Best mobile network loyalty programmes for existing customers
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We look at which UK mobile providers look after their customers best with reward schemes, refer a friend incentives and exclusive deals. Last updated: 15th September 2022
In this guide
Networks offer rewards to keep you as a loyal customer
✔ Networks may offer more reasons to stick around
Mobile networks want to keep their customers around as long as possible, otherwise they would be failing as a company. So, a few networks offer extra benefits as an incentive for their existing customers to stick with them.
There are a few different ways that networks do this. Most of the larger networks offer rewards apps that give you special discounts on high-street restaurants and other entertainment experiences.
A couple of networks offer points based rewards systems based around turning the money you spend on your monthly bill into money off things like shopping, helping you get better value out of your deal.
Some networks offer exclusive deals for existing customers to keep them around when their contract is up. And others give you rewards for bringing your friends onto the network, in a win-win-win type of situation.
In this guide we’ll go through which networks offer what sorts of customer reward schemes and which ones we rate more highly than others.
Useful link: Best rewards apps | Best points based schemes | Best refer-a-friend schemes | Exclusive deals on networks
Rewards apps
1st: O2 - Priority gives you pre-sale tickets and other special offers
✔ Get tickets to your favourite concert before they’re sold outRead their guide
at o2.co.uk
(opens in a new window)
What we like:
What we don't like:
Out of all the networks offering rewards apps, we think O2’s Priority gives you the best mix of different offers. You get benefits based around concerts and gigs, as well as high-street food, drink and shopping.
Through their Priority app, O2 customers get first pick of tickets for events hosted at O2 sponsored venues. This takes a lot of the worry out of getting tickets for your favourite bands and artists.
On top of that, you’ll get special offers on dining, drinks and shopping. These offers change from time to time, so if there’s nothing that suits your fancy you can just wait for something new to come up.
The only real drawbacks are that O2 are already one of the pricier UK networks and there’s not a lot of genuine freebies. But if it works out for you, O2’s Priority can help you get some great value out of your plan.
Useful link: O2’s guide to their Priority rewards app
2nd: Vodafone - get special offers on food and drink with VeryMe
What we like:
What we don't like:
Every Vodafone customer gets access to their rewards app VeryMe (even on pay as you go so long as you keep topping up). This app offers a wide range of offers on dining and entertainment experiences.
These tend to be small discounts on Costa coffees, as well as money off when you dine in certain restaurants. But they do tend to offer free tickets to summer events such as Wimbledon.
New offers are added every week, so if there’s nothing to fit your fancy one week you can just wait and see what comes up. There’s typically enough offers to appeal to most people in one way or another.
It’s a great way to get better value out of your deal, which is certainly a good thing considering Vodafone are typically one of the more expensive networks to join. And we like the fact that all customers get access to it.
We just think it doesn’t offer anything special like O2’s Priority tickets, and their other offers are typically quite modest. Still, there’s a lot to like here.
Useful link: Vodafone’s full guide to their VeryMe rewards app
3rd: Sky - VIP rewards your loyalty the longer you’re with them
What we like:
What we don't like:
Sky offer a rewards system that they call “VIP”. This gives free rewards and exclusive offers to Sky customers, and the longer a user has been on Sky the more rewards become available.
There are multiple tiers of rewards based on how long you’ve been with Sky. Silver rewards are the lowest tier (customers staying 0 - 3 years), then it goes up to Gold (3 - 8 years), Platinum (8 - 15 years) and then Diamond (15+ years).
Their Silver rewards include one free movie on Sky TV, presale tickets for certain cinemas, a 5 months free offer on their 2GB plan (afterwards it’s £6 a month), a 12-months free trial to Discovery+ and 3-months free Apple TV+ as well as a few thers.
That immediately gets you some nice added value just for joining. And you get all these and more for staying on Sky in the long term. Sky’s VIP benefits help customers get great value on already decently priced plans.
We do think the time frames are a bit long, especially considering Sky aren’t clear about what they give away for their most loyal customers. In any case, if you want to stay on Sky for the long term, you’re getting some nice extra value with this scheme.
Useful link: Sky’s 5 months free 2GB SIM only deal
3rd: Three - their Three+ app is still a bit limited
What we like:
What we don't like:
Three’s rewards app Three+ is relatively new compared to the other networks, so it’s no surprise that the offers you get with the app aren’t quite as impressive as what you can get with O2’s Priority for example.
However, a lot more offers have been added since the app came out. These include pre-sale tickets to certain festivals, such as Reading and Leeds 2022, 20% off Uber Eats orders and other dining and entertainment.
