While I think its perhaps a nice option for those who would rather trim off a bit of the bill, even if I were with Tesco I would rather have to deal with £3 more than ads whenever I unlock the phone. I guess its a fairly reasonable slice of the bill off though, but quite how much its worth is going to come down to how much you use the phone. Every time you unlock your phone, you would be costing yourself time.

Had enough of ads already. just want a good service with no intrusions.

It's not every time, it's every few times (or third time I read somewhere else). That's not bad for a significant per month discount.

Might switch this year.

Article
Do you think that Tesco is asking too much for too slight a discount? Remember you can get Tesco contract phones such as the Lumia 550, or Moto E 2nd gen, with 250 minutes, 5000 texts and 500MB (+200MB bonus) data for just £7.50 per month. In such a case £3 off is a significant slice.

There's two ways to look at that, one of which is that £3 is a good ‘slice’ of, for example, £7.50.

But the other is that £7.50 isn't expensive and are you prepared to put up with adverts for £3/month.

It doesn't appeal to me, for several reasons :-

- I don't have a smartphone, and
- if I did, I avoid Tesco like the plaque, and
- if my provider offered it, no way would I put up with ad's for £3/month.

I will say the way they're offering it, in effectively opt-in for people willing to put up with the ads, is the right way to go about it, and no doubt it will appeal to some people.

But personally, hell, no.

Meh, it's not for everyone but I'm sure some people would appreciate the chance to lower their bills a little.

Saracen
There's two ways to look at that, one of which is that £3 is a good ‘slice’ of, for example, £7.50.

I think they have a lot of customers who are school kids. My son was on Tesco with a £7.50/m deal that came with a Moto E, a lot of his friends seem to be on an £11/m deal that came with a Moto G. I don't personally know any adults on Tesco.

Those deals get you 500MB/m which kids struggle with, another £3.50 gets you 2GB/m on a sim only deal so I can see a lot of kids when the contracts come up for renewal asking for another 50p and adverts to quadruple their data allowance to something more youtube friendly.

In fact, if Tesco made it a simple “2GB per month extra for adverts” they would probably get a lot of takers, and it might cost them less than £3 as people won't always use the data.

OTOH, if having adverts pop up on your phone leads to playground ridicule, then the audience might be rather limited.

Saracen
It doesn't appeal to me, for several reasons :-

- I don't have a smartphone, and
- if I did, I avoid Tesco like the plaque

If you don't have a smartphone I don't think Tesco gives a hoot about your not being interested… Presumably if you have a mobile phone and only have minutes and texts your contracts is dirt cheap as it is and whoever you're with is making diddly squat off you in any case.

As for avoiding Tesco I presume that is based off a prejudice against the company itself or it's practices? Because Tesco Mobile is a Which? recommended provider and scores extremely highly on customer service. I was within them on a SIM only deal for 2 years. Only reason I switched is because they use the O2 network which has an appalling lack of 3G coverage in many areas that I travel to.

As a mobile operator they are otherwise excellent. Their customer service is easy to get through to, based in the UK and friendly. They are one of the only UK mobile operators that do not increase your contract price mid-term based on RPI increases. They also have an excellent app for monitoring your usage and purchasing one-off add ons.

so it begins, ad free voice calls to be charged a premium coming near you…soon…

Syphadeus
If you don't have a smartphone I don't think Tesco gives a hoot about your not being interested… Presumably if you have a mobile phone and only have minutes and texts your contracts is dirt cheap as it is and whoever you're with is making diddly squat off you in any case.

As for avoiding Tesco I presume that is based off a prejudice against the company itself or it's practices? Because Tesco Mobile is a Which? recommended provider and scores extremely highly on customer service. I was within them on a SIM only deal for 2 years. Only reason I switched is because they use the O2 network which has an appalling lack of 3G coverage in many areas that I travel to.

As a mobile operator they are otherwise excellent. Their customer service is easy to get through to, based in the UK and friendly. They are one of the only UK mobile operators that do not increase your contract price mid-term based on RPI increases. They also have an excellent app for monitoring your usage and purchasing one-off add ons.

I doubt Tesco give a hoot about any single domestic customers, whether mobile or shop. They're simply way, way to big. Also, of course, I don't give a hoot whether Tesco give a hoot.

As for my mobile, PAYG not contract, and I have no idea what text capability is included because I don't use them.

I used to be a Tesco customer until I was treated appallingly in a store. I have no opinion on what Which think of their customer service, but my experience is that it was atrocious. Having lodged a compaint about the actions off my local store, which by the way were not only offensive but illegal, I was promised they'd “make inquiries and let me know”. After about a month, I rang to query progress and was told, in a rather brusque tone I might add, and I quote “We said we'd let you know when we had something”.

Sooooo, here were are, about ten years later, and I'm still waiting for them to fulfil what they promised, not once but twice.

