Right being a Brit I would be mortified if my mobile phone used some my remaining balance when someone called me. If that was the case I'd just go back to having a landline and ditch the mobile. Actually I have three mobiles one for phone use (Samsung), one for Email ('Berry 8120) and one for Skype the INQ1 on Three, all of them Pay As You Go (or PrePaid).

What is great is that when I need to shout at someone at Target for losing an order I can be on a bus , walking down the street and just because they have a 1-800 number I can call them for nothing on my INQ1 I don't even have to top up/have credit on the phone. I can also call other Three users for free as well, but that requires me to top up at least once every 90 days so roughly four times a year. My £10 top up also gets me 150Mb of data and plugging the phone into a computer allows it to be used as an HSDPA modem so I think it's a good deal.

I don't make masses of calls and I can usually make £20 of credit on my Samsung last several months but if everyone who texted me or called me took a bit of my balance each time that would be gone in no time. What I do find a rip off is my land line which costs £160/year before I've made any calls and I've looked into cancelling that as a result.

Some companies just send out spam texts (although they are trying to crack down these companies) and marketing calls and I think it would be a real liberty if I had to pay to receive those calls. I like to think of the situation in the UK as being like the postal system, If I want to send a letter for I pay for stamps to send it the person at the other end. They haven't asked me to send them this letter and would probably refuse to do so if they were unsure who it was sending it.