To not want the airtime I had to buy to be activated for me

[cornflakegirl]

I bought a new PAYG phone online from Phones4U yesterday. It?s a Nokia 1200 on Virgin and I paid £10 for the phone and £10 for airtime (compulsory purchase). The phone arrived this morning (very fast service!) and Phones4U have activated the airtime for me on the new SIM ?for my convenience?.

I already have a PAYG phone with Virgin, so I was planning just to swap the SIM to the new phone. I wasn?t intending to use the new SIM at all. So now I will have to have two phones on the go while I use up the airtime on the new SIM, which is annoying.

Is activating the airtime standard practice? I haven?t bought a phone in a long time, so I have no idea. Is it worth complaining to Phones4U, or should I just chalk it up to experience?

I had that when I bought a new phone, I used the other £10 to buy ringtones and a game to use it up but just used my normal sim and put the spare one in when I went on wap.

Certainly do not complain, this is absoloutely standard and it really is a convenience to most people! You should have asked at the time you bought it, as it is unusual to not want this. Most people do use the new SIM cards they get.

I would say don't use phones 4 U as they are generally shit, but too late! Carphone Warehouse are better, but not much TBH.

Its only a tenner, you can use that up fast enough. Or keep it in your purse for emergencies when you run out of credit.

Thanks - I figured it probably would be standard. Still annoyed though - £10 lasts me a couple of months, and my phone is so basic that I probably couldn't get ringtones for it if I wanted to!

I found another site that said that Virgin might transfer the credit to my current SIM, so I've emailed them to ask.

Virgin transferred the credit no problem at all - hurrah!