Why Was My PAYG Sim Deactivated After Only 2½ Months of Inactivity?

[CDG]

The title says most of it.

I have a 'Classic Pay As You Go' (3p a minute, 2p a text, 1p a MB of 2G/3G/4G data) sim that's been in use for over a decade. (I primarily rely on it for 2-factor authentication, so I don't need anything beyond this.)

I was under the impression that it takes 6 months of inactivity before a PAYG sim is deactivated (§7.1), but via a call today to O2 customer service I was initially told that it's "3 months inactivity", then was told it's "90 days"?! Something's wrong here, so which period length is it? If it's the former, why was I told the wrong info by customer service; if it's the latter, why do you have the wrong T&Cs on your site and where are the correct ones?

Regardless of the answer, that still doesn't explain why my sim was deactivated: the last billable usage was on 24th March 2022, and the sim was deactivated on 7th June 2022 (both dates confirmed by O2 customer service). Whether it's ~2½ months or ~77 days, neither is long enough to justify a disconnection of my sim! I asked several times why this happened and how I can avoid it happening in future, but never did get an answer - as such, I'm now on here...

Skipping the obvious question of "Are O2 not legally obliged to follow their own T&Cs of service?", I'd really rather just be told how/why something like this happened, and what's to stop it happening again?

Thanks.

[Bambino]

@CDG This is a customer community. We have no access to that information. We are aware that O2 are phasing out the Classic Pay & Go offer. Sorry to say that your only option is to deal with customer service. As you've already spoken to them, perhaps contacting them via social media will get you a more satisfactory answer:

Facebook (https://o2uk.co/O2CFB), Twitter (https://o2uk.co/O2CTW), or Instagram (https://o2uk.co/O2CIG)

[MI5 · Accepted solution]

@CDG 

It should not have been deactivated.

It is and always has been chargeable activity every 6 months, but they did change it to a phone call being the only thing that counts towards chargeable activity when they discontinued the 3,2,1 sim.

Customer service should be able to activate it again for you though, but they may be awkward as they are trying to get customers off the old legacy tariffs.

[CDG]

Thanks for the reply.

I did manage to get it reactivated earlier - it's just the unanswered questions on 'why' that I've been left with. I can't handle any more calls to customer services either (2 phone calls, 1 hour total on the phone, 30 mins in queues, 20 mins on hold just to be disconnected with the 1st call) - not worth the hassle.

However, I do think you've helped with one of my questions though. Whenever I've tried to keep the sim active I've relied solely on sending sms texts; never phone calls. I'll try using calls from now on and see how I fare. Still, it seems like O2 are asking for problems by not specifying what constitutes "chargeable activity" in those T&Cs, if it's only phone calls that it applies to. A reasonable person would expect it to refer to any service that bills the sim.

As @Bambino says (thanks for the reply as well, Bambino), I may have to head to one of their social media pages. I did figure this community might be more privy to the details, hence trying here first. I've certainly received some helpful info from you both, so thanks - it's appreciated!

[MI5]

You're welcome @CDG 

Hope O2 can give you some satisfactory answers.