By all means, charge me a dollar or two a month to maintain service. But I'm already paying an insane premium for each prepaid minute (25 cents!) and 10 cents for each tiny text.

Insane? Insane compared to what else in canada? What? Yeah you're right. For $10, I only get 40 minutes of talk time! That is completely absurd! Sheer ripoffery. For only $12.50 you can switch to Mobilicity. For $12.50 you get UNLIMITED VOICE AND TEXT!

Oh wait a minute, you're an infrequent user for your kid's phone. So you expect a $25 balance to be there forever, to last two years or more. Seriously, with all the bubble wrap you pay to protect your kid in, $25/year for a phone really isn't that much.

Sorry bub, you're being completely unrealistic. You think that your money just sits there and does nothing. Overhead needs to be paid for.

I don't get it, You complain but don't do anything about it. You say with SO you're paying 20% of what you would have paid to another provider. If you think this is all a scam, then simply just switch, or stop complaining.

In other words, an iron clad contract with reasonable terms.

SO 365 is an iron clad reasonable term.

SO has the best expiry terms of any provider in Canada, true. But the idea that your balance -- however large or small -- should simply evaporate after a set period of time is something that should be legislated out of existence. By all means, charge me a dollar or two a month to maintain service. But I'm already paying an insane premium for each prepaid minute (25 cents!) and 10 cents for each tiny text.

SO has enough legal to spell it out all perfectly clear.

In other words, an iron clad contract with reasonable terms.

SO 365 is an iron clad reasonable term.

If you don't like it, go with PC, or PresChoice. It's like complaining about the quality of the food at a restaurant over, and over and over again. At a certain point, you stop going to that restaurant. Me, it takes just one bad experience to never go again.

Be upfront with your terms, and stick to them. That's the real basis of how society works. This customer service thing is all an illusion. Crappy customers? Get rid of them.

Not making people responsible for their own actions and choices, that's the real basis of the downfall of this society.

And like Chimpanzee said, at $25/year, it's $2/month. Topping up with a $100voucher just because it comes with $25 bonus airtime is like buying a 4L jug of mayonaise because it's on sale.

It will last forever, but it doesn't really save any money.

An analogy is like if you rent an apartment and left something there and not paying the rent for a year, the landlord can of course reclaim the space but they cannot touch your stuff, no matter how much you owe them or even there is some contract up front saying it is like that. They can charge you for storage and management fee, but can''t even throw them away. This is quite fundamental which is the basis of how our society works.

The term may not be able to withstand legal challenge but no one would dare to try that for a few cents here and there.

The fact that you can roll over your minutes within an allotted time frame is a bonus.

Expecting your balance to remain forever there for you to use is as unreasonable to expect that there are not fixed carrying costs that SO has to pay for.

365 expiry, free incoming texts, UMB. Stop complaining on a useless forum.

If you really have a problem, go to the BBB or CRTC

1. should the balance has expiry date?

From a legal stand point, they should not because they are in a sense 'deposit' so unless the company goes out of business, the deposit should be there and usable, forever. They can charge 'inactive' account fee but technically cannot say the deposit has gone

2. Is it bad if SO wipe the deposit ?

Given that they only ask 2 bucks a month with 1.25 goes to 'fee', they are quite reasonable in actual practice despite (1)

As for why don't they just have some exceptions, it is not as simple as that. If their system is not designed to allow such thing, the CSR cannot do anything or else the whole company may be in trouble when their account is being audited.

So I am sorry to hear that the OP lose the balance but other than complaining to local MP to have laws that ban wiping deposit, not much one can do and making it like SO is bad is IMO wrong.

It's not Jeb screwing up the world, it's his brother George.

365 and UMB. Why can't people read the terms of service?

Game the system and be prepared to lose.

I was with fido on prepaid, and I had to be on top of expiry dates because it expired every 30 days, AND I ended up spending $120 a year on airtime, AND I had to go to the store every 30 days to get refills.

THAT was a pain in the ass.

I guess what I'm saying is that if you don't like the service that SO offers, the best thing to do is to stick it to them and port your number out to a better telco. That's the only thing these big telcos will understand.

From Speakout's side, it's foolish for them to drive away a loyal customer over an issue like this. A poor business model.

I use SO for my kid's phone - he uses it in sporadic bursts, and the $25 vouchers can last a surprisingly long time. I set a calendar reminder to make sure it gets refilled a week or so before expiry, but It simply doesn't make sense to refill earlier.

I'm not being chintzy, I'm being sensible.

Even if minutes didn't roll over, I think that a $25 credit 'lost' over a year is pretty reasonable.

It's not a gift card, its a cell phone you carry every day!

I need to remember once a year to refill my account.

I know that it's important to refill at the end of the term to maximize the period, but refilling on what possibly is the very last day IS NOT BEING FRUGAL, BUT BEING REALLY CHEAP. And when I mean cheap, I mean chintzy.

OP tempted fate and lost.

So you are accumulating 75c a month.

IT"S ALL YOUR FAULT>

I disagree. Telcos have structured their prepaid businesses in a manner that forces customers to purchase unnecessary airtime vouchers when they have remaining airtime credits, or have their account balance stolen from them.

We had the same problem with gift cards before legislation was passed to prevent balances from expiring.

Scream bloody murder about it. It's your money.

Don't refill with $100 credits in the future. Just do the $25 even if there is a bonus with a $100 purchase.

It is a false economy.

Take it to this or some other website, but you'll find people like me who will say, you left it to the last minute.

IT"S ALL YOUR FAULT>