Granted, it's ONE store, and ONE customer service complaint, albeit two calls, but it's enough for me. Tesco may not, and presumably don't, give a hoot what I think but that's fine, because I don't give a hoot about them either. Which is why I said I approve of the way they're doing it, but it wouldn't interest me even if I was a smartphone user, regardless of whether it was Tesco or someone else offering it.

For me, I simply don't want ad's on my phone, and even if I used a smartphone I still wouldn't, and £3 a month discount isn't enough, isn't anywhere remotely near enough, to put up with them.

Syphadeus
<—snip

As a mobile operator they are otherwise excellent. Their customer service is easy to get through to, based in the UK and friendly. They are one of the only UK mobile operators that do not increase your contract price mid-term based on RPI increases. They also have an excellent app for monitoring your usage and purchasing one-off add ons.

They aren't strictly a network operator, in that they don't own any infrastructure, they are a branded reseller, so the coverage depends on the underlying network provider.

My Vodafone SIM only package is not linked to the RPI.

As for Ads, £3 is a small incentive for the intrusion of advertising - IMHO - of course. :)

Saracen
Sooooo, here were are, about ten years later, and I'm still waiting for them to fulfil what they promised, not once but twice.

That seems very unfortunate. At one point (probably also about 10 years ago) I stopped using Tesco after I went to one of their very large stores to find there was a choice of televisions which I had no interest in buying but they were out of corned beef. Now I thought the point of the electrical goods was as an impulse purchase while you were buying your basic shopping, but realizing I could only buy electrical goods and was having difficulty buying my groceries I just stopped going there.

Still, they seem to have improved and the customer service I have had from them has always been superb including Tesco Mobile who when stuff happened (which it just does, can't put blame on them for that) a real effort was made to put things right. Overall I think Tesco are well out of pocket on my son's contract, yet they were always happy to help.

I would have thought Tesco's pioneering work in data collection would have been your sticking point with them ;) But then I guess all supermarkets do that now.

:D

If I stopped buying food from places that data-mined us, I'd pretty much have to revert to subsistence farming. My response to that is a bit more basic - I just pay cash, and don't use “reward” cards. Ever. I might have to resort to disguises, or a burkha, if they ever implement in-store facial recognition (in stores I actually use).

As for Tesco CS, I don't assume that their CS is bad for everybody because it was bad for me. However, Tesco are not, to paraphrase an old adage, the only shop in town. In fact, I have Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda, and Aldi within 5 minutes, and it's not much further for Morrisons and LIDL, and that's just the ones I can think of immediately.

On top of that, my closest supermarket is Waitrose. I hadn't spent a great deal of time there until about 10 or 12 years ago, but after the Tesco incident, I gave them a much more thorough look. I know they have a reputation for being pricey, but in my experience that's a bit misleading. On common brand products, be it washing powder, marmalade, coffee, whatever, they're more or less the same, though as with all stores, there's variances due to timing. However, their “own brand” products do tend to be more expensive than most product lines in Tesco, but my view is that that's down to product quality. They pitch their standards, in my opinion, a fair bit up on Tesco and, to my taste, that shows in quality of meats, cheeses, etc. So yeah, you can save money by going Tesco, but only by sacrificing quality.

Conversely, I find Aldi/LIDL cheaper than Tesco and for the most part, at least as good in quality terms.

For me, Tesco have been squeezed out. I'll happily use Aldi/LIDL for some things, and happily use Waitrose for almost anything. I, quite literally, don't need Tesco. Not using them costs me nothing, causes me zero inconvenience and bothers me not a bit. At this point, I've moved on and, as far as I'm concerned, to better stores be it Aldi/LIDL, or Waitrose.

On odd occasions, when I've had reason to experience Waitrose in-store, it's been superb. Staff are invariably (in my exoerience) polite and very helpful. It's no accident, either, as I've seen some of their training materials. An example was a batch of 6 chicken breasts. When I opened them, they stank as only badly off chicken can. I took them back, the section manager undid the double-bagged package I took in, sniffed, gagged and immediately replaced them with fresh (which, obviously, is a minimum) and offered us a choice of bottles of wine (up to a max of, IIRC, £10 or £12) as an apology. When I bought a box of 6 Brita water filters, on opening them one was cracked. Next time I was in the store I bumped into the branch manager and told him, and asked if I should bring it in. He say no, and just replaced the 6-pack, despite the other 5 being okay.

Twice, when I've had queries (once about their “reward” card) and rung CS on the phone, they've promised to get back to me and both times, actually did.

Two calls to Tesco, zero replies. Two calls to Waitrose, three replies - one call they rang after a few days to say it was ongoing and taking longer than expected, then again after about three weeks with the actual reply.

My very limited experience of CS obviously doesn't constitute a valid statistical sample size, or random selection, but we tend to rely heavily on our own experiences and mine has been first rate for Waitrose, both in-store and telephone.

