Good info to know.
 

This is good to know. Finding the SIM that 'works right' for you like that is very nice.OUCH! 20 minutes and a year service for $30 new or a $15 refill is pretty nice versus $120+.

Thanks for responding.

You too, thanks :) I forgot to mention that you can't roam outside of Canada with the local prepaid sims here (though I believe you can with WindMobile, but it'll be years before we get to have it out here in the "rurals").
And don't forget the CAN$120 per year, including tax, fees, nickling & diming and converted is probably closer to US$150 - a steep fee for (not even) one or two necessary calls per month :D
That is why I would always consider an international sim first, even though they may have higher fees per minute. Hope that helps :)

I had no idea that prepaid SIM's can have such fees associated with their existance. Are these fees regardless of their useage? If you spend $30/month on credit, are they still going to debit another $10 for all these unseen costs? How do post paid contracts compare?

Well look for yourself at the Rogers, Bell or Telus site... don't take my word for it :)
Subscriptions are even worse, you are locked into a 3 year contract and the minimum is $30 per month. At least with the prepaid you get to use your credit :)

Anyway, let me not derail this thread any further, back to Truphone discussions, let's keep the "Canada mobile fees are horrible" discussion to another thread from now on :D

Well hopefully Truphone will bring Canada soon as a local anywhere country and then you will have a very very competitive product.

Yes, sometime in the next 10 years I suppose!

I very much doubt that even the "coming soon" countries will be here before the end of the year. I just noticed that Australia has moved back to this pile again.

Thought I'd follow up on my prior post...

I received the TLA SIM from an online vendor last Thursday. After several phone calls and emails, I was finally able to activate the SIM this morning. The only issue now is that the credit card authorization is still not working. The truphone website is still saying that the activation is not accepted, while my bank is telling me that they are authorizing the charges. Seems like truphone has some problems with their online payment systems. I've emailed the helpdesk a couple of times to see if they were still looking in to this problem, but I received no response yet.

As far as the phone service goes, it appears to work well. Dialing is very simple, and there is no callback process (as advertised). Here in the US the reception seems to be strong. It looks like it uses T-Mobile bands, and it gets equal reception as my regular T-Mobile phone/account. I have set it up with my google voice number, and that seems to work well. So, when I travel abroad now, at least the phone service appears that it will work well. The only problem is that when I run out of my starter credit, I may be out of luck. Hopefully truphone fixes these glitches. If not, I cannot see them lasting long.

I'll post back if something changes regarding the payment process and report how the service works for me abroad.

I noticed that.

Seems like they botched the Australian launch? I mean, they had a big banner on the front page announcing Australia as a new country, most of the stuff on the TLA section was updated, you could get a number .. and it has all been rolled back .. without saying a peep, which makes you question the seriousness of this company.

Searching on Google for "Truphone Local Anywhere" gives also a pretty bleak picture about the traction of all this. Seems like no one is talking about it, at least online, which is not too surprising anyway given its supposed to be a global product that only works in two countries.

Hoping for better news from TLA soon, I really want them to succeed.

Just went back to their press release about launching Spain and Netherlands which you can see here and it says there: "The service will become available to customers in the Netherlands and Spain in the autumn.". So technically Truphone still has until december 21st if they want to abide by their own press releases :)

Actually now that I remember last time I recharged the SIM, I was in Greece and I did it simply calling 404. Pressing '1' after it tells you your remaining balance will directly charge the credit card on file instantly. Worked for me first time and without problems. Maybe you could try that?

404 is a free call no matter where you are in the world. neat.

Hi Masr4779

Please feel free to PM us on here and we'll get the problem looked into.

Re: Australia - news very shortly!