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Sim-only deals: which is actually best? How do you find out?

Just received a Press release entitled: "Bargain Apathy - The New Condition Affecting Us All" which suggests that we're not spending enough time saving money.

The survey was prepared by a price comparison site. Well, there's a surprise! And the message is: spend more time looking for the best deal, and if you can't do that, well... why not use a comparison site?

I'm reminded of that long-lost Brad Templeton joke about "How big a banknote do you have to have, before it's worth Bill Gates's time to bend down and pick it up?"

It was based on the assessment of how much money he made per second, and the assumption was that if he stopped doing what he was doing to make money, and picked up a ten dollar bill, he'd be worse off, net.

It turns out most of us are pretty aware that time is money. The survey reports:

The study from thecomparisons.com "revealed there’s little truth in the age-old adage 'look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves', as Brits shun bargain hunting, despite the UK being in the midst of a credit crisis." The research conducted by Your Say Pays  "examined the lengths that consumers are willing to go to in order to make a cash saving, and it appears the majority of people are suffering bargain apathy – an unwillingness to spend time hunting for a saving."

Hard figures? "Of the 1,000 people questioned, nearly a third (29%) wouldn’t dedicate any time at all to saving £5 on a £50 purchase, despite the majority (84%) claiming that they’d be looking for more money saving opportunities as the credit crunch bites."

There's more data along those lines: "When it comes to making smaller savings, the cut-off point for bargain hunters is just one hour. The majority of people (29%) admitted they’d spend no more than 60 minutes of their time to save £25 on a £250 purchase (£62.50 saving), the same amount of time they’d dedicate to saving 50% on a purchase of £25 (£12.50 saving). It was only the promise of a big saving – 50% off £125 – that would tempt people to spend more time shopping around."

Additional statistics

Chris McDonald, director of thecomparisons.com, said: "What we’re seeing is real apathy from consumers when it comes to hunting for the best prices and deals, despite continual pressure from every angle telling us we should be tightening our belts and watching what we spend. People still seem to be shunning the smaller cost savings that can be made, which is really surprising, especially when so much money is at stake. But as clichéd as it sounds, there really is truth in the old adage, 'look after the pennies'."

I'm happy to give McDonald his plug; but I'm pretty jaundiced about comparisons. Inevitably, they don't include the info I need; and mostly, they are far too Web 2.0 to be useful. By that, I mean that they are assembled with a maximum of "user generated" content (may or may not be accurate or even impartial) and a minimum of human editing.

Over the weekend, inspired by a rather nicely written article on "SIM Only" phone contracts by Miles Brignall, I dived into the site he recommends, Anthony Ball's OneCompare. And one or two other phone comparison sites, too. First thing I looked for was "data charges" - and ...

...nothing. OneCompare, when I typed in "Sim-only" for a search term, said:

Sorry, we couldn't find what you were looking for. Please try some other search terms in the search box to your right...

Ploughing through the mobile operator sites, "sim-only" does produce  data - except of course, not about data. Call charges, yes; text charges, sure. Data charges? Nevererdovvit.

So, if you have a monthly, not annual or 18 month contract, and you don't get a phone with the deal, then let us know your experiences? Not with comparison sites: we're not interested. It takes too long, and we could, frankly, earn more by walking down the street picking up pennies...