Arriving in about 2 weeks, need phones, etc.

I'm sure this has been discussed before but I had no luck searching for the answers. When my wife and I come over we will, of course, need phones. I know that we will have no UK credit and we also won't have a permanent address or a bank account. To get a bank account we need an address, right? We are coming over on my wife's Tier 4 Student visa (mine is Tier 4 dependent) and may only be able to get a student account, whatever that means. To get a pay as you go we'll need to purchase phones, which are outrageously expensive. To get a contract, we need a bank account as well as credit. Since we won't have credit there, we won't pass a credit check to get a contract, plus it looks like you need a bank account for billing. I seem to remember seeing somewhere that you can put down a deposit and then get it back after a certain time of making payments but am unsure. Even if that is the case, we won't have an account. It's frustrating because we will need phones right away to keep in touch with our shipping company, pet movers and estate agents. How should we handle this?

Pay-As-You-Go phones aren't ridiculously expensive. My first PAYG was a no-frills samsung for £9.99 from Orange, and my second PAYG is a tri-band Sony/Ericcson I paid £40 for, still with Orange.  Tim just replaced his PAYG phone with O3 and paid £55 for his.  IMHO, this isn't "ridiculously expensive".

Check Carphone warehouse for some comparisons, looks like you can buy a phone for as little as £4.95 with a top-up of £10:

http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/mobiles/pay-as-you-go/by-price

I bought my first PAYG phone in November, and so far I've topped it up 4 times, and that includes using it from the US to send texts to UK numbers.  The only reason I replaced the £9.99 one was becuse I decided in March I wanted to get a tri-band so Tim and I could text easier, otherwise I would have kept the cheaper phone.

also - check eBay for PAYG/unlocked phones.  

Another option to set up right away might be a phone number through Skype. You can buy a US or a UK (or both, like I did), but you will need an internet connection for those to work.

Pay-As-You-Go phones aren't ridiculously expensive. My first PAYG was a no-frills samsung for £9.99 from Orange, and my second PAYG is a tri-band Sony/Ericcson I paid £40 for, still with Orange.  Tim just replaced his PAYG phone with O3 and paid £55 for his.  IMHO, this isn't "ridiculously expensive".

You're right, that's not ridiculously expensive. I was looking mostly at provider websites. I'm also accustomed to a phone with web browsing and email and those tend to be more expensive. I might just have to suck it up until I can get an iPhone though. They are about 350 pounds but free with a contract.

You're right, that's not ridiculously expensive. I was looking mostly at provider websites. I'm also accustomed to a phone with web browsing and email and those tend to be more expensive. I might just have to suck it up until I can get an iPhone though. They are about 350 pounds but free with a contract.

Some PAYG phones have email and web. I know I can access the web via my Orange PAYG, but I'm not sure of the rates. I'd go into a Carphone Warehouse and explain what you need - that's what I did and how I wound up with Orange.  The people in those stores are really helpful in finding the best (and cheapest) options for you.

I've been using Pay As You Go phones in the UK for the past 10 years because I can't afford a contract (I don't use my phone enough to justify spending more than £15 a month so a contract isn't really worth it). The most I've ever paid for a pay as you go phone is £100 (LG Chocolate in 2007) and the least is about £40 (although I could have bought a cheaper one if I'd wanted to).

In terms of getting bank accounts, it could actually be a good thing that you will be opening a student account because they can be easier to get than a regular account - many banks will have special provisions for international students and will allow them to open an account relatively easily (i.e. with their passport and a letter from the university, without always needing proof of address). People in the UK on other visas can have a much tougher time opening a bank account because they are not given any special provisions at all.

if you want a smartphone, they do tend to be expensive without a contract (like your iPhone example, and I paid £300 for a Nokia E71 last summer, but it was unlocked and sim-free.)  But a regular phone should not be expensive at all- the last PAYG phone I bought was around £85 and that was one of the most expensive ones they had..I could have gotten a decent phone for £30 or so.  And you can definitely get web access as an addon- I know O2 charge something like £7.50/month for their PAYG data plan (it's just deducted from your top up balance every month.)

Thanks all for the good insights, a I appreciate all of your time.

just an fyi: when i went into carphone warehouse in search of an O2 contract so that i could get an iphone, they told me that the computer would not accept the contract if i had not lived in the UK for the past 3 years.  they got around this by just checking off that i had lived at my current address for that long and the fact that i had a bank account that they could use to set up direct debit from was all they seemed to need in terms of getting a contract.  i'm sure not every carphone warehouse would do the same thing, but if you really do want an iphone, you might start there when asking about a contract.