Help with United Mobile sim
 

My first post to the forum so a big hello to everyone
My neighbor will be traveling Europe so I recomened he purchase a UM sim for him and his wife. He recently recieved the sims, registered and activated the sims but is having issues making calls. He has asked me to help him sort the issue, the sim's have a UK (44) number
So far this is what I see
Test phone is a unbranded Motorola Pebl and a unlocked Nokia 6230, sim's can recieve calls but not make calls. The message is always "Number Not Allowed"
I tried calling numbers in both America and UK (I am in America) I dialed +1732xxxxxxx for calling the American line and +4407722xxxxxx, tried dropping the zero, tried without the +44 since the UM sim is a UK number but always get "Number Not Allowed" I also tried the manual network select and tried the calls using both the att and t-mobile network
Am I doing something wrong? Is this a known issue? I did see posts regarding network busy messages but not "Number Not Allowed"
Thanks in advance, I feel bad that I recomended these cards to my neighbor and he's having these issues

Many different phones have various issues with the international sims (almost all of them) that work using callback...that is the way they are able to give you the very low rates...you actually don't make a call...rather the sim is rigged up that when you dial the number a message is sent to UM which then calls you back and completes the call via whatever carrier (probably a VOIP) it uses....

Having said that, this is an issue with many phones....one way around it is to find the United Mobile menu buried someplace...(on the nokia it should be easy to find, it will have a separate menu name)....follow the links to something like make a call...it will ask you if you wish to make a call off the sim or dial the number...enter the full international number (I think you can use the + key) and it should work.

If not, there is another thread here where somebody had the same problem and the workaround suggested was to use a call sequence, I forget it but you should be able to find the thread in the not too distant past here, and that resolved the issue.

The fact you are receiving calls is indicative that the sim is indeed active; it is not a UM issue it is a handset issue.

Welcome!
 

I would caution you about making expensive test calls on the phone from US.

Can you get a balance using balance inquiry? I have a new UM SIM and have not tried to dial out. Balance does work for me from US.

The message "Number Not Allowed" is common and in my experience with othe callback processes, that is NORMAL and the callback does come in. You might need to try several times. Sometime balance does not come in the first time either.

The 0 for calling foreign phones is not needed from the US. From the cell it is +, country code, city code (no leading 0), number.

From a land line in US it is 011 (international access), country code, city code (no leading 0), number.

0 is used within the country code of origin in place of the country code for LD calls. Just as you can usually dial 1-732-xxx-xxxx from your cell or simply 732-xxx-xxxx. The 1 is not needed on the cell in the US but is needed on a land line.

Good luck. Let's let other more active with their UM cards weigh in.

Stan

Are you trying to make these calls by using the keypad of the mobile phone?

I think what you have to do is look through the menus on the phone and find an item called either "Services" or "United Mobile" and initiate the call through that menu and not dial directly from the keyboard.

If you dial your number through that menu you should then get a callback from UM and hear the number ringing out.

And you must drop the leading 0 in the number you are trying to dial
i.e. +44 1529 305xxx NOT +44 01529 305xxx

Hope that helps.

And, if all fails, try dialing *137*441529305xxx# instead of +441529305xxx ....

I have a related question. I just came back from a trip to Austria. I had a great deal of difficulty with the UM+ card. When I placed an outgoing call, whether to an Austrian or Canadian number, I'd usually get a call back, but before I could answer it the phone would report "Call Missed" and drop the incoming call. This would happen 9 times out of 10. At one point I got so frustrated that I switched to my Mobal SIM and made the call using it despite the much higher cost. Calling 089 to get a Balance Update worked just fine.

Anyone else experience this situation or have any advice on what to do when it happens?

Last year when I had the old UM Liechtenstein SIM and used the same phone the call back mechanism worked flawlessly both within Europe and to Canada.

Hi Hawk, yes I was, I will look for that menu you mentioned and try it. I am also going to try direct from the keypad *137*1848xxxxxxx# and *447722xxxxxx# I will also try storing that to the sim and try dialing from the sim.
Thanks again to everyone for the help so far

It's almost certainly a phone issue. My UM+ SIM works fine in my Motorola RAZR V3 and P280, but I have to use the menus or the *137 trick to use my Nokia 6590i or Treo 680.

Use *137* code (as I described above). It may be a network issue, too. In another very long UM+ thread I told that using UM+ in one of three Polish networks is affected by the same problem (even menu based calling fails in the way you described). However, *137* code works.

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