Non International Sim-cards - Online
 

I'm looking for sites selling sim-cards that are specific for a particular country, and the should ship abroud.

I know about the discussion: travel to the country, and buy there.
I don't want that, I want the card before I leave.

At present, I'm looking for Brazil, The Netherlands, Germany.
But I want to make a list of sites, just in case.

Anyone?

There's full of those sites, one more expensive than the other... you can look at Orate for example... but it's really a nonsense to buy the cards at those prices, it's even cheaper to use roaming! :D
I can understand for Brazil, but you live very close to Netherlands and Germany, it's really much better to go there...

The price for these cards they offer are indeed way to high.
Now I understand why people 'suggest' to buy a card when you are in the country. The major disadvantage is that you can't communicatie your number to the people left behind, before you leave.

Any other sites known by the gurus here? ;)

For many people, the extra $10 to even $20 is well worth the price to know that's one less thing to deal with when you land. After all, what's $20 when you are spending more than 100 times that on the total trip?

...mike

For the Netherlands, you can easily buy online a sim of the MVNO Ortel Mobile.

http://www.ortelmobiel.nl

www.telestial.com
www.cellularabroad.com
www.simphonee.com

For Netherlands (or Belgium), I haven't tried ordering IDT mobile from abroad but it looks very likely to be possible. International rates about the same as Ortel and Lebara

As you ask for sites, i would like to recommend my http://www.gsm-prepaid.net ... :-)

I would like to observe that if I want a T-mobile US SIM card, I think I could manage to get one cheaper than your €90

Likewise, a T-mobile Slovakia SIM cost me 399 SKK ~€10 a couple of years ago, so your €55 does not appear to match the instinct of members here to find the best deals

As most of us know, UK SIMs are often given away free, so your €50 to €80 fees look perilously close to extortion

As Effendi said, many such sites resell the SIM cards for such high prices that no saving over roaming charges can easily be foreseen. I am surprised you have the nerve to post this here.


Surely your €24 charge for a £10 UK SIM top-up is only for stupid people that have no concept of exchange rates?

And I can't understand why your O2 UK SIM has no roaming, or your Virgin UK SIM has no data roaming. Did you order these reduced specification SIMs specially? Or do you just not know enough about what you are selling?

I quote everything Andy said... and I add that we don't like spam on this site... I won't delete thl's post since I think it's more interesting to read what Andy wrote just after it...

Yes, and the thl's site is itself "funny". I tried to check "countries & tarifs" link and whatever link on right I clicked, I always got 404 :-P

Ah.... but the ones you get in the UK don't come with the useful German manual. ;-) Surely that's what the markup is for!



Reading this thread leads me to think that there is an obvious service required here. Note I use the word 'service' and not 'market', as there is obviously plenty of that about! Even though I am relatively new to the whole ppgsm forum, I can see its members are scattered far and wide. Surely with so many nice people exchanging ideas on a forum, there will be a few who may be interested in exchanging a few prepaid SIM cards. Though I see already, it is very difficult to do this without starting a spamming marketplace. I have noted that such exchanges have taken place several times already via PM etc.

However, what I imagine is for someone to start a public thread where users post requests, and if another user can fulfil the demand, they arrange to send the SIM via post, and for the buyer to pay the cost price plus postage. This should be done via paypal (or other online scheme). Obviously a certain amount of honesty will be required, in ascertaining the price of the SIM and postage. However if this is done in public, at least other users may be aware if a scam is taking place. (And it is relatively easy anyhow to find guide prices via the internet). One may ask is all this worth the hassle for the seller (with no potential financial gain)? I anticipate users will only be interested in selling at cost price if they in future anticipate receiving such a card at cost price.

A moderator will need to draft some rules on how it works etc. Maybe some sort of point system may be good. For every card you send you get one point. For every card you receive you lose one point. A positive balance, zero or slight negative is good. A strong negative is bad. However, this may not be strictly required because after all you could live in a country that no one visits :-( or where a global roaming SIM is good enough!

What do users think of this? I am happy to be gunned down on the idea. Someone who has been around longer may convince me ppgsm may not be the place for this. However, I can definately seen its potential, and have an assortment of various SIM cards (from a few countries) I can start the process with.

EdiT: I know there is a "Buy/Sell/Trade subforum" but it would be a nice to have a single thread/site which purely takes requests.

..sounds like a good idea.
I'd be in with offering german and thai prepaid cards.

Chris

Thanks Chris!

It would of course also be a great way of getting rid of SIM's that are going to expire anyhow. Who knows how many Turkish, Indian and other SIM's I have had to let lapse in this way.... all of which could have been some good to somebody. I don't know how we would figure out partially used credit?