Declaration of interest (or lack of) : I'm not, and never have been, employed by or had any financial interest in Waitrose. I did do some consultancy for a 3rd party that involved time in Waitrose stores, but the same is true of Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda, Co-op (oh, forgot, we have them a few minutes walk from home, too) and others, too.

aniilv
so it begins, ad free voice calls to be charged a premium coming near you…soon…

Don't go giving them ideas. Seriously that would really upset people.

peterb
They aren't strictly a network operator, in that they don't own any infrastructure, they are a branded reseller, so the coverage depends on the underlying network provider.

My Vodafone SIM only package is not linked to the RPI.

As for Ads, £3 is a small incentive for the intrusion of advertising - IMHO - of course. :)

Yes - I realise that Tesco are an MVNO, but the VNO part stands for “Virtual Network Operator” and so an operator, of sorts. As for your Vodafone contract is that a network wide feature that they offer or just a deal for you or select subset of customers? I only ask because Tesco Mobile tout it is a USP of sorts as no RPI related price increase applies across their entire tariff range.

Saracen
Sooooo, here were are, about ten years later, and I'm still waiting for them to fulfil what they promised, not once but twice.

Granted, it's ONE store, and ONE customer service complaint, albeit two calls, but it's enough for me. Tesco may not, and presumably don't, give a hoot what I think but that's fine, because I don't give a hoot about them either. Which is why I said I approve of the way they're doing it, but it wouldn't interest me even if I was a smartphone user, regardless of whether it was Tesco or someone else offering it.

So, to get this straight - the primary reason you're not interested in Tesco Mobile, aside from the fact that you're not looking for a phone contract and don't have a smartphone, is owing to a complaint you had with one store and one instance of selling a decade ago? Wow… and I suppose you felt strongly enough to report the incident to trading standards / Ofcom or whichever practice governing body was applicable? Probably not eh?

Your response is an odd one because as a recent customer of Tesco Mobile I was informing you of my recent experience with them which was exceedingly positive. I then also cited Which? as another source which rates Tesco Mobile highly. Only for you to basically say that your opinion of them is set and your stance is immovable because you don't care about what they think of you, what I think of them or what an industry consumer representing body thinks of them. I would surmise from that that you're the sort of person that once you've formed an opinion on something you're going to stick to it no matter the counterargument, which is to say that you're probably very stubborn. If so, that is of course your prerogative but the only person missing out there is you.

I also find it interesting that you chose to involve yourself by commenting on this article since, on the surface at least, you appear to lack even the most tenuous of connected interest to the article's content. You don't even own a smartphone so you're completely ineligible for the product. All you've managed to do is inject your own negative and out of date opinion on the company. This is kind of like me commenting on an article about horses and saying “I don't like horses, they scare me”. Like, okay, so what?

Syphadeus
Yes - I realise that Tesco are an MVNO, but the VNO part stands for “Virtual Network Operator” and so an operator, of sorts. As for your Vodafone contract is that a network wide feature that they offer or just a deal for you or select subset of customers? I only ask because Tesco Mobile tout it is a USP of sorts as no RPI related price increase applies across their entire tariff range.

I have no idea, I haven't looked at vodafones general price list for a while.

EDIT: just checked - Vodafone do add an RPI adjustment last year it was .9%, however my SIM plan was fixed for a year. It may change when the year is up, going up by 6.3a/month.

When I replace a phone - usually about every 5 Or 6 years, I buy it outright and stay with a SIM only plan.

Wearing my admin hat, Saracen - as is any other member - is quite entitled to comment on a thread on HEXUS.

He was recounting his personal experience with a company, and as he said, that isn't statistically significant. But it is one of the reasons why he wouldn't be interested in the offer - he listed others as apwell, including the fact that his phone wouldn't be capable anyway.

Similarly, your comment about horses, would be valid - but irrelevant - and so would be ignored.

You may consider Saracen's post irrelevant, so my advice to you would be to ignore it, rather than question his motives and risking a flame war, which will only end badly. Saracen's views are well known and largely respected here, as you will discover when you have been around a bit longer. :)

Syphadeus
So, to get this straight - the primary reason you're not interested in Tesco Mobile, aside from the fact that you're not looking for a phone contract and don't have a smartphone, is owing to a complaint you had with one store and one instance of selling a decade ago? Wow… and I suppose you felt strongly enough to report the incident to trading standards / Ofcom or whichever practice governing body was applicable? Probably not eh?

Your response is an odd one because as a recent customer of Tesco Mobile I was informing you of my recent experience with them which was exceedingly positive. I then also cited Which? as another source which rates Tesco Mobile highly. Only for you to basically say that your opinion of them is set and your stance is immovable because you don't care about what they think of you, what I think of them or what an industry consumer representing body thinks of them. I would surmise from that that you're the sort of person that once you've formed an opinion on something you're going to stick to it no matter the counterargument, which is to say that you're probably very stubborn. If so, that is of course your prerogative but the only person missing out there is you.

