“Pay as You Go” or “Contract”

Communication is very important for people who are living abroad either for studying or business. With communication tools, especially handphone, they can keep in touch with their family, sharing happiness and sadness. Usually, those people buy new handphones including new simcards in the new country. At this point, there are two choices commonly offered; buying by contract or pas as you go. I shall go on to suggest you to think carefully if you want to go for the ‘contract’. I strongly recommend this suggestion for international students.

Contracts (Photo credit: NobMouse)

I got an experience having a contract with one of providers in the UK. In this contract, the officer told me that I just had to pay £ 15 per month to get £15 credit. I was using blackberry handphone in which the BBM service should be taken £5 from the balance. I thought i would just need to pay £ 15 per month and all that i needed was already there. However, in fact the provider charged me £ 5 more for the BBM service. So, they deducted from my debit card £20 per month.

Knowing such an annoying condition, i decided to terminate the contract. Because it was a monthly basis contract, i should be able to terminate it anytime i want. Then, I called the customer service and said i would like to terminate the contract. She said ‘yes’, but they would send me ‘pay as go card’ with the same number. I said ‘ok’, because i thought, if it is pay as you card, i can activate it or top up whenever i want. For sure, i went to my bank and asked them to terminate the contract from my debit card.

My pay as you go simcard came about three weeks later. Nevertheless, surprisingly, my contract number was still active on my handphone untill that time where it should not be active anymore. At first, i just enjoyed that situation, and did not activate the pay as you go simcard. In the end of the month, i got a bill for that. I was surprised because i had terminate the contract. I called the customer service, and he said, ” as long as i don’t activate the pay as you go simcard, the contract is still on”. Owh, god, it’s very dissappointing, why i should activate that card if i don’t need it. As a result, i had to pay the bill and activated the pay as you go simcard. Then, i never use that card anymore.