topic Re: Help Needed with Reactivating Inactive EE SIM Card in Pay as you go

Help Needed with Reactivating Inactive EE SIM Card

Golsh — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 12:52:03 GMT

Hi everyone,
I have an EE SIM card and phone number that I haven’t used for a long time. The SIM card is still physically in my phone, but it doesn’t seem to work anymore. The SIM wasn’t registered under my name. Does anyone know if there’s a way to reactivate it or recover the number? Any advice would be appreciated!

Thanks!

Re: Help Needed with Reactivating Inactive EE SIM Card

bristolian — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 13:11:18 GMT

You've not said, but I presume this is was a PAYG line - if so, it's subject to the hibernation policy which requires chargeable usage to be incurred at least once every 179days and will ultimately disconnect an unused line after 273 days. Details below

https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Pay-as-you-go/What-is-pay-as-you-go-and-flex-hibernation-and-how-do-I-stop-it/td-p/1198642

If your line is in the 179-273 day point, then you need to contact EE-CS to reactivate it. If it's beyond 273 days, your line has been disconnected and cannot be reactivated. You'll need to get a new PAYG SIM.

Re: Help Needed with Reactivating Inactive EE SIM Card

XRaySpeX — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 13:15:27 GMT

@Golsh : How long's a long time?

Sounds like your PAYG SIM may have gone into hibernation due to non-use. If it has, topping-up now would be too late.

When did you previously make a chargeable action? EE PAYG SIMs are deactivated after 6 months of non-chargeable use. You then have a further 3 months period of grace to call EE to reactivate it before it is lost completely.

You needed to make a chargeable action like making a chargeable call or text, topping up or buying a Pack or Add-on, not just using your mins, texts or data from your pack.