Britishsims
 

Has anyone bought from this company before? Are they reliable & good customer service?

http://www.britishsims.com/

If you are looking to buy a UK sim from them, they seem very expensive. Most of the UK sims are given away for free you know. Besides, you can get them for a dime a dozen on ebay.UK.

Britishsims

Their price is higher however, I cannot purchase a British sim directly from a UK site using USA address. You have to use your credit card billing zip code which is in the USA & the UK sites do not allow me to do that.

I have United-Mobile sim that I am using while in Europe. However I will be one week in UK. UM calls from UK to USA will be 40c. I thought if I got a British sim I could call the USA for less than UM rate.
Some rates on Britishsims are showing at 5p a minute - approx 10c USA

Actually you can. I've done it with T-Mobile and have 2 free SIMs to show for it ;) No credit cards required.

All you have to do is fudge the Town, County and Post Code fields. I put my city and province in Town, "Canada" and my postal code in County and a fake (but valid) UK post code in Post Code. The SIMs arrived in the mail a couple of weeks later.

You'll have to wait until you're in the UK to top them up, of course.

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I agree. Unless you buy it on ebay UK of course. Which is where I bought my UK sims. Another option is to just wait till you get there. To get it for next to nothing.

Good idea but there is absolutely no need to buy the card in advance...wait till you get to London or check out the T Mobile UK web site which often has promotions that give you free sim cards or perhaps sim cards for £1 each....see if your first hotel will accept any mail for you and have them sent there...T Mobile UK sim cards have no credit on them anyway and really aren't activated till your first top up which you can do with swipe card they provide with the package at almost any chemist, petrol station or grocery store...

BTW T Mobile UK calls to the USA can be a cheap as 3p/minute using a third party known as yourcallworld check their web site...somewhere there they give a link to purchase T Mobile UK sim cards for £1 each.

You can also buy a bundle of minutes from T Mobile UK of 50 minutes for £2 with 60 days validity...by my math that comes to 4p/minute if you use the whole thing and you can call direct without a third party number.

Orange UK requires registration and their rates of the Orange UK Call abroad sim...calls to the USA and Canada are 5p/minute....the card is free, easy to acquire once you get to the UK (it requires an initial top up of £10 but the cards don't expire easily and with eu roaming rates coming down quickly, who knows in the future they may be usable for very little throughout the eu. They're also easy to keep valid and active by simply sending a text message every so often which are cheap but count as a billable event require every 6 months or so.....

I wouldn't pay 20 quid for a British sim card, at least not today when several companies are literally giving them away....you can also continue to use the UM card to receive calls...

You'll just have to decide if having the number in advance is that important to you to spend the extra money.

I went to yourcallworld.com. The rates look too good to be true. What is the 07755 access number?

I have used United-Mobile sim worldwide plus callbackworld before their rates went very high. I am not a novice but not a techie either. Could someone explain the youcallworld process in simple terms that I could understand!!

They mention they have a special rate with Tmobile UK... I don't see this rate on the TMobile site and wondered if these claims were unsupported.

The rates look too good to be true but they are correct...they are not part of T Mobile UK and I odn't know the agreement between them but it is very simple...

To call the United States while in the UK if you have a T Mobile UK sim card, you first dial the number 07755 220 220 (incidentally when working with a UK mobile in the UK, to make a call to a UK number you do not dial +44 and then the number, you dial the number with a leading zero...thus a London number which might read 0207 555 1212 would be dialed exactly that way...if you were calling that number from outside the UK on a gsm mobile phone you would dial +44 207 555 1212...the leading zero functioning much the same way the lead 1 functions on a US number...it tells the switching equipment this is a UK call...also the international prefix outside the USA is 00 so to dial the USA from most anywhere in Euroope you would dial 00 1 212 555 1212 although on a mobile phone the + key stands in for the international code so on a mobile phone the number could be dialed +1 212 555 1212...to call a number in France while in Europe you would dial 0033 x xx xx xx xx although from within France the same number would be dialed with a lead 0 and no 0033...

