Vodaphone PAYG - why So Difficult To Change Phones?

[Vern1961]

I regard mobiles as a modern evil and keep one purely for emergency or essential calls when away from home. Hence just have a Vodaphone PAYG account running on an ancient Nokia 1800. Decided it was time to change to a more up to date Voda Mini 7 as the 1800 getting a bit battered and dented.

First check was that the sim card from the old phone doesn't fit in the new phone as it only takes micro sims. So set up the Mini 7 to get the new number and went to my Vodaphone online account to add it. No option to do so. Quick bit of google fu indicated you need an account for each number but on trying to set up a second account, not surprisingly get told that email already in use.

After rummaging around find an option to chat with Gupta, who advises there is a procedure but only 9 - 5 Mon to Fri. More Googling reveals just how difficult it is to do something most people with a mobile will end up doing periodically - changing the unit - and it seems there is no guarantee the credit on the old account will transfer across either.

So much for the movies where people buy a cellphone, take the wrapping off and use it straight away without all this faff or having to charge it up!

 

[Rroff]

Yeah changing sim size is a bit of a pain on Voda - I gave up on trying to do it via online and popped into my local Vodafone store and a very pleasant young lady swapped it over in a few minutes and the new phone was registered on the network within an hour.

 

[edGfaCTor]

Why not look at other networks.

 

[Richy888]

Similar to OP I think - I recently picked up an EE payg sim for a spare phone. Sim was registered to me in store and put it in phone when I got home. All fine and away it went, advising logging into your account or creating one if you hadn't one, to manage your account.. Started to register an account when got the error message that there already was an account registered to that email.

Course there was as I'd used an ee payg sim in the past. Logged in and there was my old payg sim not used for over 2 years at least. No way in hell to delete the old number and register the new one? Was I missing something or is it a load of hassle as the OP states?

 

[Vern1961]

Why not look at other networks.

Because I've always used Voda, never had any issues with them.

In the end, got round by setting up another email account and using that with the wife's name to register - but I can see the same issue in 3 or 4 years time when this phone breaks. I'll just use up the credit on the old phone and chuck it once it goes dead.

 

[stoofa]

I think the issue is that you're changing your number. Some people periodically change their phones, others change their phone every month.
However the majority of people don't change their number - in the 25 years I've had a mobile phone I've only had two numbers, and I only lost it the first time when I accidentally cancelled a contract when I meant to port my number away.
Almost certainly the phone number is built into the account somewhere and changing that piece of information isn't possible - you have an account for number 07xxx xxxxxx you don't have a personal account that 07xxx xxxxxx hapens to be associated with.
I'm not saying this is ideal, however changing a number every 12-18 months isn't something most people do.
With regards SIM's, all SIM's I've seen recently are the push out type, so they will fit any of the 3 sizes. If I were to push out the Nano part of the SIM but later require a Micro SIM, I could simply situate it back into the push out and away I went.

 

[Richy888]

I think the issue is that you're changing your number. Some people periodically change their phones, others change their phone every month.
However the majority of people don't change their number - in the 25 years I've had a mobile phone I've only had two numbers, and I only lost it the first time when I accidentally cancelled a contract when I meant to port my number away.
Almost certainly the phone number is built into the account somewhere and changing that piece of information isn't possible - you have an account for number 07xxx xxxxxx you don't have a personal account that 07xxx xxxxxx hapens to be associated with.
I'm not saying this is ideal, however changing a number every 12-18 months isn't something most people do.
With regards SIM's, all SIM's I've seen recently are the push out type, so they will fit any of the 3 sizes. If I were to push out the Nano part of the SIM but later require a Micro SIM, I could simply situate it back into the push out and away I went.

So in my case the only option is to make a new online account with a different email address - which is what I did. Luckily I have a few email accounts.

The Mrs lent me her old iPhone 6+ to see if I could get my head around apple phones. So the reason I got an ee payg sim. That and try ee round these rural parts. Anyway, it has all ended badly. No way I'm ever moving from android to iPhone. Everything is so locked down. Lost count the times I've had to enter my I cloud password just to grab the odd free app. Even had to change password as they were adamant I was entering the wrong password - though making a new one I used the old one "please input a different password". So I was using the right password to start with? Drove me nearly mad. Should have taken notice of the 3 reps in EE shop who basically thought I was mad to mess with an iPhone. I blame the heat