by sb (admin)
(Virginia)
Just a quick note. It was the last day of the service period of an LG 300g phone. I added an "easy minutes" plan to a phone instead of adding a standard airtime PIN. The minutes (200 for $15) were added correctly, but the 31 days did not get added to the service period.
The next day I could no longer make calls as my phone had been de-activated. Called customer service and after an hour found out that they would have to send me a new SIM card before they could re-activate the phone. I expect to get that in the next couple of days.
There are a couple of reasons why this may have happened. One, this is an older phone and it came with the old software that added 300 minutes upon activation. So it may have been manufactured before the easy minutes plan was available. The easy minutes plan description does say that it is not available with all phones. However, I'll know more once the new SIM card arrives. Two, this could just have been a random problem with their system. I should probably have called customer service the same day that I saw that the service period had not changed.
Will update this thread in a couple of days.
Update 1: New SIM Card Arrives - Wrong Number Assigned
I received the SIM card and called NET10 customer service. The customer rep asked for the cell phone number I was calling about, but when the phone was activated, it was assigned a new phone number! I then talked to a supervisor who after going over all the information said he had to send out another SIM card to me to fix the situation.
I tried to find out where exactly the screw-up occurred: was it at the point of activation or when the original SIM card was sent out, but I wasn't able to get confirmation.
He said there should not be a problem next time. We'll see.
Update 2: No SIM card!
A new SIM card did not arrive. In shock, I called NET10 and found that a new one had not been sent out after all. Upsetting! They promised to send one out for real this time. I really needed to keep my phone number so I agreed.
Update 3: Finally, new SIM card and old Phone number
Finally, the new SIM card arrived. I called up support immediately, and they were able to activate my phone with my original cell phone number. Woohoo. Frankly, I was worried that, after such a long delay without my phone number, that it would somehow get re-assigned to someone else and no longer be available. That was not the case, so I'm very grateful.
Conclusion
I supposed, I should be really upset that I didn't have a working cell phone for about three weeks. However, the last person I spoke to was really helpful, and I did get my number back in the end, so I feel okay about it.
Still, I've learned that you have to be careful when switching stuff around with these plans. Here, I was NOT even switching from pay as you go to monthly. I was merely switching from the pay as you go airtime cards to the pay as you go easy minutes refills.
Another problem may have been that I had switched to an older Net10 phone that was on sale, and this may have been part of the problem. Anyway, it ended well. And now that I have my number back I can transfer it to a new phone.