topic Cannot top up to activate New Big Bundle SIM in Pay As You Go

Cannot top up to activate New Big Bundle SIM

geoffco — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 14:01:16 GMT

Hi,

I am an existing Pay Monthly customer and I have a new Pay As You Go Big Bundle SIM to use in a dfferent device. The SIM arrived and I tried to activate it and add it to my existing O2 account - I failed with an error that said an "Sorry – you can't add any new Pay As You Go numbers"! Weird! Only after a hour of bouncing between support agents did someone finally say that I would not be able to manage a Pay Monthly and a Pay As You Go SIM through the same MyO2 account... Wow! Is that actually true??

Having wasted enough time on that, I did just make a second MyO2 account (lucky I had a different email address to use huh) but now while I have been able to add the SIM / number and the tariff comes up as expected, I cannot get it to top up and activate 😕 I have tried three different bank cards, two different browsers and also MyO2 app on the phone with the new SIM in, all fail to do the top up. What am I missing here? I have seen folks posting that the first top up might need to be by a voucher? Since there is NOTHING stating that online or in the leaflet that came with the SIM, I'm not sure it can be true?

I have tried to ring support on 4445 from the phone, but am redirected immediately to the Top Up line, and of course the chat bot online was only effective in wasting my time. If I can't get this resolved here today I will go to an O2 store tomorrow and ask for someone to sort it out, but honestly I am very unimpressed with O2... I have been a customer since before it was called O2 and the custoimer support used to be good back in the day 😕

Re: Cannot top up to activate New Big Bundle SIM

MI5 — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 14:50:41 GMT

@geoffco

Yes, single account per MyO2 is bizarrely a thing now/

First top up needs a voucher.

Re: Cannot top up to activate New Big Bundle SIM

madasaf1sh — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 14:55:14 GMT

@geoffco

This isnt customer support, we are all customers like you.

Sometimes the first topup is via voucher, and many of us who have been around for too long have found it works for the first top up..

And you should be able to manage it myo2.. but looks like its a feature that has been removed, for some bizarre reason

To be honest for PAYG you would have been better on giffgaff

Re: Cannot top up to activate New Big Bundle SIM

MI5 — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 15:00:56 GMT

Weirdly bizarre 🤣

Re: Cannot top up to activate New Big Bundle SIM

geoffco — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 09:19:16 GMT

Thanks for the reply. A a voucher payment did indeed work. Weird.
Also seems to be set up as a business account - yay! Next thing to have to sort out 😕

Re: Cannot top up to activate New Big Bundle SIM

geoffco — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 09:20:58 GMT

Thanks for the suggestions - giffgaff might well have been less faff but O2 lets me use all of my 25GB in Europe and that's going to happen with this in some months