So I tried again today to log on and purchase a SIM on truphone. No luck. I called the customer service. I spent 5 minutes explaining the situation to somenone again. She asked for the reference number they had given me earlier. I gave that. She put me on hold to look up the prior actions. After 10 minutes on hold I was disconnected. I emailed again and explained my phone call and asked for someone to call me. No response. I emailed three hours later and they said they were still looking in to the problem.

I know I should just give up, but I keep trying. I was able to find a truphone sim + samsung phone online. I bought that (didn't need the phone but it was only $20 more than the sim starter pack - $49 total). Hopefully someone will have been able to fix the problem by the time I need to activate the sim (or at least by the time $15 runs out). We shall see...

Has anyone else been able to purchase a SIM here in the US recently?

Any chance for adding Canada?

I have used Truphone local anywhere since early this year, I love it. Absolutely no problems whatsoever, and their rates are awesome (here in Canada). In fact for the use I make of cell phones (on a strict necessity basis) it turns out cheaper than any local company here. It always works... and I even use it for the occasional data roaming (email and chat). I started with $40 this year, now I'm down to $14 or so.
I can't recommend the sim enough, though it is true, their website stinks and they promised to changed their wrong rates in April already when I contacted them :roll:

Hi All

Sophia - thanks for your kind words. Agree that our website is not the best, there is plenty of work behind the scenes on it, and in the not too distant future there are going to be a lot of improvements!

As promised, more information on India. The preferred roaming agreements are with Vodafone India and Bharti Airtel. These should give the best rates and services. Again, we are looking to provide more of this information on the website going forward so you can plan before travelling.

Thanks for this answer. Does this imply that the rates advertised on your website are only valid on certain networks within a visiting country? If so, does this mean that other networks are blocked, or is it that receiving or making calls on non-preferred networks might incur higher charges?

Hi - the costs shouldn't differ, but you may not get the full service in terms of voice/text/data on the other networks.

After reading Sophia's post, I took a second look at Canada. I'm seeing incoming calls are .70 a minute, outbound are 1.05 a minute,and outbound texts are .56 a minute. Is there another rate (e.g. a member rate that I am missing). These may be cheaper than UK roaming rates, but are more expensive than US roaming rates, and certainly higher than any Canadian prepaid rates I know of.

Am I missing something?

Questioning the same here too, that post seemed a little bit fishy to me.

really low Canadian usage
 

If you are refering to Sophia's post, the thing that most appeals to her is the low cost of keeping the SIM alive with very occasionaly usage of voice. I am not familiar with how long and how much it is to keep Canadian prepaid alive, but Truphone appaently is cheaper---and she despises the Canadian prepaid companies.

Haha fishy :D Nope as rfranzq said, I HATE the local companies here :D What I like about Truphone is you pay per second, and my calls are always short and sweet... I usually pay less than 70 cents for a call or so. I don't want to use this thread to badmouth competitors, but I got a SIM from another company with $10 credit, it was gone within a month (can't b*tch too much though, it was a gift). On "paper" the rates looked a LOT better, but (for me!) it turned out it wasn't cheap at all. A huge starting fee per call, plus pay per minute, and all of a sudden I found that even the shortest calls cost more than a dollar. Oh and data costs with that company is $15 per 100 kb, I'm not kidding. So, I guess it depends on what you are looking for.

Another thing I like about Truphone is you can just make the call, no call back stuff and all that. It almost feels like a REAL sim :D

Oh, rfranzq, it costs a minimum of $10 + tax + emergency fees per month to keep a local prepaid sim alive here in Canada, and you don't get any data possibilities at all :)