unused PAYG SIM and credit

[peanuckle]

A while ago I asked my son to get a PAYG Vodafone SIM as we were planning on transferring his number from my husband's contract to PAYG. He was told in store he had to pay for £10 credit to get one so he did. It was later decided later to stick with a SIM only contract, so we're left with an unused SIM with £10 credit on it.  Is there any way we can get a refund or credit for it?

[BandOfBrothers]

Hi @peanuckle

This subject matter came up before and from what I remember the credit cannot be refunded.

If it's still available as a Payg SIM card has to be used at least every 180 days to keep it active but if it is not then the payg sim card is de activated and credit is lost.

If it's still there you could donate it to charity using shortcodes. 

[ToniCa]

How long ago was this? If it was as long ago as 9 months, it could be that the number has been disconnected and the credit lost. If the store applied the £10 as a Big Value Bundle, the credit could have gone after 30 days. But more likely it's just sitting unused on the SIM.

If you put the SIM into a Vodafone phone, and call 2345, you can discover whether there is any credit left on it. In theory it's not refundable, but if you call 191, they might agree to transfer it to your Pay Monthly account.

Alternatively I remembered that one of the CCs had set up some charitable options to use up your balance. After a bit of searching I found https://www.justgiving.com/teams/AnnieN

[peanuckle]

Thank you for the help. I put the SIM into an old phone, checked the balance and got the number and rang 191 from my contract phone. As they could see the SIM had never been used prior to today they've transferred the credit to my account. 

[ToniCa]

That's great! And thank you for the update. I've since thought that, if you transfer from PAYG to Pay Monthly, I believe they will transfer any credit balance to the contract account - so they obviously took a similar attitude to your situation.