The pre-sale tickets were definitely the biggest thing to be offered on Three+ so far, and they say they will do a similar thing for other festivals later down the line, so keep an eye out for that.
But where Three+ fails to impress is in the lack of genuine freebies (such as free trials) and the fact their other offers are pretty tame in comparison to their headline ones. There’s not a massive variety of services covered yet.
Still, we think Three+ has grown a lot since it was first introduced and it still has room to grow. It’s just not quite at the level of Three’s old Wuntu app, or the other rewards app listed above yet.
Useful link: Read our guide to the Three+ app
4th: giffgaff - decent freebies with their Member perks
What we like:
What we don't like:
We’re surprised to see giffgaff giving out rewards for their customers (they call them “member perks”), as they’re typically a no-frills network. They’re the only budget network to offer extra rewards, so let’s go through them:
These extras include 60% off a monthly subscription to the fitness app FIIT, a six months trial to Switchd, 60% off Uptime and a £25 phone repair voucher for the iSmash service. You can see all the info on their page here.
There’s some genuine value in these benefits if you like the sound of these services. Just bear in mind you’ll have to cancel the free trials once they’re over if you don’t want to start paying for them.
But the scheme is held back by the fact that these are one-time benefits. And the services won’t be helpful to everyone. There’s no offers on real-life dining or entertainment and no presale tickets like on some networks.
Still, we like that one of the cheaper networks is able to offer something extra for their customers to get even better value out of their already great value deals. They’re just a little bit lacking in what they offer compared to the others.
Useful link: giffgaff’s full guide to their member perks
Best points based schemes
1st: Tesco Mobile - collect points to get money off
Tesco offer a very unique type of points-based scheme with their Clubcard. This lets you collect points on both your mobile bill and in-store shopping to get money off either the cost of your plan or your groceries.
It’s free to sign up for one and every £1 you spend in-store and on your monthly Tesco Mobile bill adds points to your Clubcard. Every point you collect is worth 1p, with the minimum possible amount you can get off your mobile bill being 50p.
This is a great scheme if you shop regularly at Tesco, as you’ll start racking up points quite quickly. And if you add extra users to your account, you can get extra Clubcard points as a “Family Perk” (see their guide here).
However, you no longer get doubled up vouchers on Tesco Mobile. So 100 points used get you £2 off where it now gets you £1 off. This is a big downgrade in our eyes.
But it’s still great that you can combine your shopping and mobile bills together, and you can get some money off some already decently priced deals (on top of the exclusive Clubcard deals available only to Clubcard holders).
Useful link: Read our full Tesco Mobile review here
2nd: Superdrug Mobile - get double points on in-store purchases
Like Tesco, Superdrug Mobile let their users combine their in-store shopping and their mobile bill. Just for being a Superdrug Mobile customer, you immediately get double points on your Health and Beautycard.
For every £1 you spend in a Superdrug store, you get 2 points instead of the usual 1. You have to collect at least 100 points before you can get money off, but as a Superdrug customer you’ll get there twice as fast.
You even get an amount of Health and Beautycard points equal to the cost of your plan the first time you sign up. So if you spend £18 on your plan, you’ll get £18 worth of points (1800 points in this case).
It’s all well and good, but it would be a lot better if Superdrug Mobile did something similar to Tesco by converting the money you pay for your monthly bill into points, or if let you use your points for money off your bill.
But still, it’s a nice added benefit to help you get a bit of extra value out of your plan, if you’re a regular Superdrug shopper.
Useful link: See all of Superdrug Mobile’s SIM only plans
Refer-a-friend schemes
1st: VOXI - earn gift cards every time you refer-a-friend
What we like:
What we don't like:
VOXI will reward you every time you bring a friend or family member onto their network by giving you and the person you referred an Amazon gift card. The more they spend on their plan, the higher the value of the giftcard.
The highest amount you can get is a £20 Amazon gift card on VOXI’s larger plans. On their medium plans you’ll both earn a £15 gift card, and on their smallest plan you’ll both get a £10 gift card (see more here).
While there are some networks further down that can get you bigger rewards, VOXI tend to be cheaper than them in the first place. And an Amazon gift card is more likely to be of use to people than some of the rewards listed below.
Still, we do think direct cashback would be better as you’d have total freedom to use it as you wish. And your friend has to stay on VOXI for 2 months before you get your gift cards. But it’s a great scheme to get some extra value out of your plan.
Useful link: See VOXI’s guide to their refer-a-friend scheme
2nd: Three - cashback when you refer your friends
What we like:
What we don't like:
We said above that we prefer automatic cashback as a reward for referring-a-friend, and that’s exactly what Three give you. Both you and your friend will get money back depending on what kind of plan they joined on.
