Truphone Local Anywhere quietly increases pricing
 

I just noticed that Truphone Local Anywhere has considerably jacked up their prices for incoming calls on roaming if you are a US customer. Check prices here

It used to be that incoming calls would cost you $0.26/min in most european countries but seems like they have quietly raised this up to $0.70/min unless I am missing something. This pricing is for the 'non membership' countries, that is countries where Truphone doesn't have local agreeements, which is virtually all of them at this point. Data is still at an unpalatable $2090/GB, yes, 2 grand per gigabyte.

I guess this is still competitive with straight roaming from US carriers like ATT or T-Mobile who tend to market roaming in Europe for $1/min incoming but it's sort of downer that they are increasing prices without notifying costumers.

Anyone else noticed this?

You are correct. With the exception of their rates in the member countries of UK and US, their rates are insanely high! They certainly are not after Europeans roaming in the EU. Their voice rates are not even competitive with those of most international sims.

It's hard to see what market is left for Truphone Local Anywhere.

Nine months after launch, countries other than the UK and USA are still "coming soon", and as you say roaming in countries other than the UK and USA isn't really competitive.

Many countries are 70c/min in/out, some are $2.64/min outbound (New Zealand, Albania, UAE etc) but some (Russia, Mexico etc) are even a spectacular $5.28/min outbound! Most standard home-country sims would roam for less than this.

I got a free sim from them on launch, given their (unannounced) increases and the lack of the "coming soon" countries I'm glad I didn't pay for it!

Hi All

It's been a while since we posted on here, but I have read this thread with interest. As you say, at present I would agree our offering is most relevant to those travelling between the US and UK, and most of our marketing thus far has reflected this. In terms of bringing other countries on board, we have a number of agreements signed with operators in new countries, however we also have to ensure that the product works correctly in these countries before launching - ie when you land, the connections is made to Truphone rather than a different roaming partner, the relevant IMSI works etc... We want our users to be confident in our product before they travel and the experience to be nothing short of seamless.

There is a lot of work going on behind the scenes currently to make using Truphone the best possible experience and to bring new countries on board quickly and efficiently. We also recognise the need to have packages and pricing not only for voice but also data, and we hope to have some exciting news on pricing very soon.

In answer to the final point, is there a market left for Truphone? A product which offers the best value in communications no matter where in the world you are? Absolutely there is. The product is by no means the finished article, and as we bring on more countries and our pricing gets more competitive, our market gets bigger.

Testing 123 ...
 

If you need testers in The Netherlands please let me know.

Hello Truphone,

Let me start by saying that the little I've used your product, in supported countries and during roaming it has worked exactly how it was supposed to, which is something pretty good at this day and age.

I for one understand that the technicalities behind Truphone Local Anywhere have to be hugely involved and your service has not been on for even a year so getting things in place for solidly growing the product is important. For us customers, we just see no action for a long time and makes us wonder what's going on.

I guess my complain and I'm sure I'm not alone here, is that you are taking your sweet time to come out with new countries, and the current pricing as it stands it can hardly deter anyone from using their regular home service. It makes us all question hard if TLA has any change at this.

I still believe you do, but you have to come out with supported countries faster and your pricing has to be really compelling to make a difference in this space, specially with data, I think your voice rates on membership countries are actually fine.

Looking forward to hear all the new stuff down the pipe from Truphone

I'd cut them some slack. The global MVNO operation they are trying to come up can't be an easy task and we should judge them once they have over 20 countries up and and running. Straight roaming is and will always be expensive by definition so where they can make a difference is where they are acting as MVNO. Let's see what happens.

One important point I overlooked in my post last week - the reference to pricing. To clarify, the price for a US customer to receive a call in Europe remains 26cents - it has not increased. Huge apologies for the confusion, I've discovered that our online rate checker is posting incorrectly. Thank you for flagging this and we are looking to correct asap.

Good to hear that the $0.70/min incoming is actually incorrect. I just checked though ( 7:00 AM Tuesday, October 26, 2010 UTC ) and your prices are still showing $0.70/min incoming for european countries..

