Bad UM Experience
 

I have an original Riiing SIM (+423) and two of the newer +44 SIMS (one for me and one for my father).

I had bookmarked the "recharge" page on UM. It always asks me to logon and they asks me which SIM I want to recharge...

I recently recharged my father's +44 SIM (€25 -- the minimum) and lo and behold when it took me pack to my status page, I saw my father's SIM and been terminated! But it still let me add money to it.

Calling from US and spending my remaining Betamax VOIP credit I finally reached a person and they refused to either reactivate my father's SIM, refund my money or transfer it to one of my other SIMs. After many calls (and much $$$) I finally reached a manager who grudgingly agreed to transfer the credit to one of my other SIMs

I have been a UM customer from the days of Riiing (3-4 years) but when this credit has been expended, no more.

I should also say that before and in between the expensive calls I tried to resolve the issue via email but was basically ignored.

I know that that PrePaidGSM is not a democracy but if it was, I certainly would vote to remove UM form the list of providers in the "sticky"

If a sim has been terminated, you would think their system will not allow credit to be added to it. It was probably terminated either because there was no credit on it at all, or because it was not used in the minimum required activity period. Which I think is 12 monhs.

Good thing you were able to finally get your credit transfered to another sim

PS. When I check the credit on my +44 sim it also says "no expiry". I do not believe that any bit!

It was probably terminated because of lack of use -- and I have no argument about that. After the fact, I realized it had been more than a year since my father used it. It had about €3 on it before I recharged.

What irritated me is they were perfectly happy to keep my money and give me no service.

The the minimum required activity period is 9 months, but I think nobody wants to test if the writing "no expiry" is true or not :D

I guess I will be doing a little surfing with my +423 SIM. Question, is the US still 99 euro cents a meg??

Yes. On the main page it's quoting the US as 0.99 euro/MB

What is strange is my +423 SIM hasn't been used in well over a year and it still works.

I saw a comment (on this forum?) a year or so ago in which someone had got an explanation from UM. Apparently the official expiration is 9 months after last use, however, their cancellation process is manual so it takes them longer than that. As I understand it, you're safe for 9 months. After that you're at UM's mercy.

Very true. I saw something to that effect. They probably have the last use date in a database or so. Then they manually run a query comparing last use date to current date, and mark those greater than 9 months for deactivation. Then thay actually manually deactivate them sometime.

;) I hear you and second that motion! The latest changes in policies at United Mobile got me thinking twice about referring anyone for their services.

As a side note, if you use data while abroad, more and more MNOs offer data with their prepaid offers. If changing phone numbers isn't such an issue to you, consider this.