3 ThreePay Pay As You Go

I bought myself a ThreePay mobile phone for Christmas, as my current phone is over 5 years old and not very healthy. Being on a T-mobile Pay-as-you-go set-up a straight forward upgrade would cost me about £50 and require moving back onto a contract (18 months for T-mobile!), which I didn't want to do. I really like the Nokia 6260, but am reluctant to sign up to a Vodaphone or O2 contract to get one.

So I spent some time looking around and eventually went with a deal for the Motorola C975 on ThreePay. I have to say I was quite impressed with the phone, which is much smaller and compact than most Three bricks/phones. I'm a Nokia fan and last time I looked at a Motorola phone it was a nightmare to navigate the menus. Motorola seem to have made some significant improvements and the navigation was very intuitive, although I did have to read the manual to figure out how to change the ringtone - which is easy once you know how (not that I found even one that I liked). That said, there is no tune composer, and no packaged games - you have to pay to rent (50p for 3 days) or download those (about £5 each).

However... I haven't downloaded any games yet, or even used my phone to make any calls or send any messages announcing my new number, because I am really unimpressed with the Top-Up structure. I understand that it works out about the same as for contract customers, but so what!

One of the things I like about Pay-as-you-go is that if I make less calls than usual, for any given time period, it costs me less. Not so with ThreePay. All Top-Ups expire after 30 days and the minimum Top-up is £15... OK, I can live with that as I usually spend just over that each month. But the control freaks don't stop there...

For £15 there are currently two options...
- VideoTalk, which provides 50 voice call minutes to any network (works out about 20p per minute) and £5 credit to spend on texts or video calls or downloads or whatever.
- VideoText, which provides 100 texts (works out at 10p per text) and £5 credit to use as above.

How am I supposed to predict if I need more voice calls or text messages in a month? Sure, I can Add-on an extra £5 or £10 credit, but I have to have a valid Top-up to do that. And after 30 days I lose whatever minutes or texts or credit I haven't used. Does that apply to the Add-on credit too? This is beginning to sound like it could get expensive!

Admittedly the value for money improves if you Top-up more. A £25 Top-up has these two options...
- VideoTalk provides 500 voice call minutes to any network (works out about 5p per minute) and £1.50 credit (is that all?) to use as you like.
- VideoText provides 500 texts and 50 voice call minutes (works out at 4p per text or per minute) with £1.50 credit to use as you like.

But what if I want to download a game that month? Than I have to buy a £5 or £10 Add-on to do that! And I doubt I would use 500 minutes or texts in 30 days, so most of the "savings" would be lost when the validity period ends...

You get the picture?

Bring on the 14-day return policy, I'm sure there must be a deal out there that will suit me much better... without me having to experience poor quality coverage, foreign customer services employees who don't understand my accent or speak intelligible English, or the other problems that fellow reviewers seem to have experienced.

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UPDATE: So I took the phone back where I bought it, and they were very nice, but apparently Three will not allow the £15 credit (compulsory as part of the initial purchase) to be refunded. The guy in the shop said even they didn't know that until a day or two before Christmas. Consider yourself warned!!
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FINAL UPDATE: Kept the phone for the week over New Year to use up that credit they wouldn't refund, and really struggled to do so. Even with all the people I wanted to contact to wish them a Happy New Year. The problem being that I wanted to send text messages (which had to be paid for out of the £5 credit) and not phone calls. I sent one friend lots of mini-movie messages and found myself using the mobile to make phone calls (20p per minute) instead of my landline (6p per hour). And I had real problems any time I tried to video call other Three customers I know, usually because there was no video network available or the battery was run down (symptom of new phone, perhaps?), which I felt made the phone a wasted resource. 3G teething problems, but I just can't afford to pay for them as I go and Three's contract tariffs just aren't as good a deal as when Three first launched.
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