Buying a PAYG phone for a sim only contract

paulboy83

Hi All,

I'm thinking about buying a new payg phone for my sim only contract, every phone I look at requires a £10 top up to purchase the phone, I don't need this £10, is it possible then to either give whoever I eventually buy it from a friends number and top that up or will I have to top up a sim card that is useless to me?

Cheers

grumbler

paulboy83 wrote: »

...is it possible then to either give whoever I eventually buy it from a friends number and top that up

If I understand the question correctly, then yes, you can port some old number from a different network to the new sim (AFAIK you can also port the number from O2 to O2). You can do it at the time of buying or later. You'll need the Porting Authorisation Code (PAC) from the old provider.
If it is the same network you can also try asking to have the credit transferred to some other account.

or will I have to top up a sim card that is useless to me?

Why would you have to top up the sim that already has £10 on it and that you don't need?

If you don't need the sim, you can sell it. I think you can get £6-8 on e-bay for a sim with £10 credit.

Also, don't forget to get a cashback if buying the phone online.

jnm21

If I understand correctly you want to give them your mates P&G number so that any top up goes to him (possibly with some compo from him for this advantage) - correct? If so, try carphoneearehouse - instore, they will let you do this, but best to have your mate pose as the purchaser (perhaps say he is your brother & you are paying for his new phone as a present). The good news is that you will not need to do any top up, the bad is that they only do this on some networks, O2 being one I think.

Techhead_2

jnm21, is correct. If you ask the store to process the purchase as a PAYG upgrade, there is no extra top up involved.

If you want to buy from other stores, or a network that doesn't do upgrades then the situation is more complex.

The top up may come as a printed receipt which you can give/sell to a friend.

The top up may be applied automatically, in which case you can sell the SIM+credit.

The top up may be applied when (or shortly after) the handset is registered/activated. You can still sell the SIM, but the account will be in your name unless you arrange transfer to someone else. Or lend the handset to the person to action the registration.