I've found where Truphone have hidden the online support:
Truphone | Facebook

Interesting nuggets:

"the inactivity period is 90 days, after which you'll be charged £2 monthly fee that could be avoided by making a call or sending a text." - that's good.

"data is charged per session in 100KB increments. Minimum charge is 100KB, that is 10c in the USA and 5p in the UK." - that's not so good, big chunk.

Rob

Thanks for sharing :)

not website?

I got a Truphone Local Anywhere simcard with British number (+44.7408xxxxxx).
I just sent an SMS to Andrea but it seems he didn't receive it... I was billed € 0.12 while on the website they state SMS cost € 0.11, but I suppose the didn't include VAT...
I sent another SMS to Przemolog now, let's see if he gets it...

It seems there are some little problems with SMS...
I sent 2:
- destination 3 ITA (number ported from Wind): never received
- destination Orange PL: received, but reply rejected (yet billed by Orange)

Other tests going on, no very good results...
SMS with mobiSMS to my Truphone: OK, arrived at once
SMS from Truphone to Wind Italy number (no ported number): failed (not billed yet)

I did some data testing too. I downloaded/uploaded 117,26KB of data (Nokia log) and I was billed € 0.32. That means about € 2.80/MB, quite higher than € 1.50/MB such as written on their website. The connection through Vodafone IT HSPA network was fast and with no problems...

P.S. Truphone in Italy roams on TIM and Vodafone networks only, both 2G and 3G. No connection with Wind and 3 Ita.

Hello All. I thought it would be beneficial for us to post on here so you can give feedback whether positive or negative, and ask questions. Please feel free!

Hi Truphone, welcome to our Forum.

It really seems there are quite a lot of issues in SMS sending & receiving.
I also copy/paste here what I wrote by e-mail to your customer service.

Here are the problems I had after really few tests.
- SMS to Italian number (operator 3, former Wind number): never received (but billed)
- SMS to Italian number (operator Wind): never received (and not billed)
- SMS to Italian number (operator Vodafone): OK
- SMS to Polish number (operator Orange): OK
- SMS from Polish number (operator Orange): never received
- SMS from mobiSMS service: OK
- SMS from Italian number (operator Vodafone): never received
- SMS from Italian number (operator Wind): never received

All outgoing SMS in Italy have been billed € 0.12 instead of € 0.11.

I have yet to receive my Truphone SIM card... Ordered it on Mar 14th. I guess Canada Post is sloooow.

Hi Effendi

I have one of our testing and development team looking into the problems, and they may well be in touch directly. I believe we have a number of issues specifically affecting Italy currently, but they will be able to confirm.

Hi VladS

Was this one of the promotional SIMs? If so, can you please drop an email to fun@truphone.com and they will sort out a replacement for you.

A little update with some corrections.

Outgoing SMS seem to work to all operators I've tried with, i.e.: Wind, Vodafone and 3 in Italy, Orange in Poland, Vodafone New Zealand and Travelsim (Estonia).

Incoming SMS work with NONE of the above mentioned operators. The only SMS I received was the one sent from mobiSMS. I never received SMSes from Truphone itself, which I should receive, as stated on the guide, every time I connect to a roaming network to get information about rates.

I received a call from 3 ITA (our friend AndreA) and it was perfect, very good voice quality. I also tried to call him before and the phone rang but he was busy. So there seem to be no problems with voice calls (both incoming and outgoing), and outgoing SMSes. While incoming SMSes don't work at all.

Thanks to our friend KiwiSteve I also tested SMS sending to 2degrees, the new NZ operator, but it failed.

Truphone's SMSC is +316540940903 which seems to belong to Vodafone Netherlands, by the way...

What is SMSC?

Look at it as a server that relays mail, like an SMTP server for mail, an SMSC relays SMSs.
It accepts SMSs and routes them to the appropriate servers for delivering it to the recipient.

This explains it better than I can...
Short message service center - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thanks for the explanation :)

BTW I am in the Netherlands right now, and Truphone treats roaming as "local" even though I have a USA number. It also says vodaphone.nl in the APN, so I guess it does use something natively Dutch. In Canada it always mentions "roaming" when I use wireless internet.

