Hop to go away
 

I have been told by hop that they plan to limit service after Feb 28th of this year. I would suggest you use all the balance that you have during any future trip because service it appears might be limited to outgoing calls only in March and April. The card will not function after April if they continue with the current plan. When you go to the site for reloads you will see they say the function is not available anymore. They are limiting reloads and want people to use the balances they have. This is some heads up information that will let you use your balance. Don't be caught by surprise when you can't use your SIM account after April so use it in February is our suggestion. If they announce the end of February two way calling deadline and outbound only in March and April on their site. looks like the end of hop as well of the other cards.

Can you please keep us updated? I have a HUGE Hop balance, and am not happy about the prospect of losing it.

My HOP SIM is dead, but they were the only ones with a reasonable usage rate in the US.

What got me started on this was I toped off my card because my 12 months was coming due.
I toped it off put in in my phone, and the sim would not register. After much talking with CS they have sent me a new card, and told me what I stated in my first post. I am here in the states so I will have to use up the balance this month. I to have a hefty balance on the sim.
well I will just have to use it up.

Hop Mobile Recharge Question
 

It was always difficult to recharge to Hop Mobile SIM, but now all recharge options have been removed from the homepage www.hopmobile.com.
Any ideas how to recharge now?

I've merged your post with this thread, which suggests it may no longer be possible

You are correct it is no longer possible to top off your sim card. Please use your balance, and be done with it.

I purchased a HOP reload from a reseller in January (last month), before a trip to Russia. Have worked with him for several years to get my HOP reloads. Stopped purchasing them directly from HOP - they would never authorize my credit card (long story).

I will edit this post when I get home tonight, to include the website of the reseller. It is a well-known reseller (like Telestial) but can't think of the site right now.

HOWEVER - I agree with powerlifter, that if they are done, a reload is probably no longer in your best interest. But for now, my HOP card still works inbound and outbound.

what a pity! They were the 1st one and the best solution for US

As well as for India, Canada, Cuba!

I sent an e-mail to customer service regarding my recharge question and recieved a reply within 24 hours.

Regarding recharging: I could send a western union transfer to a private person in Beirut :eek:. As soon as they recieve the transfer, they promise to credit my hop card. Oh well, I knew the headquarter was in Beirut, but still... I'm just going to use my remaining balance, but it's a pity as I liked both the rates and the Monaco prefix.

Regarding the termination of the service, here's the quote from their e-mail:

well, maybe the dispute is about the +377 on a Ghana simcard...

Here is the website if you still want to get a HOP reload.

http://www.valuesphere.com/intouchsm...s/rldcntr.html

Hmm, why? I suppose it may be rather something about weakness of the US dollar. Raising rates and/or making debiting worse than 1/1 wouldn't look very attractive :-P

Why? Because a lot of competitors didn't like that agreement... anyway, the dollar is another trouble you're right! Anyway it's a pity :(

Here I thought with all the trouble with the Manx sim that Hop would stand alone. Still working
for as long as we needed it. I was wrong it is a pity as it did as Stu pointed out that it had the best rates in the U.S.

Gone
 

My Hop card appears to no longer work. Calls to it result in a reorder tone (fast busy) and it will not register on AT&T or T-Mobile. What a waste.

Whatever the reason for these companies going out of business - it's pushing me further away from the prepaid market. My main interest in prepaid is to have one number wherever I travel, cost is probably the fourth most important factor to me (behind quality of service, and number of countries). I guess maybe I don't mind paying $4/min for a phone call - maybe that's better than losing an investment with no course to recoup costs. It's kind of like a slap in the face. Anyway that's probably a topic for another thread.

Good-bye Hop.

I know. Unfortunately, we as consumers do not have much protection. The most we can do is to not topup at all until it's time to use the card, and even so, to topup with the minimum possible. At least that may reduce the loss incurred when they go belly up!

I talked to my source at hop. He states that you can use the phone to call out until April. He did not give a date, but that is better than the end of Feb. like it was planed. It looks like I will still lose money. I'm with bones-boy I think I had it with international cards.

I'm sorry I don't understand what your point is. If you don't mind to pay $4/min (or least the price is not the most impoartant factor to you) why don't you just use roaming with your US SIM? AFAIK both ATT and T-Mo charge about $1, not 4 per minute in roaming and you have one number (a US number, not foreign one, which the Americans wouldn't like to call).

My point is, I'm tired of falling victim of every self-ordained investor with a little bit of capital starting a phone service. It's gotten a bit out of hand. Wouldn't you agree?

Sounds like a good idea. That is what I'm considering.

Not for most of the places I go (Angola, Russia, and Chad most often, which is 2.49, 4.99 and 4.99/min. USD respectively)

Most of my calls come from the local in-country staff I'm supporting. Cost is not a problem for them usually. My costs however are a concern, that is one of the attractions for prepaid SIMs.

Have you thought about scouting for the best offer from a reliable phone company?

Just as an example, BASE (a belgian operator) has the following rates for Angola, Russia and Chad:

€2.25 / €1.25 / €2.25, which is approx. $3.4 / $1.87 / $3.4
local calls are less than $ 1 / min in Angola and Russia and $ 1.95 in Chad

I am sure there are other operators that have similar or even better fees for these countries but provide the sort of reliability you need...


If costs are not really of a concern for those who are calling you, you might even try to get an international premium rate number (eg a satellite number) and have it diverted to yuor belgian number: the part of the fee collected by the IPRN operator and passed on to you would subsidize your roaming fees! :)

Sure, I agree. But Hop has had a long history - its first functional version of the website was archived on 27th Sep 2002: http://web.archive.org/web/200209270...hopmobile.com/
so one may have assume it was a reliable product....



Ouch!


OK, so your needs are different that those of many US people here. Since you receive calls mainly from the country you are in, it doesn't matter much to callers whether they call USA, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Estonia, Iceland, "UK-like" islands or whatever - these are just international calls to them :-)

But in fact, you don't need a prepaid SIM :-). Prepaid is just a form of payment (but of course, most "international SIMs" are preaids). You need a SIM with low-cost calls - both incoming and outgoing and coverage in many countries, also those "exotic" from North American or European point of view. And, you cannot find an tariff plan matching your need among offers of US mobile operators, right?

New HOP message
 

Got this text on HOP phone today:

"Effective May 1 2008, the hop INCOMING service will be stopped. The hop OUTGOING calls service will be available until further notice. We regret the inconvenience caused. For any additional information, please contact our customer service by dialling *126"

I find the "until further notice" quite interesting. Also will OUTGOING work without INCOMING - remember HOP is a callback service...