Travelfone - cutting the cost of using mobiles abroad

stripee

Hi all

I haven't posted a lot on the chat forum, but hope that this is useful to everyone. I had an email come through tonight from savastore.com who I have used in the past to buy pc stuff online. I think they are a fairly large and reputable company.

They are currently promoting a relatively new service called "travelfone" which for the cost of £30 for a sim or £70 for a mobile/sim gives you the opportunity to "save up to 85% when making calls abroad". More importantly (in my opinion) it also means you can receive calls for free in a lot of countries. List of free roaming countries available at:

http://www.travelfone.co.uk/pdf/freeroam.pdf

Here's a link to their main site:

http://www.travelfone.co.uk/index.html


And here's an example they have on what you can save in France vs other networks on a one week holiday:

• receiving 10 calls, each for 10 minutes
• making 6 calls to the UK, each for 5 minutes
• Sending 15 text messages to the UK


Travelfone O2 Orange T-Mobile Vodafone
Calls received FREE £99 £60 £55 £75
Calls made £8.70 £25 £18 £14 £19
Text messaging £4.50 £5 £7 £6 £8
Total £13.20 £129 £85 £75 £102
Saving £115 £71 £61.80 £88.80

[It took me quite a while to put spaces in to make that table look nice, and it's made no difference at all. Nevermind! ]

This seems pretty good. If you travel frequently I would imagine you can save a lot. As for whether you can be bothered to have a different number or not whilst abroad, I don't know. But it certainly seems worth a look? I'd be very interested to know Martin's opinion on this one.

If all of this is a bit much, then follow my own (simple) advice:
Option 1 - Obviously the most frugle moneysaving tip to save when abroad is to leave the damn thing at home as it's a curse. Enjoy your holiday! (and let others enjoy theirs without you receiving and sending texts all the while(personal gripe)!)

Option 2 - My own personal favourite is to call up your provider before you leave and ask them to switch off your voicemail - then at least you don't pay for someone to leave a message, and then to pick it up. (Let's face it, if it's that important they'll call back!) Then just ring and ask for it to be switched on again on your return to the uk. Simply moneysavingtastic.

All the best moneysavers. Let me know if anyone takes the plunge on travelfone!

Also posting on the travel forum.

redux

There seem to be more and more brands of the Isle of Man SIMs, which have been around for a bit over a year.

The resellers have discretion over tariffs and some vary on the range of countries wirh free incoming calls. That one seems about par on rates, and has free roaming in several African and Asian countries, while some brands are only Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa.

In Europe, the 44p rate to call UK mobiles can be undercut by O2's 35p, Vodafone have their Passport scheme, 3 have just abolished roaming charges on their networks in 7 other countries. Other countries networks are also cutting roaming charges, for example T-mobile Czech.

All of the tariffs on their comparison chart are wrong, if you've quoted it correctly - the cost on O2 would be £45.50 not £129 and the rest around £50 or £60 as well, except that Vodafone contract would be only a few quid more than at home - £4.50 for the calls, plus the texts.

So using the IoM SIM on its own tariff isn't quite as great as it was a year ago, and they've exaggerated savings by having fewer outgoing than incoming calls, and only calling landlines at home. But in any case it's possible to use it more cheaply ...

• receiving 10 calls, each for 10 minutes
• making 6 calls to the UK, each for 5 minutes
• Sending 15 text messages to the UK

That could be done for between 56p and £4 to £8 (if all calls are to UK mobiles) using one of these SIMs with other callback providers

stripee wrote:

I'd be very interested to know Martin's opinion on this one.

He's written about these SIMs with free roaming for almost a couple of years now, and other choices like local SIMs, in his main roaming article

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1119870249,48922

and here is its discussion thread

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=2530781#post2530781

joey3

this one looks very expensive to buy

see: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1153479986,72104,#global

for decent comparism

--Tony--

Sorry to bump this back up from Janurary but not much information on this company.

http://www.travelfone.com/products.aspx

A question if anyone knows.

1, It says incomming calls to Hong Kong are free.

2, Martin says calling these numbers from the UK is the same as calling a UK mobile.

So if I posted one to family in Hong Kong and I called that number using free cross network minutes would I not have a way to make free calls to HK for good? Just making one call every 9 months to keep the sim active.

nat1nut

--Tony-- wrote: »

2, Martin says calling these numbers from the UK is the same as calling a UK mobile.

So if I posted one to family in Hong Kong and I called that number using free cross network minutes would I not have a way to make free calls to HK for good? Just making one call every 9 months to keep the sim active.

These cost the same from BT! From Vodafone/T-mobile/Three they will not come from bundled minutes! Hence T-mobile/Three charge 35p per min.

