2013-07-25

Sainsbury’s has launched their own mobile network: Mobile By Sainsbury’s. We review the new network & their price plans.



The UK’s two biggest supermarket chains, Tesco and ASDA, have already offered their own mobile services for a couple of years. It was only a matter of time until third-placed Sainsbury’s launched a network of their own. With this week’s launch of Mobile By Sainsbury’s, we’ve finally got a glimpse of what the new network looks like.

For light users, Mobile By Sainsbury’s has competitive rates for calling and texting. You’ll pay 8p per minute and 4p per text. For more frequent users and for smartphone owners, Mobile By Sainsbury’s has a range of bundle packages. Bundles start at £10/month for 200 minutes, 5000 texts and 250MB of internet. As a bonus, bundle customers will receive double Nectar points on shopping at Sainsbury’s and on fuel purchases from a Sainsbury’s petrol station.

In this article, we review Mobile By Sainsbury’s. We’ll look at the price plans, the handsets and the network. We’ll also look at how Mobile By Sainsbury’s compares against rival offerings.

Bundles & Prices

Mobile By Sainsbury’s has two types of tariff.

The first type of tariff is their basic price plan. The basic price plan is designed for light users who don’t have a smartphone. This is Pay As You Go at its simplest: you’ll pay 8p/minute when making a call, 4p for each text message you send and 50p/day when accessing the internet (up to 25MB per day).

The second type of tariff is the bundle price plan. This is designed for smartphone owners and for people who call and text on a regular basis. With the bundle price plan, you can buy a £10, £15 or £20 bundle which lasts for 30 days. The bundle comes with an inclusive amount of calls, texts and internet. It’s like a SIM-only contract but you’ll pay for the bundle using your Pay As You Go airtime balance. The cheapest bundle costs £10 and lasts for 30 days. This gets you 200 minutes, 5000 texts and 250MB of internet.

Basic Price Plan

The basic price plan is designed for light users. It has some fairly competitive rates for calling and texting: you’ll pay 8p per minute for outgoing calls and 4p for every text message you send. Compared to the big networks, who usually charge 25p/minute and 12p/text, this is fairly good value. However, it’s beaten by Three’s 321 Tariff which charges just 3p per minute and 2p per text.

If you’re a smartphone user, we’d recommend against the basic price plan. Sainsbury’s charges 50p/day for mobile internet access. Even if you used a small amount of data each day, you’d still be paying £15/month just for accessing the internet. For smartphone users, the bundle price plans provide better value. For a low cost alternative that lets you use your smartphone without a bundle, giffgaff charges just 20p/day for 20MB of internet (see our review). This works out as £6/month. Alternatively, try Three’s 321 Tariff: data costs 1p per megabyte.

Calling Rates:

Voice Calls

8p/minute (any network, any time)

Calls to Voicemail

8p/minute

Messaging Rates:

Text Message (SMS)

4p

Picture Message (MMS)

25p

Internet Rates:

3G Internet

50p/day (up to 25MB)

Additional Data

50p for another 25MB

Nectar Points:

On Top-Up Amount

4 points per £1 (worth 2p)

For every £1 you top-up, you’ll get 4 Nectar points. This is equivalent in value to 2p. Hence, you’ll get 2% back on all of your top-ups. A £10 top-up will actually cost you £9.90.

Bundle Price Plan

For frequent users and smartphone owners, it’s possible to convert your Pay As You Go credit into a monthly bundle. This gives you a set allowance of calls, texts and internet. All bundles last for 30 days.

Monthly Price

Minutes

Texts

Internet

£10/month bundle

200

5,000*

250MB

£15/month bundle

300

5,000*

500MB

£20/month bundle

800

5,000*

1GB

* On the Sainsbury’s website, bundles are advertised as having unlimited texts. According to the fair usage policy, you can send a maximum of 5,000 text messages per month. For this reason, we’ve used the figure of 5,000 in our comparison table.

Once you’ve used up the inclusive allowances, you’ll pay 20p/minute, 10p per text message and 50p/day for 25MB of data. Note that the bundle price plan has higher per-minute and per-text rates than the basic price plan.

If you have a BlackBerry device running BlackBerry OS 7 or earlier, you’ll need to buy a BlackBerry Internet subscription. This costs an extra £5/month in addition to the cost of your bundle. You’ll get unlimited web browsing, push e-mail and access to BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).

Nectar Points

One of the key selling points of Mobile By Sainsbury’s is the additional Nectar points you’ll earn from being a customer. All customers will get double points on their Mobile By Sainsbury’s top ups. This equates to 2% off your spend (e.g. you’ll get 20p back from your £10 top-up).

With the bundle price plan, the double points offer also extends to grocery shopping at Sainsbury’s and to fuel purchases from Sainsbury’s petrol stations. For families who do all of their shopping at Sainsbury’s, this can give you an additional saving of around £2.40/month.

Mobile Top Ups

Grocery Shopping

Fuel Purchases

Basic Price Plan

Double Points

4 points (2p) per £1

Standard Points

2 points (1p) per £1

Standard Points

1 point (0.5p) per litre

Bundle Price Plan

Double Points

4 points (2p) per £1

Double Points

4 points (2p) per £1

Double Points

2 points (1p) per litre

According to the Office of National Statistics, the average family spends £237/month on groceries and other food purchases. Assuming your family does all of their grocery shopping at Sainsbury’s, you’d earn an average of £2.37/month in additional Nectar points.

When it comes to petrol, consumption varies greatly depending on your household. Families also differ in where they fill up their car. For households who own a car, the Office of National Statistics reckons you’ll spend £158/month on petrol. This equates to around 120 litres of petrol. Assuming you buy half of your petrol from a Sainsbury’s forecourt, you’d gain an extra 30p/month in bonus Nectar points.

