Hey gang-

Just got back from my first trip to Europe with my United Mobile SIM card. I was in Venice, Italy, and the available networks were ITIM, Vodaphone, and IWIND. I tried all three, though the one the phone seemed to default to was ITIM.

My experience was that I got my callback from CBW about one try in three. I had no problem dialing the call to CBW. UM would callback as advertised, and I'd let it ring once as CBW advises, then I hung up. About one time in three, I would then get my callback from CBW.

I tried variations on how many rings I waited. I tried a half-ring, one full ring, one and a half, two rings, etc. Still, success rate about one-third.

Any thoughts on how to achieve a better success rate? I'm heading to Zurich tomorrow, so I'll post if my results are similar.

Thanks!

Dave

Make your trigger call from another phone?

Well sure- assuming there is one handy. ;) I could also trigger a callback from the Internet- if I had a computer nearby. I guess what I was asking is might there be something I'm doing wrong- or could do better- to trigger my callback from the UM phone?

Thanks!

Dave

Send an e mail to customer service at cbw and ask if they can delay the callback to its maximum amount...

I was in Europe during almost the entire month of June visiting Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, France and the UK and can tell you cbw worked about 85 to 90% of the time perfectly when I was on um. a couple of years ago early on I had the same problem you described but I did e mail them and they said they would increase the wait time for the callback from them and have had pretty good success with them since then.

On a recent caribbean cruise CBW + UM worked flawlessly for me 100% of the time.

I've been using the service daily for the last six months and haven't had a problem. During this time period, I've used it in at least six countries.

Thanks Matha- I just left a message with Barry at CBW asking to increase my Callback delay.

Dave

Well- I just walked in the door from Zurich, and unfortunately my experience with CBW was very similar to last week in Venice. Got my callback maybe one try in three. As before, tried with one ring as CBW advises, then experimented with one ring, half-ring, two rings, etc. No difference that I could tell. The two networks I tried were OrangeCH and Swisscom.

I had an email waiting from Barry at CBW, and he indicated that my callback delay was already set at the maximum. He says they do that now automatically for all new accounts with United Mobile numbers.

Anyhow, I found that if I just kept trying, I'd eventually get a callback, so for the most part I can live with this, but it is rather disappointing. I'll be in Rome next week, so I'll try it again there.

Dave

During some testing, I found out that I even get the call back without letting it ring at all. That is, I hit send, and after it shows "calling", I end the call before hearing any ring. I think the key is hanging up ASAP.

I did try that as well, and never got a callback that way. It seems to be a razor thin line between not ringing long enough and ringing too long. And not consistent either. Whereas one full ring might get me a callback on one try, the next callback only would come after two rings, or a half-ring, etc.

Also- It does seem like a long delay between when UM says "calling" and when I finally hear a ring on my end. I suspect that what I am hearing is not representative of what CBW is hearing. But as I said, I had no success if I hung up before I heard any rings.

Anyhow, I'll just keep trying. FWIW, has anyone had different or better or worse success with Enlinea?

Thanks!

Dave

I have also had similar problems with CBW and UM lately. I used to trigger the CBW number with a different phone but many times I did not receive it, untill I dialed 4-5 times! Some times I did not receive it at all.

This is the first issue. The second is that the quality of calling mobiles in some European countries through CBW is not acceptable. Only with landlines it works at a minimum acceptable quality.....

The quality of calls made on cbw is no different than the quality of calls made with many of today's international calling cards which give oodles of minutes for very little...to achieve these low rates they all use portals to internet providers or VOIP which is not landline quality.....it wouldn't surprise me if calls on cbw are not up to the quality of a call say from a landline to another landline but, and I can only speak of my recent experience, I found during June the quality of calls to be acceptable (at least on my end) and I was sucessful over 90% of the time in getting a callback....what company were you roaming on when you had the difficulty...sometimes you have to manually select a different roaming partner manually when this happens.

I tried different networks in the same country (as well as in other countries) but that did not work. The quality of mobile calls to my country was very bad (the other end did not hear me well so I had to spek twice or 3 times!). So it is not a matter of expecting pstn quality but a minimum that would allow communication.

With landlines the quality was more acceptable

Hey gang-

Well- just got back from Rome- my 3rd trip to Europe with my UM phone. I'm glad to say that my callback success rate with CBW was day-and-night different from what I experienced in Venice and Zurich. I got my callback on the first try on each of 7 different occasions. Only once did I have to try a second time. I was using the ITIM network, which interestingly gave me dismal results in Venice.

Anyhow- I'm crossing my fingers that this will be the rule and not the exception! ;)

Dave

I cannot login to the online info of cbw. Does anyone else have the same problem;

Have had the same problem for the last day and a half.

BTW seems to be working now.

it Still will not allow me in....

I was in Rome previous week, too. I wasn't as successful as you in getting CBW callbacks after the first attempt - sometimes I had to retry once or twice. However, I made calls succesfully everytime I needed. I made also one call in the Czech Rep. - the second callback was succesful.