China and cell phones

Not knowing the language in China can be a huge barrier. A good example I learned today is that there are local cell phone numbers and national cell phone numbers. We should have opted to the national one, but back in Shanghai, I bought not knowingly a Shanghai number. Since we’re not intending going back to Shanghai, this seems to be a problem. China Unicom offices can only handle local numbers, so in Xi’an, Datong or any other city, the local offices cannot view or cancel my account. I was told by the English representative of China Unicom over the phone, there are new regulations in place that I should cancel my account and SIM card if I don’t intend using it anymore, otherwise my passport goes to a black list… Sounds dangerous :(

Moreover, there are regional data plans and nationwide plans. I have a local Shanghai plan. It means that the data plan I bought via WeChat never really worked, and also, the SIM card itself is kind of prepaid, but you can configure it to continuously recharge its plans, deducted from the credit you have, as all plans are monthly based, i.e. from day of purchase to end of calendar month.

Oh well, you learn as you go, right?

Update: Before leaving China, I called China Unicom again. This time the representative managed to explain to me very clearly how it works: my number is a Shanghai number, so only there I can cancel the account and I must do it with my passport. Also, as this is an LTE SIM card, there is no option to switch it to a national number, this might change in the future though. There is an option however to suspend the account, which seems my best option when I leave the country. The account is not a prepaid account, I put money into it and China Unicom will charge according to my plan monthly the amount due. I must ensure I have enough credit, otherwise the account will be suspended automatically. The so called ‘black list' has nothing to do with government as I feared before, it is China Unicom’s in debt list, so I’ll have to pay my debt first if I want to reuse the SIM card in the future or buy a new one.

So the conversation ended by switching to the cheapest national data only plan possible for the time we will not be in China, when I come back I’ll probably owe them some money for October usage which I’ll need to pay before using the line again and hopefully it will all be well. When we move onwards from China, I’ll suspend the account assuming I can potentially use it again later.