OVIVO gone ! : Where to go next ?

thetightone

adindas wrote: »

IS there any expire date for the credit you add on each top up.
For instance I top up £15. If I do not use it often for instance I just use £1 call/data/text credit (say) in a year is my end of year balance will still be £14. Or will the remaining credit will expire ??

You have to make a changeable action call, text or internet every 60 days (or is it 90 days) to keep it active. Otherwise it never expires.

Doc_N

MSE_Helen wrote: »

Mobile phone firm Ovivo has gone into liquidation following its sudden closure in March, which left many out of pocket

Read the full story:

Ovivo goes into liquidation: Customers may not get refunds


Click reply below to discuss. If you haven’t already, join the forum to reply. If you aren’t sure how it all works, read our New to Forum? Intro Guide.

Three accounts in this family. Three claims. Different results.

1 Paypal - in my view the least likely to pay out, but actually they were the best of the lot. Paid out without any fuss at all.

2 John Lewis Partnership Card (HSBC) - paid out, but with difficulty and only after a fuss.

3 Amazon card (MBNA) - by far the most difficult to deal with, and the most reluctant to pay out. Still considering the claim.


I have good records with all these companies, and I should stress that there is/was no legal requirement to repay. It was all a matter of customer goodwill. Paypal behaved more than reasonably. Partnership card were pretty good.

But worst of all was Amazon Card (and they've made a lot of money out of me) who have been unhelpful and difficult. No customer goodwill there, then!

Result - PayPal were very good, and they'll now be getting a lot more of my transactions to the detriment of Amazon Card. They'll make far more than the £15 they refunded, and Amazon Card will lose far more than the £15 they haven't refunded.

Some sort of justice there - treat customers well, and they repay you with more business. Treat them less well, and you've lost your customer.

Roger1

Doc_N wrote: »

...

3 Amazon card (MBNA) - by far the most difficult to deal with, and the most reluctant to pay out. Still considering the claim.

...

But worst of all was Amazon Card (and they've made a lot of money out of me) who have been unhelpful and difficult. No customer goodwill there, then!

Not my MBNA experience.

They treated the £20 charge as £5 for the SIM - which Ovivo provided - and £15 for the service - which they didn't. Refund from MBNA £15.

Result: one happy MBNA customer.:)

Roger1

thetightone wrote: »

You have to make a changeable action call, text or internet every 60 days (or is it 90 days) to keep it active. Otherwise it never expires.

Really?

I just checked my 3-2-1 account which tells me:

Your credit will not expire.

No mention of using it every 60/90/whatever days.

thetightone

Roger1 wrote: »

Really?

I just checked my 3-2-1 account which tells me:No mention of using it every 60/90/whatever days.

From the t&c's

Top-ups
Where a Top-up is bought in-store and a 16-digit code provided, the Top-up needs to be activated within 90 days of buying it. Once activated, Top-ups have no expiry date, unless there is no activity at all on an account for 180 days as Three reserves the right to terminate or suspend unused accounts.

It's not very clear but it looks like they might cut it off after 180 days

NonGeographicalMan

thetightone wrote: »

It's not very clear but it looks like they might cut it off after 180 days

On Three 3-2-1 the credit never expires but you do have to do something that generates chargeable account activity at least once every 180 days to keep the SIM active. The events include making a call, sending a text, using data or I think also topping up the account.

So you can keep the £10 valid for years by just making a 3p call or whatever once every 6 months.

The only phone provider I know of that lets you have longer than a 6 month validity without using the SIM at all is Orange Spain Pay As You Go where you only have to make a call, send a text or top up the account once every 12 months to keep the SIM active.

Small MVNOs all tend to have much shorter inactivity timeout periods like 60 or 90 days as the networks clearly seem to charge them some set minimum monthly fee for keeping a SIM active. This fee is probably above the real economic cost to the network of supporting a SIM so hence why the main networks themselves tend to be more generous about minimum SIM activity requirements.

The_Jakal

Tealblue wrote: »

Where's the evidence they would be paid to do so? MSE's 'recommendation' came with a heavy caveat (which many people seem to have conveniently forgotten) that it was a new service and there could be problems.

It wasn't a totally new company. Other sites had been promoting OVIVO for at least a year.

MSE only started promoting the company when the referral scheme was introduced.

Make of that what you will. I have no opinion on the matter.

Doc_N

The_Jakal wrote: »

It wasn't a totally new company. Other sites had been promoting OVIVO for at least a year.

MSE only started promoting the company when the referral scheme was introduced.

Make of that what you will. I have no opinion on the matter.

A point well made. There's a tendency to forget that MSE is now part of Moneysupermarket.com Group PLC:

MoneySuperMarket.com is the UK's leading price comparison website. Our aim is to save 10,000,000 households more than £200 each in 2015.

In 2013, we achieved revenues of £225.6 million for the full year.

Roger1

It's interesting to see alternative interpretations of

Your credit will not expire.

I have an old Three phone that I haven't used for years (not 3-2-1). I just checked the balance and see:

Top-up credit £xx.xx Won't expire

(I've kept this in case I want to keep the number.)

The 3-2-1 landing page http://www.three.co.uk/Store/Pay_As_You_Go_Price_Plans says:

With mind-blowing rates of 3p a minute, 2p a text and 1p a MB of data, you can talk, text and browse your heart out. Once you’ve topped up, the rates don’t change after 30 days – they last until you use your last penny. No more converting to this or bundling to that, just a simple top-up to get great rates.

I bought my top-up online, not at a dealer, and in view of Three's message that 'Your credit will not expire', I do not expect it to expire after 180 days of non-use, no matter how unlikely that non-use period may be.

redux

Roger1 wrote: »

It's interesting to see alternative interpretations of I have an old Three phone that I haven't used for years (not 3-2-1). I just checked the balance and see:(I've kept this in case I want to keep the number.)

The 3-2-1 landing page http://www.three.co.uk/Store/Pay_As_You_Go_Price_Plans says:I bought my top-up online, not at a dealer, and in view of Three's message that 'Your credit will not expire', I do not expect it to expire after 180 days of non-use, no matter how unlikely that non-use period may be.

My oldest Three SIM was originally a contract for a year then pay as you go.

It went completely unused for a couple of years, not even put in a phone, and has not been topped up for 2 or 3 years, just used for a small amount of data from time to time

However two newer Three SIMs were cut off after periods of non-use, so I would not count on the terms and conditions being the same as years ago. I'd say use it, even if just for a fraction of a penny worth of data.