Mobile phones

[maude]

 

Hi folks,after a minor car problem last week with my wife out on her own,we are considering a mobile for emergency use only, so dont want a fancy contract,never use it for anything other than emergency use.Can anyone recommend a simple solution? Thanks    Maude

[SC]

I've just changed our occasional use mobiles to Virgin France. Sim cards are 15€ including 5€ of calls, and recharges are 10€ & upwards and last 3 months (ie 3.33€/month). Calls are reasonable for PAYG and phone+sim  deals are OK too. www.virginmobile.fr

Hope this helps,

Steve

[Ssc]

I have a Uk PAYG. Calls are expensive, but for true emergency use only then it works out cheap, as the credit does not expire provided you use the phone for a quick call every 6 months. Plus if you visit the Uk as I do a couple of times a year you have a phone to use there.

Tony

[edyth]

Steve

When you changed to Virgin did you have to pay to have your phone unlocked?

I opted for NRJ because there wasn't a time limit on credit but of course they changed all that. So when my credit runs out I would like to change to Virgin. I am just wondering if I will have to unlock my phone first and if so how do I do it.

[pedrobewan]

hi maude

we bought an orange fr SIM card each and started off by trying to use the credit before it ran which obviously cost us a small fortune over a year.

we eventually decided to go for the "emergency only" option and found that the cheapest route was to buy a credit ticket from the post office, copy the number onto another piece of paper and keep the number in the back of both phones until someone needs to make an "emergency call". this way, the credit isn't ticking away needlessly and as long as you check on your credit info for your SIM card and make sure it is "used" before the expiry time, you can recieve calls and have the comfort of your secret stash of credit.

bon courage and may we never need to make the "emergency" calls too often.

long live the misers

 

[Cassis]

[quote user="edyth"]

Steve

When you changed to Virgin did you have to pay to have your phone unlocked?

I opted for NRJ because there wasn't a time limit on credit but of course they changed all that. So when my credit runs out I would like to change to Virgin. I am just wondering if I will have to unlock my phone first and if so how do I do it.

[/quote]

Should you ever find your phone locked then you may find some info here to help unlock it:

http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/740182/ShowPost.aspx

[SC]

[quote user="edyth"]

When you changed to Virgin did you have to pay to have your phone unlocked?

[/quote]

Our experience with one Orange PAYG phone and one year and new two year Universal Mobile contract phones was that they weren't locked. If you bought your mobile in France and have had it for more than six months your provider is obliged to give you the désimlockage code free of charge. 

Doubtless there are other ways, but if you want to know if your phone is locked borrow someone else's sim card and put it in your phone to see if it works or not.

At the risk of appearing like a mouthpiece for Mr Branson, when we went to the UK at half term we bought three UK Virgin sim cards at Argos, normally £10 but reduced to £5, each with £5 of calls included. We thought that was a pretty good deal.

Steve

[Pierre ZFP]

I can't believe this idea of credit expiring, what a ripoff!  I can see you having to make a call say every 6 months just to keep the number but if you don't use the credit the phone companies just take the money without even a thank you.  I saw that Auchan were touting their own cards recently and the international call charges were indeed quite good.  The downside? the credit can last as little as 1 week [:-))]

[Nearly Retired (I am now)]

As a UK resident who makes frequent trips to France the obvious choice is a UK mobile for me. But it occurs to me that as our maison secondaire is in a "dodgy" reception area and the UK phone roams between 3 french service providers in the same house/garden depending on where I'm standing (! !) then a french mobile fixed to one network might even be pretty useless for a proper signal throughout the whole property. 

Our village is in a valley and signals just seem to come and go!

So the precise service provider may be all important to some users.

[Nearly Retired (I am now)]

I get FRA88 too - who are they?

[Will]

Those who travel overseas frequently might like to look at one of the services such as www.sim4travel.com which give you a SIM card from a country such as Liechtenstein which has low (or zero) roaming charges. This gives you cheap call rates, and you do not pay to receive calls. If you make calls to French landlines then the Mobile World SIM card from Carphone Warehouse in UK is another good solution.

[MargaretD]

I found that NRJ were the cheapest and lastest the longest.  I don't use my phone except for emergencies so have spent 15euro only (incl. SIM card).

M

[BJSLIV]

 found that NRJ were the cheapest and lastest the longest

With the emphasis on were, because after your next top up, NRJ are now into the monthly/weekly expiry game...

[Jeanneclaire]

I've thought about a UK PAYG but wouldn't it be very costly for people in France who phoned you on it? It really annoys me that my credit expires after such a short time on my French mobile. Not everybody has to be on their mobile every minute of every day.

[Nearly Retired (I am now)]

TempsPerdu it's a Nokia 3120 on Orange. It already shows Orange F when in range, so I'd be surprised if FRA88 was another way of showing Orange - but, I don't know much. The Nokia 3330 belonging to the better half is on 02 and it roams about a bit too.

Getting text messages in reply to sent ones can cause problems because I presume the sending french network receives the UK reply, but if by then we've roamed to another network we don't get our text reply until we're back on the same network. Sometimes it can take several hours, days even.

I'll certainly try the manual bit when we get back, which I don't suppose will be until late Feb / early March.

The FRA88 on the screen really intrigues me though - there's nothing that a Google search shows up.

 

[Nearly Retired (I am now)]

TP - the phone shows Orange F, Bouygues Télécom and FRA88. So maybe FRA88 is another way of showing SFR.

[Nearly Retired (I am now)]

And there was I thinking that the new mobile phone mast in the next village might be putting me into reach of a new 4th network ! I told you I didn't know much about this (any?) topic. Next time I'm in France I'll definitely try to manually select the best network and see how I get on. Thanks for the info.