If your friend joins on a phone contract or other device plan you’ll both get £40 cashback. You can even do that if you’re only on SIM only yourself, meaning you could offset the cost of your own plan for a couple months or more.
Or if your friend joins on an unlimited data SIM (12 or 24-month contract) you’ll both get £20 cashback. It’s just a shame that if you join on any other SIM plan (1, 12 or 24-month contract) you’ll both only get £5 cashback each.
That’s a pretty big drawback. In order to get the most out of this scheme, your friend has to spend a lot. And Three say you’ll sometimes have to wait up to 7 weeks to get your reward, but they also claim it can sometimes take only 90 days.
It’s still great to get cashback that you can spend on anything, and you can refer as many friends as you like. But we think the drawbacks just hold it back from being first place.
Useful link: Read more about Three’s refer-a-friend scheme here
Joint 2nd: giffgaff- cashback for referring friends and engaging with the community
What we like:
What we don't like:
There’s a few ways to earn cashback on giffgaff, all of which involve engaging with the giffgaff brand. That includes bringing new members onto giffgaff, giving answers on the community forum and suggesting improvements.
giffgaff don’t actually say how many points you’ll get for helping out the community, but every time you bring a friend onto giffgaff you’ll get £5 worth of cashback points and your friend will get £5 credit after their second monthly top up of £10 or more.
That seems like a fairly modest scheme, but considering giffgaff are one of the cheaper UK networks a bit of cashback goes a long way in saving on your bill. Still, it’s a bit of a shame that your friend has to join on with £10 or higher.
If you bring more than 14 people onto giffgaff you’ll become a Super Recruiter, meaning you’ll get even more cashback if you bring more people onto giffgaff. However, we think the vast majority won’t ever bring that many people onto one network.
It’s still an intriguing scheme and it’s nice to see customers getting rewarded for their loyalty. But it’ll only really benefit customers that are extremely loyal to giffgaff, which holds it back somewhat.
Useful link: Our full giffgaff network review
3rd: iD Mobile - Curry’s gift cards offered for referring a friend
✔ The longer your friends’ contract the more you get backHow it works
at idmobile.co.uk
(opens in new window)
What we like:
What we don't like:
iD Mobile offer Curry’s gift cards when you get someone to join their network. The value of this gift card depends on whether your friend joins on a 1-month, 12-month or 24-month contract.
If your friend joins on a 1-month contract, you’ll both get a £10 gift card, a 12-month or 24-month SIM only contract gets you a £15 gift card. And if they join a 12 or 24-month phone contract you’ll both get a £30 gift card.
It’s a fairly modest saving, but considering iD Mobile are one of the cheapest networks already, it can help you get a bit of extra value out of your plan. But like the other networks offering gift cards, we think direct cashback would be better.
And we think most people will prefer an Amazon gift card anyway. But if you shop at Curry’s on a regular basis you might like this scheme. It’s not a bad scheme, but it’s not earth-shattering either in our eyes.
Useful link: Our full iD Mobile review
4th: EE - modest gift card rewards for bringing a friend onto their network
What we like:
What we don't like:
EE’s refer-a-friend scheme is similar to Vodafone and VOXI’s, but just isn’t as impressive. This is because you only get a £10 Amazon gift card when your friend joins on a pay as you go bundles, not their regular pay monthly plans.
You need to be a pay as you go customer already on a bundle worth £10 or more, and your referred friend will also have to join on a bundle worth £10 or more. That removes most of the flexibility these schemes usually offer.
At the very least you’ll receive your Amazon gift card within 7 days. But you’re only getting a gift card worth £10 which pales in comparison to what you get with every other network offering similar schemes.
Combine that with the fact that EE are already one of the most expensive UK networks, and their pay as you go bundles are even pricier per GB and this scheme looks even less impressive.
At least it’s something to give back to their pay as you go customers. But we’d rather they just made their pay as you go bundles better value in the first place. Overall a pretty disappointing scheme.
Useful link: EE’s pay as you go monthly bundles
Exclusive deals for existing customers
1st: O2 - double data and more for Virgin Media customers
✔ Extra benefits for both your mobile and home broadband plansHow it works
at virginmediao2.co.uk
(opens in new window)
What we like:
What we don't like:
O2 are now owned by Virgin Media, and as such both companies want to incentivise customers to join O2 on mobile and Virgin for their home services. They have done this with what they call “Volt”.
This is an existing customer benefits scheme to reward you for joining O2 and taking home broadband with Virgin. You get a long list of benefits for both your mobile and broadband plans.
