Until recently, data add-ons never expired. Unused portions of data add-ons remained attached to the account and kept rolling over billing cycles indefinitely. Until the Data add-on was fully consumed and dropped off the account. The same way that minutes from long-distance add-ons worked (and still work).
The "Data add-ons expire 30 days post purchase" subtext is a new thing. A sucky, stupid, nonsensical thing which would scare off any idiot consumer who wanted to buy them. Use it or lose it? Combine that with the unreasonable prices ($5 for 200MB, $15 for 1GB) and nobody will ever buy them except in the most dire and urgent crisis situations.
And remember that we also have another option. "Renew Subscription Now" in Self-Serve. Pay the full price of your plan and force it to renew immediately (before the billing cycle is complete) - and all your plan provisions (your data and your calling minutes) begin a new cycle at full capacity. I think this is still a bit wasteful but people used to do it back when the best data plans were around 5GB, imagine how much more cost-effective this strategy is compared vs the rip-off data add-ons now that plans can have up to 100GB (or more). A downside of forcing plans to renew immediately was that Reward cycles would be wrecked (days on interrupted plan cycles didn't count towards Loyalty, Referral pay-outs skipped for the cycle, and obviously no AutoPay bonus) - but I suppose the new Points system gives you kickbacks for spending money so the more you spend the more you get which only emphasizes how ridiculous and insulting Public Mobile's obsolete data add-ons coupled with Telus's greed have become to us.
