topic Re: SIM card expiry in Archived Posts

SIM card expiry

aflataboveashop — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 19:32:32 GMT

I bought a pack of SIM cards for family members a few months ago.

Do these expire? I am not concerned about credit or anything, just the phone number.

Re: SIM card expiry

Chris_B — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 20:14:15 GMT

@aflataboveashop providing they’re not activated they will not expire.

Re: SIM card expiry

aflataboveashop — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 22:19:39 GMT

Ok, cheers. Are you sure 100%. There're a few comments online saying otherwise but it's hard getting a qualified answer.

Re: SIM card expiry

XRaySpeX — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 23:37:18 GMT

@aflataboveashop : The comments you might have seen here could well be about already activated PAYG SIMs having been left unused for over 9 months are then deactivated completely.

Re: SIM card expiry

aflataboveashop — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 09:12:59 GMT

Thank you for your response. This is what a guy wrote whose tag was that he is/was a network engineer

Mark Woolley

Working as a mobile network engineer since 1998

Answered June 21, 2016

Some SIMs have an expiry date, so that for instance, prepaid SIMs do not lay around on the shelves of shops for years and years consuming network database resources and costing support and licence fees (and hogging a phone number) whilst earning no revenue for an operator. If they are not used by the expiry date they get removed from the network systems and can not be used.

Re: SIM card expiry

bristolian — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 09:28:48 GMT

The generic quotation you've given, is from an independent Q&A site and appears to be from almost 5 years ago.

The answers you've been provided with here on the EE Community are correct.

Re: SIM card expiry

XRaySpeX — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 10:39:19 GMT

All my PAYG SIMs have on their postcard a "Start using before" date. I now don't remember when I got them but a Summer 2020 Offer of 3 months extra data has "Start using before 10/02/2021". So it could be for up to 8 months. I only started using it on 14/01/2021 when EE slammed my Home BB & EE gave me 60GB on it to tide me over.

Similarly for the Xmas 2019 Offer of treble data for 6 months which has "Start using before 10/07/2020".

It does not say what happens if you don't, whether it is just referring to the extra data offer or the SIM as a whole.

Re: SIM card expiry

aflataboveashop — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 13:12:01 GMT

Thank you, very much appreciated.

Re: SIM card expiry

XRaySpeX — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 13:57:03 GMT

Thanks! You're welcome 🙂 ! Glad I could be of assistance