SFR "La Carte"
 

So today I came across this:

- La Carte - SFR

It's the prepaid package of SFR. They have interesting "iPhone" options, which I assume can be used anywhere. It is €3 for 1 day or €10 for 7 days of unlimited internet.

Two uncertainties:
- What is the passive validity period? Does it expire with the speed of light, like the other French prepaids? Or can you buy it, use one day of internet, and then buy another €3 recharge for another day of internet 1 year later?
- Is the internet really unlimited?

does anyone know if sfr prepaid simcards can be recharged abroad using Vodafone vouchers while in roaming?

here you can see how fast the recharges on this card expire:

Recharge 5€ valable 1 semaine
Recharge 10€ valable 2 semaines
Recharge 15€ valable 1 mois
Recharge 25€ valable 2 mois (+5€ offerts)
Recharge 35€ valable 3 mois (+10€ offerts)
Recharge 65€ valable 4 mois (+20€ offerts)
Recharge 95€ valable 5 mois (+45€ offerts)

so its business as usual :-(

The iPhone options are just an add-on to the normal cards and have no influence on the expiry day of the card itself as far as i understood

Yeah but that's the validity of the recharge. If the passive period would be, say 1 year, it would still make it quite a good offer!

i try to ask my french collegues. maybe someone has a SFR card. main contracts in our company are on orange though...

Let us know if you find out something :)

they didnt know unfortunately. all on orange :(

Leclerc
 

Leclerc SIMs are easily to keep alive from abroad. I use a Moneybookers Mastercard (UK based) to recharge on their website. My SIM has €1,50 monthly fee and a validity period of 12 Months after top up.

The only issue was that, when I bought it, the recharging option was disabled for my SIM. I called the customer service, explained (in English) the message shown when the payment process stopped. The lady did not speak English well but she understood the issue and enabled the recharge option. Since that - everything fine!

Making Leclerc cost €18 per year to keep alive instead of €20 for Orange. Not much of an improvement...

It's actually worse than Orange, because Orange only costs 10€ per year, 20€ per 18 months, because the €10 Orange recharge you do after 11 months and 29 days is not wasted money, it can actually be used for calls etc.

Whereas all those little €1.50 per month with Le Clerc have gone for ever. :) Except the last one before you start using the phone again.

@scirocco - wrong reasoning. With Orange, the full €20 is wasted, unless you actually come to France (and use internet) exactly 6 months after your last recharge. The actual cost (wasted money on keeping the sim alive) is always more than €10 and maximally €20, depending on when you visit France, and how much of your recharge you use up while visiting.

Yes, I was a little inaccurate. The wasted money is €10 for say 10 months inactivity and €20 for 12 months (assuming you only recharge with the minimum).

I guess my point was that with Orange, for people who return to France yearly there may be no need to waste more than €10 each year. For example, last year, I left France in mid August. I recharged the card with €10 to keep it alive in mid February (wasted money). To keep it alive I will need to recharge again in early August. I will recharge with €25. I will start using the credit in early September (taking advantage of two months credit validity). This is not wasted but will be used on calls and internet during September.

So even though I will have been out of the country for 12 months and two weeks it has only cost me €10 in wasted money. True, if I recharged with only €15 I would have needed a second €10 "keep-alive top-up". But €15 is not enough for me for a 3-week visit- it only gets you Internet Max and Mail and leaves nothing for call credit.

Compare that with Le Clerc where all twelve of the €1.50 monthly fees are wasted money. €18.

Sorry to the OP regarding SFR La Carte for hijacking the thread.

Hi guys,

I'm hoping someone here can help me with a question relating to SFR.

Basically I've purchased a SFR 'la carte' sim for a friend of mine who is going to be spending quite a lot of time in France.

I activated it in store and it's working fine. The only issue is that the SIM comes with the voicemail service as default (groovy outgoing message by the way, they play music) however as most people are going to be calling her from overseas, it makes sense to deactivate it to save them money if she doesn't answer.

I tried the usual ##002# short code but got the error to say that SFR don't allow diverts to be cancelled.

Tried looking on the SFR website and found lots of information on how to modify the voicemail service but nothing on de-activating it completely.

Anyone on here got any ideas? If no, I'll have to bit the bullet and attempt a coversation in French with customer care.

SFR's support pages only show how you can make your mailbox not recording voice messages but to announce your unavailability instead: Les options du répondeur Mobile

Dial 123, press 3 for "options" and then 6 to switch to "mode répondeur-enregistreur" (non-recording mode).

Unfortunatley I couldn't find out if callers will still be charged for this announcement or not. Once you find out please report back.

FYI: Cartes prépayées, recharger la carte de téléphone SFR