Good News/\Bad News about ekit service life and recharging

[rfranzq]

I was checking on Service Life information on ekit and they have changed some things.

Service life
Your Service will remain active indefinitely if you use a charged service (such as making a call, or sending a text message) within any six month period.
We will send you an email and text message notification one week in advance of your Service becoming inactive. If your Service does become inactive, all your remaining credit (including the credit that comes included with the SIM) will expire. However, we will automatically re-instate your full expired credit balance (including any remaining initial included call credit) if you recharge your account with $30 or more via Customer Service within fifteen (15) months of last use, or purchase a new SIM card from Customer Service after fifteen (15) months.

You no longer have to 'recharge every 15 months' to keep the SIM alive. I called to confirm if this is true and the CS person said yes.

However [and this is the 'bad news'], the minimum recharge is now $20 and no longer $10.

If you have older ekit SIM cards, you will want to check if the Service Life info on your 'My service' tab says this. At least one of my SIMs did not have the new policy. I do not know whether it has changed for that SIM or not. I did not want to bring this up now, so I will wait until the 15 months on that SIM approaches.

[rfranzq]

Originally Posted by rfranzq

If you have older ekit SIM cards, you will want to check if the Service Life info on your 'My service' tab says this. At least one of my SIMs did not have the new policy. I do not know whether it has changed for that SIM or not. I did not want to bring this up now, so I will wait until the 15 months on that SIM approaches.

Great post Robert!

It turns out two of my SIMs that I could check [of 13!] do not have the wording in the previous post. Both still say there is a need to refill every 15 months. Both were acquired from the UK ebay seller a few years back and shipped to the USA. The UK ebay seller does not ship to the US any more.
All currently available ekit SIMs available on their website seem to have the use it every 6 month minimum now.

[rfranzq]

Originally Posted by rfranzq

If you have older ekit SIM cards,blah, blah, blah,......... so I will wait until the 15 months on that SIM approaches.

Ekit's policy for ALL SIMs is 6 month expiration now. They will be updating any pages with old policy as they discover them.

[123456]

Any credit balance in your account will expire if you have not made a charged call or sent a charged text message using your account for a period of three (3) months.

The full credit balance (including any remaining initial included call credit) will be automatically re-instated if you recharge your account with $30 or more within twelve (12) months of last use, or purchase a new SIM card from Customer Service after twelve (12) months.

Link: http://www.ekit.com/ekit/MobileInfo/TermsUse

[dg7feq]

Seems they want to get rid of all the "travel-once-per-year" customers.

[rfranzq]

Originally Posted by 123456

quote:
Any credit balance in your account will expire if you have not made a charged call or sent a charged text message using your account for a period of three (3) months.

The full credit balance (including any remaining initial included call credit) will be automatically re-instated if you recharge your account with $30 or more within twelve (12) months of last use, or purchase a new sim card from customer service after twelve (12) months.
Link: http://www.ekit.com/ekit/mobileinfo/termsuse

Thanks for the heads up. I checked my seven exit cards. Two Explorer Service [ekexp_green],
two US SIMple Calling Plus Service [ekusplus_yellow], and three Passport Service [ekpass_yellow].
All have the same below expiration statement in their information page.

Your Service will remain active indefinitely if you use a charged service (such as making a call, or sending a text message) within any six month period.

We will send you an email and text message notification one week in advance of your Service becoming inactive. If your Service does become inactive, all your remaining credit (including the credit that comes included with the SIM) will expire. However, we will automatically re-instate your full expired credit balance (including any remaining initial included call credit) if you recharge your account with $30 or more via Customer Service within six (6) months of last use, or purchase a new SIM card from Customer Service after six (6).

It will be interesting to see what is actually done.
I had not noticed before that all funds would be restored even if you buy a new SIM.

[Bossman]

I have an old US simplecalling sim. I received the following email on Monday. Seriously, my use for international sim cards has diminished somewhat. As I am usually in one place for a long period and I just buy a local sim. Plus, I have Piranha as well, and that has worked well for me. I'll be in Nigeria for 2 weeks starting this Friday. I already have 2 local sims that I use there. However, I'll burn up whatever is left on my Ekit while I am there.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Dear mobile customer

Thank you for using our service. We are continually making improvements,
so please let us know how we can make the service better.

As you have not made any calls with your SIM card recently, the balance of your account will expire in one month.
Please see our terms and conditions http://www.ekit.com/terms for details.

To extend the life of your account balance, simply make a call or send a paid text message or recharge your account within the next month.
To recharge your account, just go to www.rechargeminutes.com

Should your account balance expire and you wish to reinstate your balance,
please contact Customer Service to recharge your account and we will
reinstate the expired balance.

[rfranzq]

Originally Posted by bossman

-------------------------------------------------------------
dear mobile customer

thank you for using our service. We are continually making improvements,
so please let us know how we can make the service better.

as you have not made any calls with your sim card recently, the balance of your account will expire in one month.
please see our terms and conditions http://www.ekit.com/terms for details.

To extend the life of your account balance, simply make a call or send a paid text message or recharge your account within the next month.
To recharge your account, just go to www.rechargeminutes.com

should your account balance expire and you wish to reinstate your balance,
please contact customer service to recharge your account and we will
reinstate the expired balance.

For the last year or so I have been quite diligently using the SIMs I have every five months. I will be doing that every 10 weeks or so now. I have already whittled down the number of ekit SIMs I have by closing them down and asking the balance to be transferred to one I would more likely use.
Since they stopped requiring annual refills and with the balance transfers the balances have been pretty static.
I probably should do a little more whittling down to one kind of each card type [SIMple, Explorer, Passport Plus].

[rfranzq]

Ekit seems to have renewed their product line so that what now exists
SIM-wise are new and different from what they offered before.
I assume that a year or so from now they might replace our current SIMs with newer current ones.
This has happened at least twice in my memory.
So look at what is being offered and what you already have and use it to your advantage.
Ebay seems to be the place with the best prices for their SIMs.

[gandalf]

Amazon too? Can find some decent 2nd hand sims there...