You get double data on any O2 SIM only plan, as well as getting O2’s “Travel Inclusive Zone” benefit. And you get a speed boost for your home broadband as well as up to three WiFi pods to improve WiFi coverage in your home.
And you can save money by taking your O2 pay monthly phone contract or SIM only plan and your Virgin Media broadband at the same time versus paying for them separately.
The only major downsides are that you have to join on an 18-month contract if you pay for both at the same time, but at least you can change your O2 plan up and down each month if you’re not happy with it.
Useful link: See the full guide to Volt
2nd: Sky Mobile - stream Sky TV apps without eating into your data
✔ Our joint-first pick for the best free data streaming schemesRead our guide
at simsherpa.com
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What we like:
What we don't like:
Sky help their TV customers get the most of their home package by letting them stream their TV apps on data without eating into their monthly allowance. Think of it like taking your TV with you wherever you go.
If you want to tether to a device with a larger screen without eating up your data, Sky let you do that. And you get this benefit at no added cost on even the smallest and cheapest plan Sky Mobile offer:
So, what are the drawbacks? Firstly, you can’t use the benefit abroad. And you can only stream the apps on two devices at once, which can be very restrictive if you’ve got a lot of other users on your account.
But other than that, this scheme is a perfect example of how networks can help their customers get the most out of both their mobile deal and any other services they pay for.
We do think it’d be good if Sky offered extra benefits for existing WiFi customers too. As it is, it’s still a brilliant benefit and one of our favourite free data streaming schemes.
Useful link: Sky’s full guide to their Watch benefit
3rd: BT Mobile - broadband customers get a discount on their mobile plan
What we like:
What we don't like:
If you’re an existing BT broadband customer and were thinking of joining BT Mobile then you’ll be happy to know you get £5 off any BT Mobile SIM only or phone contract.
The reason we don’t rate BT Mobile higher is because their plans tend to be a bit pricey in the first place. The discount makes BT look more appealing, but they’re still pricier than a lot of networks even after it’s applied.
But if you have BT Halo at home, you get double data on any BT plan. That can let you sit comfortably on a smaller plan than you might otherwise buy. That way you can save a little bit more on your plan.
And if you’re looking for a new phone contract, BT customers get either 10% discount of the full cost of some EE phone contract or special discounts on others. That can work out to some pretty massive savings overall.
So, there’s a lot to like with BT’s scheme. Their discounts would be more helpful if the SIM only and phone contracts they applied to weren’t so expensive in the first place, but it’s still a good scheme overall.
Useful link: Our full BT Mobile review
4th: Plusnet Mobile- 2GB free data for broadband customers
What we like:
What we don't like:
If you’ve got Plusnet broadband at home, then you might like the extra 2GB data boost you get on any Plusnet Mobile plan as a reward for your loyalty. That helps you get some great value out of Plusnet’s already cheap plans.
It’s not as massive as some of the data boosts listed above, but it’s still an impressive benefit simply due to how Plusnet’s plans are already brilliant value. It’s especially great if you’re on a small plan.
But we would prefer a straight up discount in all honesty. If you’re on a plan that already suits your needs, having extra data won’t help. And 2GB isn’t really enough to comfortably join on a smaller plan than usual.
So Plusnet’s benefit looks a bit tame overall. But it’s still great for getting just a bit of extra value out of your plan.
Useful link: See Plusnet’s guide to their Mates Rates
5th: Tesco Mobile - Clubcard holders get access to better deals
✔ Unique deals and discounts for Clubcard holdersSee current deals
at tescomobile.com
(opens in new window)
What we like:
What we don't like:
If you’re a Tesco Clubcard holder, it’s worth looking out for any SIM only or phone contracts on Tesco Mobile’s website marked “Clubcard deals”. If not, it’s totally free to sign up for a Clubcard.
These Clubcard deals are offers only available for Clubcard holders that tend to be much better value than their regular range. Sometimes these deals are totally unique, while sometimes they’re just cheaper versions of their regular plans.
That’s all well and good, but there are a couple of downsides. There is no flat discount applied to all plans, you’re just getting access to unique deals. So if the current Clubcard deals don’t suit your needs, the benefit hardly helps at all.
It can be especially frustrating on phone contracts, when only specific tariffs on specific devices are discounted. You might see your ideal device discounted, only to find out it’s only on a tariff that is way too low or too high for your needs.
We say it’s always best to go with a plan that suits your needs so you’re not paying too much for a plan you won’t use or constantly buying data add-ons because your plan is too small. But it’s still a great scheme if you can find a plan you like.
Useful link: Our full Tesco Mobile review
