EKIT and their U.S. number Service Life
 

Maybe others with a dual number EKIT SIM know this, but there was a minor change in their "Service Life" agreement since the time I bought my SIM. I have not used my SIM for about 4 months and they automatically deleted my U.S. number. You can keep your U.S. number by paying a 50 cent per month fee. Or, you get assigned a new U.S. number for free.

If your number is deleted, you just log on to EKIT with your UK number. Then you hit a button and reactivate the U.S. portion of the account and immediately are assigned a new U.S. number. The new number shows up right on your account page.

I still maintain that EKIT has one of the best expiration Service Life agreements around. You must use the SIM with a charged service every 9 months. You must recharge at least once every 15 months. And you can restore any expired credit by recharging your account with a minimum of $30.

Good to know how it works now.
 

Thanks for updating us on this issue. Was the phone number the same area code? Did you have any choice in the new number?

I check monthly or so and click the 'activate' button in order to keep the same number. The fifty cents route is not for cheap me. Of course we could use it more often to keep it alive, but.............

Anything else about the process we should be aware of?

I live in California. My original U.S. number was an area code in New York City. While cell phone users with their free calling plans could call my New York number for free, I preferred a California phone number. It would have made it easier for a few people to just dial a California number.

Before I re-activated my service on EKIT's web site, I asked their customer service if I could choose a new area code and number. I was told no, it was assigned automatically.

But when I activated on line, I was assigned an (805) area code IE: California number. Not sure why, but I am happy.

What's the cut-off for when you lose the US number?

From ekit's web site
 

4 months seems to be answer.
ekit says:

But every 4 months you have to activate it online in your account or need to have a service charged to keep it alive?

Not to rain on your parade, congratulations are in order I suppose, but does it really matter unless the area code is in your local calling area? I mean here in New York (I wanted a NY number too but they said no way Jose) it costs just as much to call a NJ number as it does to call California i.e. free on cell phones and whatever my ld carrier charges on my land line. The only downer, so to speak, will be if I have to forward to the USA number when I'm out of the country...what I have to do is forward from the landline to mobile (both NYC so I pay for that one call a flat fee not timed, that's the way local NYC verizon rates work) and then forward from the mobile to the ekit number and it comes out of my minutes but I have so many and free weekends it is not a problem)....I wonder if call quality suffers with a double hand off (it doesn't seem to) and the calls all go through relatively quickly....

But every 4 months you have to push the activate button online in your account or need to have a service charged to keep it alive?

My understanding is you need a chargeable service.

I forward the US number to another number when I'm not in the US. The forwarding destination can be can be set and changed online (this is one of the best features of the sim).

The forwarding works for me even if the US number is "inactive" I believe it's just the availability of sim registration that is activated/deactivated with the button on the site, the number remains working longer (up to 4 months).

My US number gets a few real calls, or wrong numbers, or marketing calls each month, which then creates chargeable events (the forwarding cost). If it didn't I'd just call it once every month or two to keep it active.

I have the original US/Canada eKit sim that only has a US number, no UK number, but I assume the same would apply to the US portion of the current combined sim.

Rob

Using 870 to activate US Service
 

Wasn't there a message in this thread saying you could use short code 870 to activate the card's US number from the 'global' side. Where did it go?

How about just receiving a text message which costs 10¢ I believe? Won't thaty do it?

While I used the web site to re-activate and get a new U.S. number, I was told I could log on using the UK number and then use the 870 to activate. In that case you get an e-mail with the new number. On line the phone number show up immediately.

To preserve your U.S. number without paying the 50 cents a month requires a paid usage. Even a text message once very 4 months will hold your number. And since a text message every 9 months will keep your SIM active, a text to preserve the number will keep the SIM active too. Don't forget a small recharge is needed every 15 months too.

The reason I wanted a California number was so that certain friends and business associates in California could call me without using a cell phone and just pay California toll charges. (About 5 cents a minute). And some said that they have free in state calling, but out of state calls cost 12 cents a minute. It's not really a lot of money but it can add up.

Is the minimum recharge 10 USD or is it different?

$10.00 recharge
 

Yes, $10.00 is the minimum recharge allowed. On the web site the dropdown list if you are signed in defaults to 50 but 10 is there. If you just select from the ekit home page to 'recharge' no amount is shown on the dropdown list. The amounts are $10, $30, $50, $100, $150 , $200.

The text on the recharge page says: "Recharge your minutes online using your American Express, Mastercard, Eurocard or Visa card to add US$30, $50, $100, $150 or $200 to your phone or SIM card account 24/7."

But $10 is there.

rfranzq is correct. If you log on to EKIT and select re-charge "on-line", a $10 amount is shown in the drop down choices.

Yes, that should work as well. Free to send from Google Voice website. Makes it only 40c/yr (4 texts) to keep the number active.

I find the international call forwarding from the eKit useful. So there hasn't been a month (certainly not 4 months) when I haven't had a chargeable event. In other words, I do actually use it! :-)

Rob

Is it still required to recharge at least once every 15 months or is just doing a chargeable event at least once every 9 months OK? I ask because I last recharged one of my (old, single-IMSI) eKit SIMs over 16 months ago and used it between then and now usually to send texts here and there about once every few months or so and kept my balance so far.

I intend on recharging it once my balance is low enough to not be able to send any texts. Perhaps the rules are different for the dual-IMSI SIMs?

