Currently, SMARTY only offers rolling monthly plans, but it would be great if there were a traditional Pay As You Go 'plan' where you pay per minute, text and MB of data that you automatically switch to if you don't renew your plan, or don't select a plan when activating a SIM. There is a PAYG page on the website, but this has misled some customers into thinking SMARTY offers PAYG plans (examples here: How to activate a data-only payg SIM | SMARTY Community, Pay as you go Sim | SMARTY Community); instead, the page is only saying how rolling monthly plans are better than PAYG. That doesn't seem very "Simple, honest mobile" to me. I agree that rolling monthly combines the price benefits of a pay monthly plan with the flexibility of a no-contract PAYG, but PAYG is still cheaper for light users who only make occasional calls and don't want data, and it will only cost them pennies per month compared with a rolling contract costing £6.
There is already a somewhat PAYG option, where you pay per minute and text if you have a Data-only plan (10p per minute & text and 40p per MMS text as set in the price guide), but there is no way of not paying for a monthly data plan and only using the PAYG calls and texts with an out of plan add-on. I think adding a PAYG tariff is a great way to capture extra customers and revenue that only want a PAYG plan. I would also push some of my family members over to SMARTY if they were available.
There are probably other considerations to make, such as whether to use account balance or out of plan add-on balance, how to handle the 220 day inactivity account closure, if they can buy data and unlimited pass add-ons, how PAYG fits into groups/nickname SIMs, how to handle refer-a-friend rewards, and roaming & international charges.
As for pricing, 10p per minute is great compared to networks like GiffGaff (25p/minute) or VOXI (30p/minute), which seem to treat PAYG as second-rate rather than a viable way to use the SIM. However, it doesn't quite match up to networks like iD Mobile (3p/minute) or 1pMobile (1p/minute), so maybe reducing it to around 5p or lower would be nice, preferably 2p to beat out iD Mobile. Some networks also reduce the cost or even make it free to call & text numbers on the same network, not only because it skips termination fees, but also encourages people to move friends over to the same network. It would also be preferable not to have minimum monthly top-up amounts, otherwise it won't be of much value over the monthly plans.
And please don't make it hard to find out that this option exists by not including it on the plans webpage, hiding the rates, or making it hard for new customers to start out with this option. Your motto is "Simple, honest mobile", after all.
3 Comments
MSF I think the idea is that customers looking for PAYG plans would go to SMARTY and top up their account balance with them, instead of going to another network like iD, so SMARTY gets nothing. Of course, they need to price their rates accordingly so they still make a profit while staying competitive, but that is for them to figure out. There are people out there still wanting PAYG plans, even if it's a small number, because they are users doing a call once in a while, and are not interested in mobile data. For them, PAYG is the more cost effective choice.
