Expert: DebiN - 7/31/2009

Question
i put my net 10 sim in my unlocked nokia phone and it worked but i could call out but not receive calls it went strait to v mail. then i put my net10 sim back in the net10 phone it came with and my minutes have not changed. are the minutes stored on the sim like its stored in the actual phone? is the phone number stored on the net10 sim like other sims? is it possible i got away with free minutes since my time shows the same? everywhere i read said this would never work but it did for me "putting sim from net10 in my unlocked phone" i like to figure things out and learn from it and this one is new to me. i have swapped sim cards but never from net10. any info i would appreciate. thanks

Answer
You were still charged for the minutes you used when you put your Net10 SIM into the unlocked phone. It's just that your phone has not registered  the minutes you used when the SIM was not in the phone, but the account was docked for those minutes, I 100% guarantee you that. But you will run out of minutes sooner than you think. Minutes aren't stored on your phone or your SIM card. They are stored on your account with Net10. Your phone number belongs to Net10 and whenever you make a call, Net10 deducts the minutes from your account. The benefit of using your Net10 SIM with your Net10 phone is that the phone calculates the number of minutes that were used by you with the phone and reports that to you. If you use the SIM in another phone, the phone doesn't know that you have used the minutes so it can't register that you have used them. Whenever you use a Net10 SIM in another phone, you won't know the accurate number of minutes you have left because it has no way to register them for you. You've still used them though. There's no way around that. And the reason that no one could reach you is that Net10 codes your IMEI of your phone into their system so that if someone calls you, if your SIM isn't in your registered phone, it won't reach you. It can't control your outgoing calls, but it does control incoming. I hope this helps. Thanks. DebiN