Manx Telecom is investigating sending warnings to customers to inform them their credit is about to expire.

Jason Moorhouse, MHK for Castletown and Malew, raised the issue with chief executive Gary Lamb.

Mr Moorhouse called on the telecoms provider to ring-fence credit worth £5 to protect vulnerable people who use their mobile phones infrequently or in emergency situations and may not realise until it’s too late they have no credit.

At present, top up credit on Manx Telecom pay as you go expires after 90 days.

Speaking after the meeting, Mr Moorhouse said: ’The protection of the credit is unfortunately not currently an option.

’Mr Lamb is seeing if a message can be sent 10 days before the end of the 90 day contract. If the current systems do not allow that, he is looking at whether the final usage date can be displayed more prominently on the information sent when the contract is agreed.’

Mr Moorhouse questioned why credit expires at all.

’They clearly viewed the issue from a competition stance,’ he said. ’I compared it to a bank account where a credit simply goes. I raised the issue of £20 a year being a lot of money.’

Meanwhile Sure’s Mike Fawkner Corbett said: ’If a customer’s pay as you go service has been inactive for 90 days we will place the account in a suspended state for a further 90 days - during which customers will still be able to contact the emergency services.

’If no action is taken by the customer during the second 90-day period the account will be terminated.

’We do not currently advise PAYG customers via text message that their account is about to enter a suspended state but we are working with our suppliers to introduce an SMS text notification.’