. This wasn't the same on tesco or O2 who I am with now. Tried 4g and 3G for a month and was recieving less than 1mb if I even had access.

Was an important factor for me. For calls and texts no issues though.

Giff gaff is on o2, same network and it isnt clever enough to throttle the mvno. Same for tesco, also on o2. Probably a network setting on the device...

If you use it abroad then definitely look at 3, and their feel at home offering that is included. Basically kets you use the mobile as if you were at home in about 20 countries. Very handy for data use!

Hi guys, thanks for the info, will take look at 3 and see how it compares.

My 3 children and I are on Tesco SIM only deals. Like Giffgaff they use the O2 network. However my daughter was on Giffgaff and switched after a month. She had trouble with the switch over from EE and the customer service is none existent. Once switched she was plagued with junk calls which she'd never had with EE.

Tesco SIM only start at £7.50 which gives you 250 minutes, 5000 texts and 500Mb of data. You can also add a safety buffer (I have £2.50 on each of ours).

The times I've had to contact customer services I've found them very good. Online chat usually sorted out any niggles and when I've had to talk to an adviser, they've always been very helpful.

Tesco for our eldest here too. As far as the adults go I'm on EE (and never had any issues, they've always matched deals for me whenever they weren't the most competitive) and MrsWishy is on Virgin, which have both been fine.

If you use a cashback site like Quidco, don't forget to use it. They're very good for sim-only contracts. I got £50 cashback for my £9.90 p/m contract on Three.

Giff gaff really does have throttled speed compared to both 02 and tesco. Read the forums. Also try it out as I did. Same phone, O2, giff gaff and tesco. Giff gaff lagging massively. Dependant on your usage but tesco has some great deals.