Virgin Mobile have released a new PAYG tariff this February that they are claiming is straight-forward and simple compared to other PAYG tariffs such as Stop The Clock, Favourite Place and Top Up Friday. However it is still a little confusing, and not a simple low cost flat rate tariff, like a lot of us hope for.
The tariff is called Daily Bonus and your bonus only kicks in once you have made five minutes of calls in a day, once you have paid for five minutes you will get the next five minutes for free. After your Bonus five free minutes the rest of your minutes will be charged at the standard 15 pence per minute.
It's the same story for text messages, you pay for your first five then get the next five for free, after that it then it goes back to standard rate of 10 pence per message. You can only have five free minutes and five free messages in any one day, and any free minutes you do not use will not rollover to the next day.
So as you can see it is not that simple, but if you make 10 minutes of calls in a day you will only pay 75 pence, which is less than 8 pence per minute. And texts are even better, with the first 10 texts costing just 50 pence!
This tariff is almost the same as Talk Talk's old Take 5 tariff from 2007, this gave customers five free minutes a day once they had paid for five. Unfortunately Take 5 did not last long, only a few months, before disappearing never to be seen again - which suggests it didn't work well or customers didn't like it.
