Recharging a Personal Cell Phone

[bobg]

I got a SIM card for my phone when I arrived last month and now I think that my remaining funds are about to expire (is that what "VTO" means?). So I need to recharge it. If I go someone and buy $20 pesos worth of recharge I think that my funds will again expire in a month. My question is can I pay a bit more and get funds which will not expire for 5 or 6 weeks or do the refills only work for a month. I never use up the $20 in one month and if my recharge lasts only one month I will have to refill again like a week to ten days before I leave.

Thanks, Bob

 

[igor]

I believe with Personal your balance does not really expire. They "freeze" it after the expiration date and "unfreeze" it when you add money to your account. The balance is not getting lost. You can still accept incoming calls, that do not generate charges to Personal, even if your balance is frozen. Expiration date is 30 days regardless of the amount you add. There is 15 pesos phone card for Personal. This would be probably the cheapest way to maintain a cell phone number.

 

[Carlosgreat]

I believe adding more money will extend the exp date (vencimiento) Have you tried credit card over the phone or online ? that's the way I do it. The phone also works in the US and a bunch of other countries. Like igor said they unfreeze the remaining credit even after months have passed, however for the money involved it's better to keep it active and be "in touch" of anybody around the globe.

 

[HowardinBA]

change to Movistar,that lasts for at least a year and twice a week you get double,sometimes triple,promotions

 

[igor]

change to Movistar,that lasts for at least a year ...

No, it does not.

http://www.movistar.com.ar/planes/prepago/

Click on "Preguntas Frequentes" to see the table. You need to pay at least 30 pesos for it to last for a month and it is the maximum. And if you don't buy another refill until expiration, your Movistar balance goes to zero.

Movistar has some advantages though: decent customer service that works on the weekends (also via chat), detalization of your calls, email2sms (when you send email to [email protected] it is delivered as an SMS to your phone), no charge for incoming calls including Skype and SIP providers etc. And yes, they double and at some days even tripple refill amounts.