15 Months
 

No, the rules are the same. You should strongly consider adding $10.00 right now if you want to keep the card, otherwise you might have to do $30.00 if you want to rescue the balance.

How they calculate '15 months' and when your ability to recharge ends is not clear.

I have a SIM that is almost 17 months old from original charge up date that seems to be still alive [with a 5 cents balance] .
I am not keeping it because I have gotten a dual IMSI instead.

Do they tell you of both dates before they come around? I was reminded of the 9-month deadline to use before losing my balance before but never got anything about the other, 15-month, one for recharging. The SIM in question I have is just under 2 years old now and I last recharged it roughly 7.5 months into its life. The remainder of the time till the present was spent usually registered onto various networks in my area and sending SMS once every 2 to 6 months. My balance is low enough on that SIM now to where only a few more SMS would be needed before I would have to recharge anyway, so I ought to go ahead and do that.

The US simple card is so cheap ($9 + $3 shipping on ebay) that it almost doesn't really matter (you get $10 worth of credit with a purchase) but I suppose you don't want to have to keep reminding others of your new number eh.

As far as I know: NO.
 

As far as I know: NO.

They do not send out reminders. You have to keep track yourself of expiration dates. The 15 months to recharge is from the last recharge. It is shown on line in your account.

Are you sure it is 805? and not 508?
 

Hello, are you sure that the area code is 805 and not 508 ?

I just got a SIM from a new to me eBay seller and got a 508 area code.

Mine is definitely an 805 area code. I have no idea how they get assigned.

I got a 631 Southampton, Long Island, NY area code. Think they may try to give you an area code somewhat close to where you live (although I live in CT). The chip currently resides in my watch phone :)

I know the e-kit guy monitors this board; or at least he or she did at one time in the past. If so, that is the one big downer of e-kit. Why can't people choose their area code from those available. I wanted a NYC area code (there are about 5 of them) to make call forwarding from my landline a viable option but they told me I couldn't get one; yet somebody on one of the blogs complained they had gotten a NYC area code.......it doesn't seem that doing this would present such a logistical challenge, does it?

I'd imagine they could even charge an extra $5 or $10 for user-specified AC.

Can you use forwarding via a Google Voice account to bridge across the area codes, or is there always an extra welcome message or conditional action required by the caller that takes up time?

Sorry if the question is naive. I have an account, but as they haven't expanded it outside the USA yet, and what's more no longer even allow accounts from outside, I haven't experimented with it much.

My areacode is 646. I have not really checked what state that is. It really does not matter to me, and should not for most US users that will just be forwarding their number to it. Since pretty much all mobiles include nationwide calling. In a few cases, some landlines still charge for long distance, then the areacode could be an issue. My landline is vonage so, not an issue for me.

PS. I went to Jamaica 3 weeks ago, with the hope of using this (and my other sims of course) for incoming calls. Because of the good rate of $019. So, I forwarded my our mobiles and landlines to it. It was absolutely useless for incoming calls. I tested it as soon as we got there. May be 1 in 10 calls came through. I quickly resorted to my other sim card, telna, etc. that charged higher rates, but worked perfectly. So, it's one thing to have a US number, it's another to be able to actually receive calls on it at your destination. Bottom line - always have at least one backup plan.

Bossman...you hit my "problem". My landline doesn't time calls within NYC so I can forward a call to a NYC area code and only pay 9¢ or whatever it costs for as long as I talk...any other area code costs more (I don't have a national ld plan on my landline, don't need it). So what I have to do is forward to my mobile and then forward from the mobile to e-kit.....I don't there's any deterioratin of the calls due to the double hand off so I suppose it's no big deal but 1 fewer step might be a tad more convenient.

I have used my Google Voice account to forward calls to my U.S. number on the EKIT SIM. In fact that's how I learned I lost my first EKIT U.S. number.

I got a message from Google telling me that my EKIT phone number had been re-assigned to someone else. Upon researching this with EKIT, that's how I learned about the 4 month rule.

I have Californian +1-323-275-9XXX (Hollywood?), so I think 0,50$ is ok for such good number.

Sorry to dissapoint
 

Sorry to dissapoint, but the 323-275-xxxx would just be considered 'Los Angeles. The 323 are code is the 'doughnut' around the 213 'doughnut hole'.

But the good news is that Hollywood IS in the 323, being a part of Los Angeles. And the way the prefixes ['275'] are allocated it could be anywhere in the parts of Los Angeles that is 323.

So if you want to say 'Hollywood' it would be hard to say it is not Hollywood. Does your SIM have a UK number or just the 323 number? I have one that just has the 323 number [and another that has the 213 number.]

Thank you for the explanation. Another number on this simcard is +447924422XXX.

That would be Isle of Man, UK. Home of the Manx Cat. It's listed as "mobile phones additional capacity" in this link: Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia but I'm not sure what mobile phone carrier represents that number pool (guessing might be Cloud Nine or Manx Telecom, but someone might know the answer).

More info.
 

If you go to: Innternational number plans
you will find:+44879244XXXXX mobile Manx Telecom

If you try to search the US number it will be over 14,000 pages and no way to skip very far.

Also, at
SIM card information
you can stick in SIM card numbers and see who they really are for.

And as a useful bonus:
NANP Administration System you will be able to look up your prefix of an american phone number.
This is the kind of stuff that amuses those of us here.