Losing Skype Credits

A. Summary:

If you do not make a SkypeOut call for 180 days, all your Skype credits will “expire” – meaning you lose all money left in your Skype account. Successfully completing a SkypeOut call will extend your expiration date by 6 months.

B. Key Points:

· You will lose any balances on your Skype account if you do not make a SkypeOut call for 180 days

· Your account remains active and valid for 180 days after each successfully connected phone call

· Although Skype is supposed to warn you of upcoming expiration dates by email, you should check your account expiration date regularly

· To check your account information open your Skype software and select File--My Skype Account--Go to My Account Page

· Link to SkypeOut

· Link to SkypeIn

· For corrections, updates, or clarifications on this Star Point, please email ewallace@afsc.org

C. Details:

Skype Credit can be used to place SkypeOut calls or to purchase a SkypeIn subscription.

If you have purchased credits from Skype in order to make SkypeOut calls, your account will not remain open indefinitely. If you don’t use SkypeOut -- that is, don’t make any additional purchases or place any SkypeOut calls in 6 months -- your Skype balance is zeroed out. This means you will lose any money left in your account. Note that you must successfully complete a SkypeOut call to keep your account open.

Skype is supposed to send you at least 2 warning messages when this is about to happen. But several Skype bulletin boards show some users complaining they never received these emails, possible because they were labeled as Spam. So you should regularly check your account. In order to check your account information, including your Account Balance, open your Skype software and select File--My Skype Account--Go to My Account Page. Log in with your Skype name and password. Under SkypeOut you will see your credit balance and the date it expires. If your account is close to expiring, you must make one successful SkypeOut call to extend the expiration date by 180 days.

These expiration terms are in Skype’s Terms of Agreement. Their reasoning is “to ensure that we aren’t using expensive systems to maintain accounts for people who don’t need it.” Many users have complained about this practice, but it continues in effect.