In any event, after dialing the number 077 55 220 220, the call will go through and you start listening to a message describing the procedure..you don't have to wait for that message to be completed...as soon as the message begins you dial, say to call the USA, 001 212 555 1212 followed by the # key...you don't press send and the call goes through and it goes through very quickly and the connections seem very good and indeed the rate is what is quoted 3p/minute...you do not pay for the call to 07755 220 220 as a UK call..the total charge is just what it says 3p per minute...I use this service a great deal, for example, to call the US number 1 800 555 8355 where I can pick up baseball or football scores....what I did was program my phone with the T Mobile UK sim card for that number to 077 55 220 220 ppp (press the * key three times on Nokia phones - to get the p, not sure on other models) followed by the number 001800 555 8355 and after a message you get telling you "calls to US toll free numbers are not free if dialed from outside the United States, you will be billed at international direct dial rates if the call is answered, if you do not wish to be billed, please hang up now"...and then the call goes through and yes to repeat the rate is indeed 3p/minute...I've used it and it is true. And one other good thing about calling the USA, you pay the 3p/minute whether your're calling a landline, a US toll free number or a mobile number....you can use the same situation to call a number say in France by, after the call to the 0775.. number is answered, dialing 0033 whatever (omitting the lead zero) and in this case a call to a French landline is the same 3p/minute but a call to a French mobile would be 15p/minute.

The nice thing is that T Mobile UK has I think the cheapest rates to call other mobile numbers in the UK whether they are T Mobile UK numbers or not...all calls to non special numbers in the UK, be they mobile or landlines are 15p/minute dialed as noted above without the 0775... number.

Your skepticism is totally understandable, I was skeptical too but trust me, I wouldn't lie, it works completely as advertised.

Wow - thorough answer. Appreciate you taking the time to explain it. I am definately going to try this. I will copy your instructions and follow them when I get there.

I have decided to get my UK Sim before I leave. I want to know & give out my number beforehand to my USA friends so they can reach me.

Incidentally, just one other quick thing...callbackworld and a similar service enlinea used to be very very good from mobile phones and many of the international sim cards to call the USA...for a couple of years, it worked indeed very well with the original United Mobile with calls coming in at around 12¢/minute to call anywhere UM had free incoming to the USA (enlinea might have been a couple of cents cheaper) but then, and being a conspiracy theory person myself, to try to kill thise golden goose, cbw (and enlinea) were forced to raise their rates using the+423 service to some unfathomably high rate....this went along with the steep rises in termination fees on other carriers to Liechtenstein mobiles (as well as Estonian mobiles, Icelandic mobiles...I wonder what they have in common???) although cbw and enlinea rates using the Estonian and Icelandic mobiles, particularly Iceland, are still okay. This is what, I am sure, pushed UM to start pushing its +44 service using Jersey numbers instead of the +423 numbers...it was and still is free to receive calls in many many places on the +423 number but the people calling pay a mint to make the call if indeed the call goes through at all.

Anyway, the interesting thing now on both cbw and enlinea is that rates on many local sims using their service is still relatively cheap say on French, Italian, German sim cards but have also shot through the rook on UK mobile numbers...in other words using a UK mobile to make a call via cbw or enlinea is not cheap as you indicated...again I wonder why (draw your own conclusions...)

Again, try then to get a T Mobile UK sim card via ebay UK or the trick described above when T Mobile UK runs, as it does from time to time, its free giveaways of sim cards or as desribed on the yourcallworld web site, perhaps for £1 each.

Don't mention it...I learned many of these work arounds from some of the great people on this forum who are only too happy to share their expertise.

That's what message board buddies are for.

I have some free SIMs. Send a PM with address details

I have read that the Estonia & Iceland services are unreliable. United Mobile seems to be the stable company & I have used them before so know how it works.

I am going to London and do not have a hotel which accepts mail. How can I get a prepaid T-mobile Sim card once I arrive in London???

Earlier in the thread, somebody suggested a way of using the T Mobile web site and having the sim card sent to your address outside the UK...

I did find one place that sells the sim card for £0.99...but charges £6.50 to ship to the USA...

However, that might not be so bad as when I was last in the UK, the T Mobile store wanted £5 for the sim card and carphone warehouse, in its catalogue, listed some obscene price for it!

I don't know if they want me to give the name of the shop I used for UK phone accessories, they are very cheap but of course shipping to the USA is obscene.

I also just looked on ebay USA (ebay.com) and found somebody selling one for US$2.49 with US$3.99 for shipping (shipping from USA)....you won't do much better than that...

Do remember T Mobile UK sim cards are sold without any credit, you do get the phone number and upon arrival in the UK, you have a swipe card where you can go into most any pharmacy (Boots, Superdrugs), petrol station, grocery chain store (Sainsbury's, Tesco) and easily top it up for £5 to activate the card......go to ebay and do a search for T Mobile UK sim card and you'll find it.

Also T Mobile UK operates on 1800 mhz. so those US tri bands made for Cingular (AT&T) and T Mobile USA which have 850/1800/1900 will work provided they are unlocked.

Shipping to the US from the UK by "Royal Mail International Signed For" (recommended for any thing of value being shipped overseas by post - courier excepted) costs about £4.95 and upwards depending on weight, so although £6.99 seems a "obscene", it is not much more and it gives the shipper and buyer a level of compensation if it goes missing.