That is why I asked about SMSC :D

Anyone is able to receive SMS on a Truphone sim? From Italian mobiles it's still impossible to receive any...

I just tested sending an SMS from my Google Voice account to my Truphone number, no problems there. I'm in the Netherlands right now.

It would be more interesting to test from some normal sim card. Also from MobiSMS it works, but from all 4 Italian operators, Travelsim, New Zealand operators and one Polish operator I received nothing...

I will be roaming in Macedonia soon, with the majority of calls to Croatia. Both countries are not on the list. Anyone knows why ?

From a Dutch mobile phone (T-Mobile) I receive SMS without problems :) Not sure why it doesn't work for you?

I receive this e-mail today:

I got the same email from Truphone.

Unless I've misunderstood, it appears Truphone have replaced the free "home country" for Local Anywhere with a paid membership that gives the lower rates for the US and UK (and maybe others later).

In other words, previously the US Local Anywhere had reasonable rates for the US when used domestically. Now, it changes from 10c to 70c a minute, unless a monthly fee of $15 is paid (after 30 days).

So the "home country" appears to have been totally withdrawn, at least in the rates tables. Really kills the main selling point, which was a number that you could use in your home country then add other numbers to when you went overseas. With a monthly fee required to get sensible per minute rates, it becomes uninteresting as a home country number, in most cases.

And they have changed the US rates also.
 

No, you have misunderstood.
They have changed the US rates also. The US receiving a call rate has increased to 15cents [from 10cents, I believe]. The former send/receive US SMS rate was 12cents. Now receiving SMS is free. Does anyone know of ANY other prepaid SMS that has free receipt of SMS to a US number?

SMS issues
 

Flawless
 

Just pinching in on this forum to say I have been using Truphone Local Anywhere for a few months and their service so far has been flawless for me.

I've used the service in the USA (home country), France, Spain, Andorra, Italy and Greece and it worked like a charm everywhere, voice and data included.

Their voice local rates for USA and UK are fine, but their data rates blow chunks (change is coming apparently). They should be adding lots more countries soon so hopefully TLA is going to become a great solution for us international roamers.

It's pretty amazing Truphone Local Anywhere is offering free incoming SMS in the USA. I'm not aware of any other provider that does it? other than Google Voice of course. Their data rate of $500/GB is still on the pricier side.... :p

The near future
 

If you indeed live in Spain, they might be a 'home' country before the end of the year. I don't know what your typical usage might be but you might get a Spain SIM and ditch the US one?

It really depends on what sort of data pricing Truphone comes out with. I sort of need decently priced data, most of my phones are iPhone's or Androids these days, and data is very important. There are many cheap alternatives in the spanish prepaid SIM market for both voice and data so if Truphone doesn't come out with something remotely competitive to that it won't make much sense for me to use them.

I'm not aware of any European provider that charges for incoming SMS when roaming anywhere in the world. Does this really still happen in the USA? It must be a rather rare occurrence.

(I suppose it may happen when having SMS 'forwarded' from a local area code number to the number that the SIM is identified with).

Yes, all cellphone carriers in the USA charge for incoming SMS. Bizarre but that's the way it is. They've been many complain through the years because unlike a phone call, you can't reject an incoming SMS and thus you get charged for something that you can't control, but most people have unlimited text messages plans anyway so it really doesn't matter.

Yeah. It's weird that the carriers here charge for incoming SMS. Not an issue for most though, since they have unlimited SMS packages. Also, incoming SMS while roaming comes out of the SMS plan. Hence, it's pretty much free for those with SMS packages yo receive SMS, roaming or not.

SMS issue resolved.
 

As of the week before Christmas, the problem seems to be resolved. I have received SMSes from AT&T and AT&T MVNOs.

Local HELP?
 

So another reason I thought this product was great is I could call up from anywhere in the world and get help from english people with any queries I have. I'm sad to learn that we are losing yet another call centre to overseas why is the customer service team being shipped elsewhere?

What, Australia?
 

What, Australia?