Orange mobicarte SIM 1,99€ until sunday only

[Gardener]

Can be ordered online and has 5€ of credit.

It is found in the orange fr boutique

mobiles mobicarte.

[Jay]

LINK

[Jay]

If you go for one of the Orange pay as you go mobicarte offers - such as THIS what are the hidden costs? I presume they reimburse the 30€ offer, but when and how much do you have to pay first? Also the last Orange payg phone I had the credit expired, 10€ one month, 20€ two month etc.. is this still the case? Anyone taken up one of these offers? What are the running costs?

[Hereford]

So long as you top up the credit BEFORE the expiry date of the previous top-up you do not lose anything.  We have built up quite a big credit, but it is still the cheapest way we have found of having a phone with no rules on how long per month one can talk!

[Jay]

It is the exp. date on the top-up that bothers me. Our Lebara top-up never expires.

[sid]

It's a problem with French prepays; I have a Virgin SIM, and so long as I top up with 20€ it lasts for 90 days, then I have to topup again in order not to lose the credit left. Trouble is I rarely use 20€s-worth so the credit builds up and up! My phone is just for emergencies, and mainly gets used for texting, so I occasionally blow a lump on a phonecall! Wow!. Using a phone to speak to someone... whatever next.

[sid]

I have just tried my Tesco pay-as-you-go SIM in my phone here in France and it has registered and is working! I have rung my FT line, and rung from my FT line to the mobile, all OK.

Normally I only use the SIM when I'm in the UK where my French Virgin card doesn't work. This could be the answer for my requirements, leave the Tesco SIM in permanently; the rates are reasonable and it appears to be easy to top-up!

What does "208 88" mean? This appears below the service provider thus:

TESCO

208 88

 

 

[CeeJay]

Sid

Sounds as though your requirements are the same as ours. We also have Tesco sim and pay as you go, it has worked for us for about 10years now, you get what you pay for and the credit is always there plus you can set it to automatically top up when the credit goes below a certain amount. For us it's good value.

[sid]

CeeJay

Another plus for Tesco! I'm sure I tried this previously, maybe 5 years ago, and couldn't get a signal here and assumed that it wasn't meant to be able to "roam". Looking at the Tesco website yesterday I saw that it said that the Paygo SIM is set to automatically work abroad, which is really great news for me! Until now I have had 3 separate SIMs, my main one, Virgin, for France, the Tesco one for UK, and another for Spain/Tenerife.

I don't have great requirement for mobile calls, but I need to be able to send/receive texts so that our family can notify us about the state of elderly parents back in UK. It's cheaper for them this way and I can then call back from a landline if necessary. I carry the mobile in the car too in case of emergency.

Now all I have to do is use up the credit on the Virgin SIM and dump it.

[Chancer]

I use a Lebara sim in France and an Asda one in the UK, I rarely spend any money on either of them, I just make sure that I send the odd text every now and then to not lose the credit like i did with NRJ, they both work in the other countries (excepting texts in the Uk with lebara) so I have some built in redundancy.

I have just spent a week in the UK, I now have a changeover procedure that I do whilst waiting for the ferry, I have a small bag in the glovebox containing all the items of the destination country, for me to swop out, notes and coins, a keys to the other properties (I just switch the car key between keyrings) and the mobile simcard.

I also have a reasonable wardrobe in both places so no longer travel with clothing.

One thing that I have noticed with both Asda and lebara is that they both have (and correct me if i am wrong) increased the call charges and/or connection charge hiding the increase in a text message about some other promotion.