The only difference is... 1€cent :D

Responding to my own post - I went online to Virgin and started placing an order to see how far it would let me go. It appears that it requires a French bank account for the monthly debit of the 19.99 Euro.

Like most of French operators ;) That's why Joe is seen as revolutionary.

In the meantime, I've decided to move to them from B&You... I'm afraid of Simyo.

Why are you afraid of Simyo?:eek:

Don't know if you know the story about the recent changes for B&You prepaid... anyway, I've read that moving to another operator from Simyo is quite difficult, they've one of the worst customer service, unreliable service, and things like that. Given that I often use my French number, I prefer to move to a more reliable operator before B&You move me to Simyo.

Just a normal process. Nothing to be afraid of.

OK then, 2 questions:

Are the monthly payments with Joe made by credit card?

I went part of the way through the Joe process, and it seemed that it wanted a French ID card or French passport - neither of which I have. Any way to get around that?

Yes, but they can be either credit or prepaid cards issued in France and bordering countries: Italy, UK, Spain, Swiss, Belgium. If you have no cards issued in these countries, Joe community members suggest to apply for a virtual prepaid card by Neteller, resulting issued in UK. You can then choose the bundle you need, and if you don't need to use your French card, you can suspend temporarily your forfait and then reactivate it without losing your number, extras, etc., provided that you re-enable your sim within 6 months max. since the suspension of the service.
For this question I can't reply since I've not received my Joe sim yet.

The neteller option interests me. I have a Vodafone UK PAYG sim and mostly get top-up certificates while going through Heathrow (WH Smith counter) but it would simplify my life a bit if I had an accepted UK online payment method. Anyone know if the UK phone operators also accept Neteller?

Update: Neteller isn't available to USA residents. Hmm. So Joe Mobile recharges for US residents would require an SFR paycard?

If you can get one, it would be a viable option.

P.S.: regarding Neteller, I too would be interested to top-up UK sims, but some of them (like O2) require also a British address associated to the virtual card, so I don't know if it could be useful...