They do come from bundled minutes on Orange - for now. I haven't checked with O2. I found that the Storytelecom version was the best for me (costs wise).

BT charge fm1 rate (13p per min day/5p per min eve). All the networks have ranges in fm1 (so there is no difference as far as BT are concerned).

redux

--Tony-- wrote: »

So if I posted one to family in Hong Kong and I called that number using free cross network minutes would I not have a way to make free calls to HK for good? Just making one call every 9 months to keep the sim active.

The Travelfone SIM charges 25p/min for incoming calls in Hong Kong.

If that's your main motivation, look into cheap calls providers.

Depending on your UK mobile network, you'd be able to call HK via callthrough numbers that either come from your inclusive minutes, or from 0.4 pence a minute on top - see DialNow, Voipcheap or Call18185, etc and the MSE Callchecker

timwb

I bought a travelfone sim for £29.99 a few months ago becauuse it looked like a good deal at the time, costing 23p to make calls anywhere in Europe (that has since gone up to 29p +VAT) and free to receive. However last week was the first time I tried to use it on a short trip to Belgium, that's when it all fell apart.

I couldn't make ANY outgoing calls. The way it's supposed to work is that you dial your full international number you want to call, you get disconnected and receive a callback which is then charged on a payg basis. I never received a single callback. I was able to receive calls from the UK but only from mobiles, not landlines.

When I try to use the sim in the UK I get told "outgoing calls are barred from this number".

Another thing they don't tell you is that when you register your sim so that you can top it up online you HAVE to buy a minimum of £10 credit, even though it comes with £2 on it already.

So I've spent £39.99 for that service and got nothing in return! It's even embarrassing for me because I also bought one of these as a gift for someone!

What also rubbed salt in the wound when I was out there that I received a text from Orange (on my normal mobile) saying for £7 I could receive calls in Europe for free and make calls for 40p min (max 1000min)

I complained by email on my return and their response I received today is below. They won't accept responsibility it seems, who do I complain to to get my money back?

---

Travelfone (GT-SIM) response

---

Dear Sir,

We apologise for the inconvenience.

However, we noticed that the SIM had been used calling in and out in Belgium.

The failure you have met was caused by the head network operator in the UK, which happens sometimes.

Once again, please accept our deep apologies for this inconvenience.

Happyisseb

I would like to re-opening this link as I cannot find anything anywhere that mentions the shutdown of Travelfone 07624 numbers last September/October 2007. I emailed then from Spain and was given a detailed explanation about problems with other operators. I was informed that if I sent an email with my number and the word replacement I would be DHL'd a repplacement SIM immediately.

That was October - Since then the website has been shut - The phones have been dead and no Sim, No repsonse, No Refund of mony on account.

Today, for anyone listening, I had an email from Savastore again offering Travelfone Sims. I then noticed the website was reopened. So I have sent them another email asking where my replacement SIM is and will let you know if I ever get it.

The SIM worked well for me as we travel quite regular and saved loads on calls as I simply diverted my O2 mobile to the Travelfone number. I tend to use Skype for most of my outgoing calls now when abroad.

I am interested if anyone else has had any luck with a Travelfone replacement SIM.

timwb

I received a replacement sim completely out of the blue, back in March. It didn't work. All their sims come with a pin code on them but none of the codes provided worked. As a result of too many wrong entries the sim became blocked, which then requires a PUK code to reactivate it. Guess what, none of the 3 codes I received worked either! I have just tried it again today and npw it doesn't even give me the option to enter a code anymore. The re-opening of this theread has motivated me to try contacting them again and get another replacement that will work. It's kind of worth chasing, since I have just under £20 credit on it (which is non-refundable).

redux

In late September last year, all of the Callkey-based IoM SIMs stopped working, due to issues at Callkey.

It was announced that there were hopes to get things working again, and this eventually happened early this year, with new owners of some of the ex-Callkey assets.

In the meantime, some of the resellers moved to supplying other products, some waited patiently for these to get going again, and some kept quiet and more or less vanished.

I don't know enough about Travelfone, but if they are still trading, which appears to be the case, you need to get in touch with them and find out what the position is now. They may have a different supply and not updated the website, or still be on the old ones. There was a deadline for re-activating the old SIMs, which has officially passed, but maybe that's still possible; I'd reckon they should be able to help you out one way or another.

timwb

Inspired by the re-opening of this thread I rummaged through my old emails and got back in touch with these guys. The email address and previous replacement sim mentioned above are for GT-SIM.com (Global Termination, no kidding). I explained my problem very politely (unlike my original rant to them a few months ago) telling them what codes I had tried etc. they have agreed to send me another sim card. Hopefully this one will work!