I have been trying to purchase a truphone sim card now for two weeks. I seem to be having some extreme difficulty with the website, and the truphone customer service. First, when I tried to add a credit card to the account that I created, the card is not authorized. I emailed and then spoke on the phone with the help desk. The first person I spoke with told me that it seems like they are having some problems, so what he was going to do was just mail me a sim card and then I could try adding a card when I activate the account. 10 days later no card. I call again, they tell me that they show no record of sending me a sim card, and that they would not send me a sim card. They said to try again to purchase one online, and if it does not work the problem is with my bank. I tried several different cards (with several different banks) none of them work. I call each bank and the banks all verify authorized charges by truphone that never post (so the charge was accepted). I try to explain this over email and phone calls with truphone. They insist that it is my banks error, not theirs. I try again and again to buy a sim card, each time verifying with my bank that a charge from truphone has been authorized. I explain that to truphone. No response. I even create an account with truphone voip, and add $5 to that account. Truphone ignores the email when I ask them to verify that there is a card added to that account.

As of this morning, I have now sent three emails that have not been answered. The whole process began over two weeks ago and I still have not been able to get a sim. I would like to purchase this sim, and I really like the "local anywhere" concept. I travel to Spain and the UK enough to where this would work (even before Spain becomes a "member" country). It seems difficult to believe that this company will actually succeed if they cannot even satisfy a costumer that is happy to give it business. Regardless of what the problem is, you would think that within two weeks they would find a way to accept my money for their product.

I have used US credit cards in the past with them without any issues but it has been a while since I last recharged my account. I have two SIMs with them.
I am not sure what's going on with their website, things seem to be pretty stalled over there. Note the original post of this thread and the later reply from Truphone here mentioning that the pricing information is incorrect in the rates section. Just checked yesterday and they still haven't fixed the pricing info on the website that sounds bizarre to me. Maybe they are working on relaunching the service/website once the new countries kick in and they are not working on the old stuff anymore, I have no idea.

I agree with you, it almost seems like Truphone doesn't care about local anywhere too much. There haven't been updates in a long long time and if your operational issues are true it's difficult to see how this sort of service can gain any traction. Hopefully things will change soon.

Truphone,
it has been 2 weeks since this post from you and your online rate checker is still posting $0.70 receiving for european countries. Is it really still $0.26? Or you have actually raised it to $0.70

Thanks in advance

bartolo5, they must have heard you! New country added.
 

hi truphone,
(assuming i can get a card)
can you tell me how likley it is that in Nepal and India i will be able to connect to your supported networks and get the 0.18p incoming price. Also.. how will i know if i'm on one of your networks. will teh phone simply not work or will i just get a big bill for using the wrong one. i phone dyour support people but it was all a bit vague. Basically if your card really would give me 18p per min in much of nepal and india i would jump at the chance. it seems hard to get this sort of info from your company. Surely your company must know these things?
Thanks,
PeterGene

Also truphone (or anyone who knows)... is it possible to just buy one of these cards somewhere, in london, at the airport (in istanbul) ... i'm leaving uk monday morning... ta!

I did see that. $0.10/MB-$100/GB is not too bad for casual data use. Sadly in the USA they are still asking $0.50/MB-$500/GB. I wonder if T-Mobile must be part of the problem raising their data in the USA?

Nice to see a third country finally added. Still eagerly waiting for Spain to join. Anyone have a heads up?

Hi All

Quite a few questions to get through!

Re:India networks...I have been given an unconfirmed answer on this, I'm just waiting for confirmation from our roaming team as I don't want to post something that isn't accurate, but am on the case!

We are talking to a number of partners about retail, but nothing currently. I would suggest speaking to our customer service team and seeing if we can get a card to you by Monday.

Spain (plus the other two countries shown on the website) are close...can't say any more than that, but watch this space!

Well, if Truphone keeps its promises the next 3 countries should come online in less than 7 weeks given that's how much is left of 2010.

Eagerly awaing for their spanish service here too. Hopefully their data rates will be reasonable as well as their voice rates. There are so many cheap MVNOs in Spain at the moment that it maybe difficult for Truphone to offer competitive rates there.

Austrailia update
 

They seem to have backed off on Austrailia.

Here is the line that encourages that more will be coming soon.


I wish them well. Hope things work out. Now would be a good time for communication. What they are doing can not be easy. If it was, all of us would have done it a long time ago.
I am happy to be able to use it in the US--that is why I got it. I do not use data, but I think it is easier [assuming it works OK in the US for data] for most short time visitors to acquire and use than any other prepaid data offers.

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 :)

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!