Mobile Phone Dilemma

[Tokyo Joe]

I still am looking for a company that will keep my phone number valid while I am not in country. I visit 3 to 4 times a year and seem to return just after my account is cancelled. I have a DTAC SIM and their customer service is trying to help but they are missing the basics for the English reader. In a recent email, they described how to add credit to the phone via the internet as long as I have a refill card that I can buy before I leave the country. When I checked into it, the service is only on the Thai web, not the English side, so I am out of luck again.

I think I will resolve this by having a Thai friend help with adding credits but I am not sure what the value is. If I charge the phone with 500 baht, I think I can get 75 days of service. Does this mean if I put another 500 baht on the account before the 75 day point, I will get another 75 days and still have all the credit? The English info sheet is very confusing at best.

I would rather pay a modest monthly fee by credit card to keep the account open. The main reason was to keep the same phone number but I am at the point that I just bought a SIM card reader to transfer all my numbers.

The new problem is that I will have to keep re-registering new SIMS with the new rules so I prefer to keep the same number if possible.

If it isn’t one thing, it is another. What are others doing in my situation?

[The_Other_Mac]

I'm not in your situation. However I recall that my DTAC phone quickly got to the point of telling me that my call credit was valid until a date 12 months in the future. So presumably it does keep adding the extra time each time you top up. Dunno if ALL the credit is valid until that date, or just the last-added credit, but at least the number is alive.

If you happen to have a Thai bank account and online banking and a good memory, you can set it up to add credit from your bank account every now and again...

Edit: sorry, I don't know how much time you get per credits added. I never listened.

Edited July 27, 2005 by The_Other_Mac

[Firefan]

My AIS (1-2-call) does the same. Every refill ADDS days to the expire date. Best is apparently to take the highest value cards as gives proportionally more days than the smaller value cards. Cheers!

[syd barrett]

Buy a One to call SIM card (about 300 baht) then keep loading it with top up cards of 300 or 500 baht value, you will soon get a 6 month 'cushion' It might seem difficult to accept, but if you load up a 1-2 Call card you won't lose in the long run, because they still give you another 4 weeks till they disconnect you. So 7 months is enough for most visitors who visit Thailand twice a year.

Don't lose a number just because you don't top up enough. I lost a fantastic number once beginning 06666**** so from the U.K. it was 666666****a sad day for me I missed it by four days. Now my number is so difficult to remember I have to check every time.

My girlfriend has a 'cushion' of over 19 months........God knows how many top-up cards she uses......?

[RDN]

My AIS (1-2-call) does the same. Every refill ADDS days to the expire date. Best is apparently to take the highest value cards as gives proportionally more days than the smaller value cards. Cheers!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Some small cards give you 10% extra calls, whereas the bigger ones don't. So it depends what you're more interested in.

My DTAC phone took nearly 2 years to get to 365 days expiry time - but then, I didn't use it much.

[britmaveric]

12 Talk - added few thousand bht while I was there, Expiry date is now pushed back to Oct 06!!

[spog]

With orange, you get a a different time limit, depending on how much you recharge by and what package you are on.

e.g my wifes phone give her something like 2 months for 300 baht and 3 months for 500 baht (I can't remember the figures)

But my Orange phone give me 1 years credit on any refill - I think it is because I am on a different package - but no one at the Orange shop seems to know exactly why.

I don't make a big fuss in case they reset something