68M Phone Credits Expire Every Month

68 million euro of unused phone credit expires every month. That is around 8 euro per person per month. The Dutch consumers union, de Consumentenbond, which announced this on Tuesday, sent a petition to the government to change the expiry date of a credit to at least a year after it was bought.

According to RTL.nl about 15 percent of call minutes, 17 percent of texts and 16 percent of MB’s remain unused. People choose a broader subscription because the rates paid outside the package are sometimes three times the price of their subscription rate. “If people can keep their credit longer than a month, this would not be necessary,” according to Consumentenbond director Bart Combée.

NOS.nl reported that Vodafone responded that the price of a subscription was inextricably linked to the limited durability of credit. The provider recently introduced subscriptions with unlimited credit called the Red subscriptions.