Also some of us who travel a lot have established easy places to buy a SIM card. These experiences may be difficult first time round but once you have done it once, you know the ropes and it is easy picking up another SIM in that shop around the corner from your regular layover hotel, local supermarket etc. Perhaps next time you are travelling you will have a few minutes to kill and remember that request from a ppgsm buddy. ;-)

As it stands at the moment, I may not actually have that many SIM's to hand, but I know exactly how to cheaply and easily lay my hands on many like these the next time I travel.

Any service which sells prepaid SIMs outside the home country to roamers will mark up the price. For folks on this forum, we'd wince at paying US$55 for someone buying a Hong Kong SIM when it could be bought for $10 on the ground there, but there are valid reasons for paying this markup.

Many people desperately want the contact number before they left. I WOULD have paid the fee for India because these companies will get the number registered before you land which saves you five days of weighting for the Indian government to get its rear in gear.

I bought a SIM for my neighbor's kid when he flew off to do volunteer work in Pakistan two years ago after the massive Tsunami (sp). The kid was a very young and naive 19. I thought giving him a lifeline before he left was worth something. 95% of the time, I have purchased the SIMs on the ground, but I confess there are 5% where I went with Plan B.

Postscript: I went through the guy's inventory on gsm-prepaid.net. It doesn't make any sense to me. Who would stock 3 different brands of SIMs for Spain? Then, of course, there is that Verizon SIM card. Just pop it in your unlocked gsm mobile and roam on Verizon's CDMA network. Great trick!

Some thoughts...

I think for a while somebody on this forum was offering WIND (Italy) sim cards but found the logistics difficult and had to stop doing it.

UK sim cards, as Andy noted, are almost being given away the competition is so fierce. For the most part, it is just as well to wait till you get there but if it is really important to get one in advance, there are many people selling them on ebay UK (if you look at some of the offers, most only post alas to UK addresses but some do post them internationally...)

Stay away, at least in my humble opinion, from merchants such as telestial noted in this thread. While they are legitemate in terms of you will get what you buy, their prices are asininely high, almost triple to quadruple what you will pay if you wait. I have made that suggestion on other forums and have been hit by "it's much more important for the convenience than if I pay a few extra bucks" nonsense...or "I must have the number before I leave to tell my associates, family and friends." To each his or her own.

I do think, though, since I know the members here are essentially among the most helpful and honest people I have ever had the pleasure of corresponding with via this forum, that the idea of having people send sim cards (and I must add about a year and a half ago one prominent member of this forum sent me an O2 UK sim card and I am still sorry he had to pay the postage...I would love to reimburse him via pay pal! or something....

Just some random silly thoughts on a cold Sunday morning in New York with no football games to watch on the telly today.

This is largely true. I guess paypal should be an easy enough mechanism to provide reimbursement.

True... but the ones that are given away free, you need to catch the offer online and then send off for them. True it is all free, but you need to have your ear to the ground, and be in the UK at the right time. I for one have a little stash of these freebies now (as will most of the UK members on this forum), but it has taken me a while to hoard them. I often sent them out to friends who need them. I remember a while ago a ppgsm member offering a swap of UK SIM's for others. Not quite fair in my opinion as the ones he would be getting for free in return would have cost something unlike his.

I couldn't agree with you more! But wouldn't it be nice to still get them before one travels (so you know the number) and not have to pay top whack for them? I know we will be pi**ing off the people who run these sites but who cares!

... is good?

For all we care, maybe this facility should be open to people who have gone above a certain number of posts. Just so this doesn't become a marketplace with hundreds of newbies posting serial requests like "I need a SIM for Dr.Congo tommorow. Thank you".

You can wait till you get to London or wherever, pop into a Carphone Warehouse and they will give you a Mobile World sim if you top up for £10 and you get the full £10 worth of credit...very convenient for calling the USA, Canada, the land of Oz, New Zealand. Virgin mobile cards have traditionally cost 10 quid but come with 5 quid of credit and for a while in the past they were giving away a 5 quid recharge with the pack making the effective cost 0....when I was in London three weeks ago, T Mobile UK was selling their sim pack for £5 (no credit) but they have the great £2 add on for 50 minutes to the USA and Canada as well as 12p/minute to other networks in the UK (as opposed to 35to 40p for others to other networks)...if you are travelling to the UK and know where you will be staying, you can request free sim cards if they're available on line, have them posted to your hotel and held for arrival...get mail all the time as I use the same hotel all the time and they hold the mail.

As noted, there are many UK sim cards available on ebay for prices like 99p; unfortunately they don't post internationally for the most part.