Story Telecom TravelTalk Sim - Poor experience 17 October 2009 at 10:00AM in Mobiles 6 replies 6.8K views

vlad1mir

Recently bought above global Sim for use in Sth Korea. Checked with Story Telecom before purchase that would work on SMS & calls in Korea, UK & non UK handsets. Sadly it did not. I could only text UK mobiles & success rate was around 50%, same for receiving. No success texting non UK mobiles & receiving was hit & miss. Calling out was similar experience, more often than not unable to make call. Was in major cities (Seoul & Suwon) so no network issues & there for 3 weeks, so not a temporary problem. Interestingly I had the same problem at Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris, so this doesn't really seem to bode well for anyone else thinking about using Story Telecom.

If you are going to Sth Korea I would advise renting a phone & sim. Too late I found out that it can be as cheap as 75p per day with texts 1 p to local numbers.

jonny69

Its 20011 and Story travel talk are still blaming everyone else for their Sims not working. I tried my £25 sim in: UK, France, Germany, croatia, serbia and Oman, all of which didnt work. The excusses are: its your phone, its you not following the operating proceedure, it doesnt work in the UK("its probably a bad Orange coverage in your area"). Then they want you to have recorded all the attempted calls, where they where too, when they were made and what was the response given on the phone!!! All this for a £25 sim.
They will not give refunds and its always your fault. Even if you point out that the sim may not be at fault and its possibly an incompatability issue with your phone(I now buy a sim in each country I'm in), they still wont agree. Spend your £25 + top up and hold your breath, even paypal wont help you with them.

alessandro_pawianto

Travel talk SIM single-handedly saved my LIFE!!! Originally i purchased the product as a ''back up'' while going on my business trip to Italy , my Vodafone SIM card failed to pick up any network and i was unable to contact my business assosociates to arrange ameeting ( I'm a lawyer it was a very important client that i didnt manage to contact) or get in touch with my family back in the UK which included my pregnant wife who was due to deliver my daughter - I nearly started to cry , i was devasted at the time , not only i lost thousands of pounds due being unable to make any business calls but worse of all I had no clue whats happening with my wife - i was extremely worried (just the thought of it makes me shiver) then all of a sudden i've realised i purchased Travel Talk SIM three weeks before and i took it with me just in case.The product was spotless , i managed to get in touch with everyone and arrange a last minute meeting with my client and i got to speak to my wife shortly before she gave birth. When the credit ran out i called up their UK based customer service and a lovely gentelman assisted me and added more credit on my phone. I would definetely recommend this product to anyone. Its been more than 2 months since the trip and now I'm a happy father and my business is growing bigger and stronger. I'm sure i will use this SIM card next time i go abroad. All the best fellow travellers !! Alessandro Pawianto

rapido

alessandro_pawianto wrote: »

Travel talk SIM single-handedly saved my LIFE!!!

Obvious spam from the company, I think.

They charge to receive calls from the O2 network (but give no explanation why this is, they already use a special mobile prefix which is usually not included in minutes packages). Presumably there's no warning when you're about to receive a call from an O2 caller.

Calls apparently can't be received from T-Mobile callers at all!

They also think their customer service number is in the mythical '0208' code. Similar to Truphone who give an '0203' number and Sim4Travel who think they are in the '0207' code!

Strange how none of these 'international roaming' companies can get basic details like this right, but it rather explains why most people have trouble making calls with their SIM cards.

AbraC

Hi Everyone. We bought Travel Talk Sim after reading about it on MSE. It has been a disaster. It almost never works. We have it for use in Qatar when my husband is working and in France when he is at home. Whether he is ringing me or me him, the success rate for connection would be at best no more than 1 in 10 and at worst - a big fat zero. It certainly saves us money because we almost never manage to use it. So far it has left me waiting at an airport for hours when my husband couldn't call me to change his arrival time and it has had him driving for an hour to a cancelled appointment when I couldn't phone him to tell him to come home. Save yourselves a massive headache and a lot of cross words and don't buy this sim, it'll drive you nuts!





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vlad1mir wrote: »

Recently bought above global Sim for use in Sth Korea. Checked with Story Telecom before purchase that would work on SMS & calls in Korea, UK & non UK handsets. Sadly it did not. I could only text UK mobiles & success rate was around 50%, same for receiving. No success texting non UK mobiles & receiving was hit & miss. Calling out was similar experience, more often than not unable to make call. Was in major cities (Seoul & Suwon) so no network issues & there for 3 weeks, so not a temporary problem. Interestingly I had the same problem at Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris, so this doesn't really seem to bode well for anyone else thinking about using Story Telecom.

If you are going to Sth Korea I would advise renting a phone & sim. Too late I found out that it can be as cheap as 75p per day with texts 1 p to local numbers.

DUTR

What a strange thread? All but one poster is posting for the 1st time, original post in October 2009, 1st reply July 2011, then nearly a year later April 12 another reply, 2 months later someone detects it's spam and then lo and behold another 1st time poster defends the grain

Browntoa

and on that point I think I will close the thread