I also find it interesting that you chose to involve yourself by commenting on this article since, on the surface at least, you appear to lack even the most tenuous of connected interest to the article's content. You don't even own a smartphone so you're completely ineligible for the product. All you've managed to do is inject your own negative and out of date opinion on the company. This is kind of like me commenting on an article about horses and saying “I don't like horses, they scare me”. Like, okay, so what?

I'm not interested in Tesco Anything because it's Tesco. Presumably, when a company treats you like dirt, you continue to use them, despite there being loads of competitors that don't? You are entitled to your opinion on Tesco, and unlike you, I haven't criticised your right to express it. Are you seriously suggesting, though, that having been treated I dirt by them, I should ignore that because Which, or some random bloke on the net, wasn't there? Really?

But Tesco were not the point of my first post, even though you seem to have latched onto that.

My second point was that I don't have a smartphone. The reasons why are numerous, and a balance of positive and negative and, for me, at the moment, the negative outweigh the positive. Why that is so really is beyond the scope of this thread.


So, why comment?

It might have escaped your notice but this is a discussion forum. The idea is to discuss.

So, in the interests of clarity, I pointed out that that deal did not appeal to me because, first, Tesco, and second, no smartphone.

However, I have and still am keeping the issue of a smartphone under review, so the second reason why, right now it's not for me could disappear at any time, and will if positive exceeds negative.

That just leaves the issue of discounts to receive ad's. And THAT, since you obviously missed it, was the point of my post.

So let me clear it up for you.

Assume it's next week or next year, and I've bought a smartphone. Assume the deal wasn't from Tesco, but from my existing (non-smart) carrier. Would I accept ad's for a discount? No. Not at £3/month. Not at 50% of what I was paying per month, before switching to PAYG. Not if they halved my call rates.

I doubt there is any figure they could offer that is anything like consistent with my phone costs that would induce me to acceot ad's. If they kep my rates the same and offered a free iPhone 38, or Samsung 62, or whatever the latest bells and whistles phone is if I accepted ad's on it, the answer would still be no.

I don't want ad's on my phone, and certainly, emphatically, don't want geo-tracked ads on anything, phone or otherwise. I also, for the record, don't want junkmail through my door, telesales calls at home or on my mobile, and if I could dump TV ads I would. And I take every sensibke step I can to prevent all the above.

So no, my personal view is I wouldn't take it whoever offered it, but that precise deal is a non-starter anyway because Tesco are on my blacklist. And I'm not losing out because of it. Tesco offer me nothing I can't get elsewhere, and I don't miss them one tiny, little bit. My not dealing with them hurts them more than it hurts me, and given that they no doubt wouldn't notice that tiny little pinprick, a few grand a year, it should tell you how much I miss them.

As I said initially, no doubt some people will like that deal, or type of deal, whether Tesco or not, but that type of deal is not for me, whoever offered it, is not for me.

I use my Kindle a lot. There was (in the US at least), an ad-sponsored version that was cheaper to buy. Would I? No.

There are software products that are free if you take ads and ad-free if you buy. I buy.

And so on.

That is why I commented. Because, on a discussion forum, I felt it relevant to, like everybody else, comment on my view on the principle of the deal.

Or do I need to check with you before posting to make sure you understand the point?

The advertising industry has succeeded in training me to mentally screen out all advertising.

I honestly can't remember the last advert I watched / looked at.

In-fact thinking about it I could not tell you the content of any currently running advert.

Not having a TV license and using add blocker on all my browsers may be a factor however.

I wouldn't personally do it.

I use Tesco mobile, it's only a tenner.

OTOH, it looks like Three are now doing an offer of half price on their sim only deals for the first 6 months. On a 12 month contract, that's quite significant.

They are also running a trial today on filtering ads off their network, kind of the opposite of this.

Edd
The advertising industry has succeeded in training me to mentally screen out all advertising.

I honestly can't remember the last advert I watched / looked at.

In-fact thinking about it I could not tell you the content of any currently running advert.

Not having a TV license and using add blocker on all my browsers may be a factor however.

Off Topic: The Youtube advert running by the leave campaign featuring the Turkish parliament having a brawl has stuck with me. Nothing else in the last few weeks that I can easily recall though.

On Topic: I don't use my mobile much. I would use an advertiser supported discount service to save ~1/3 on my bill if the service was otherwise good and it was otherwise well executed enough.

No thanks ! I just want to get on with my life rather than watch ads. What a world we live in !

Calum
No thanks ! I just want to get on with my life rather than watch ads. What a world we live in !

So your saying you would pay to not watch ads, which is effectively the Tesco proposition?