If more than one person in your family has Mobile By Sainsbury’s, you’ll only receive the double points promotion on groceries and fuel once. Subsequent users will only get the 2% back on top-ups.

Mobile By Sainsbury’s customers will need to opt-in to receive their Nectar points. Using your Sainsbury’s mobile, text your 16-digit Nectar card number to 40774.

Handsets

If you’re looking for a new handset, there’s a selection of phones available on the Sainsbury’s website. Prices start from £12 for the Nokia 100 and increase to £115 for the Nokia Lumia 520. In truth, the handsets on the official website don’t look particularly attractive. They’re all low-end devices and you can get much better phone for your money. In our opinion, you’d be better off heading to Amazon and buying a SIM-free smartphone. This will work on any network, including Mobile By Sainsbury’s.

If you’d like to use your existing handset, you’ll need to make sure that it’s been unlocked. We have in-depth guides to unlocking your iPhone, unlocking your Samsung Galaxy S3 and unlocking your BlackBerry. When ordering the SIM card, take care to order the correct size of SIM card. There are three different SIM card sizes: Standard SIM, Micro SIM and Nano SIM. This guide explains the differences and tells you which type you’ll need.

Coverage & Network

Mobile By Sainsbury’s uses the Vodafone 3G network.

Mobile By Sainsbury’s uses the Vodafone 3G network. As Sainsbury’s is actually operating a virtual network, it’s Vodafone that’s providing the service behind the scenes. As such, you’ll be using Vodafone’s masts and you’ll receive the same coverage as a Vodafone customer.

You can check the coverage where you live by using Vodafone’s online coverage checker.

Traffic Management Policy

Mobile By Sainsbury’s has a traffic management policy. You can read the full policy on their website. To give a quick summary, voice over IP services (e.g. Skype) are blocked. Tethering (sharing your phone’s internet connection with other devices) is also prohibited. Customers who tether will either have their connection slowed down or will be blocked from the network.

4G Connectivity

At the time of writing, Mobile By Sainsbury’s doesn’t provide 4G. The host network, Vodafone, is yet to launch 4G for their own customers. It’s not known whether 4G will eventually launch on Mobile By Sainsbury’s. As most of Sainsbury’s handsets are low-end offerings, we suspect 4G won’t be available for a while yet.

Keeping Your Phone Number

If you’re switching to Mobile By Sainsbury’s, you can keep your existing phone number. Transferring your phone number should take no more than 24 hours. Start off by requesting a PAC Code from your current network. This nine-digit code authorises Sainsbury’s to take control of your phone number. Once your receive your new handset or SIM card, call the Sainsbury’s Helpline on 40775 (they’ll charge you 25p for this). Give them your PAC Code and your number should be transferred on the next working day.

For a step-by-step guide on how to transfer your phone number, see our PAC Code Finder.

Alternatives

The basic price plan has reasonably competitive rates for calling and texting. At 8p/minute and 4p/text, prices are about one-third of those on mainstream networks. The UK’s best value deal is Three’s 321 Tariff. On 321, calls cost 3p/minute and texts cost 2p each. Accessing the internet is also cheaper: you’ll get 150MB free when you top-up and further data usage costs just 1p/MB. As a typical smartphone user consumes 10MB per day, you can expect to pay 10p/day on the 321 tariff.

Calling Rates:

Voice Calls

8p/minute

3p/minute

Calls to Voicemail

8p/minute

3p/minute

Messaging Rates:

Text Message (SMS)

4p

2p

Picture Message (MMS)

25p

36p

Internet Rates:

3G Internet

50p/day (up to 25MB)

150MB free with top-up

Additional Data

50p for another 25MB

1p/MB (approx 10p/day)

More Information:

Review

See above

Our Review of 321

Official Site

Mobile By Sainsbury’s

Three.co.uk

For a full round-up of the UK’s Pay As You Go offerings, see our guide to free Pay As You Go SIM cards.

Alternative Bundles

We’re not that impressed with Sainsbury’s bundles. After accounting for Nectar points, you’ll still find much better deals elsewhere. The best value alternative is perhaps giffgaff’s goodybags. Like Sainsbury’s, giffgaff is a virtual network operator (they use the O2 network). giffgaff has a range of bundles from £7.50/month – you’ll get much more for your money than you would on Sainsbury’s. You’ll find full details on the giffgaff website where you can also grab a SIM.

Monthly Cost

Minutes

Texts

Internet

Minutes

Texts

Internet

£5.00

-

 -

 -

 -

60
& 1 min per min

of calls received

300

20MB

£7.50

 -

 -

-

 -

200

Unlimited

250MB

£10.00

250

5,000

250MB

500*

Unlimited

1GB

£12.00

-

 -

-

-

250

Unlimited

Unlimited

£15.00

300

5,000

500MB

400

Unlimited

Unlimited

£20.00

800

5,000

1GB

1,200

Unlimited

Unlimited

* The £10 Goodybag normally includes 250 minutes. If you sign up before the 31st October 2013, you’ll get 500 minutes per month. You’ll continue to get double minutes even after the offer closes to new customers on the 31st October. To take advantage of the double minutes, grab yourself a free SIM card.

For more information, see our full review of giffgaff’s goodybags. You can order a free SIM card from giffgaff through their website. For customers who are willing to consider a contract, SIM only deals can provide even better value.

More Information

For more information on Mobile By Sainsbury’s, refer to their website.

Related posts:

Skype To Go: Cheap International Calls On Any Mobile Network

Giffgaff Goodybags: Low Cost SIM Only Deals on O2 Virtual Network

How to choose your own custom mobile phone number and use it on any network

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