Report on using Orange Mobicarte in France

[tux]

Originally Posted by flychr

hi


was afraid what 5 euros was too little on sim but it was orange fr. where it was necessary to top op with more than 5 euro every 6 month?
Chr

Orange mobicarte, SFR La Carte, etc.

[EveT]

I still don't understand what happened to me in France a couple of months ago (May 2015). After arriving in France from the USA, I bought a local SIM card from Boutique Orange in Paris. A couple of days later I ran out of data because (well, long story...) which generated a text message and an automated phone call in French from Orange saying my account was used up and I should provide my credit card number to top it up.
I stopped into another Orange shop and they redid my plan to unlimited calling and data. Calls within France and to the UK, web surfing, email etc. then worked just fine.
Then, 5 days later, I needed to make a call within France, and I suddenly got the identical recorded message from Boutique Orange in French saying my account was used up and they wanted my credit card number to top it up.
BUT I was still able to call an international toll-free number and also make calls to the UK.
How could it be that my Orange account was used up when (a) I supposedly had paid for an unlimited plan, and (b) I could still call outside France???
Does anyone have any explanation for this?

[scirocco]

Sounds like Orange just charged you exactly what was needed for whatever unlimited call plan you agreed to with them. Say it was 20 euros for two weeks calls for argument's sake. They added the 20 euros to your account, which you had previously run down to zero. So now it is 20 euros. Then they activated the 20 euro plan, which gets deducted from your balance. So now your balance is back to zero, but you have a good working plan, so you can make the calls you need to.

But your balance is still zero or very low. That triggers off the automatic reminders, because your plan won't last for ever and when it runs out you won't be able to make calls. So they send you texts to remind you of the situation.

[EveT]

Thank you for the reply.
So "unlimited" does not really mean unlimited? Wow. It would have been extremely helpful if any of the 3 different Orange employees I spoke to had explained this.
Not very nice of them. I will not use Orange again if I can help it.

[scirocco]

Seriously? You thought unlimited meant "for ever"? No prepaid plan anywhere in the world gives you that. The calls are unlimited during the duration of the period you paid for, a day, a week, a month, whatever.

[rfranzq]

Originally Posted by scirocco

Seriously? You thought unlimited meant "for ever"? No prepaid plan anywhere in the world gives you that. The calls are unlimited during the duration of the period you paid for, a day, a week, a month, whatever.

Unlimited with regard to time is forever.
Unlimited with regard to data is unending data.
When you are new to something or in an unfamiliar situation
it can be difficult to know what is and what is not included in things.

[EveT]

The "unlimited" plan I paid for was for 30 days.
Instead, it ran out in 4 days.
I did not make a lot of calls in those 4 days. I did use data, but -- again -- it was supposed to be unlimited calls and unlimited data for 30 days.
The day it ran out, I was leaving France so I did not have time to go and find a Boutique Orange to ask why this was happening.

[1040Berlin]

Did someone manage to buy a Mobicarte SIM card for 3.90 EUR including 5 EUR credit in an Organge shop (boutique)?

[svenn]

Good morning

I am using the orange travelsimcard.

It includes 1000 sms 120 m call and 10 gb of data.

And the best thing is i can usw 8 million free orange wifi for free with it.

https://boutique.orange.fr/1/mobile/...orange-holiday

The speed is fantastic.

I top it up here. https://topup.orange.com/?gclid=CjwK...BoCbskQAvD_BwE

I bought it from amazon

[woody1]

Originally Posted by svenn

Good morning

I am using the orange travelsimcard.

It includes 1000 sms 120 m call and 10 gb of data.

And the best thing is i can usw 8 million free orange wifi for free with it.

https://boutique.orange.fr/1/mobile/...orange-holiday

The speed is fantastic.

I top it up here. https://topup.orange.com/?gclid=CjwK...BoCbskQAvD_BwE

I bought it from amazon

40 euro for 2 weeks sounds expensive to me. I don't know how I could possibly use 10gb in 2 weeks either. I generally use about 1gb in a month. I use wifi as much as possible. I guess this would be a good deal for someone who needs a lot of data.

Right now, I'm in Thailand and I'm using my US-based Project Fi plan, which includes foreign data at the cost as US data. This plan is $30/month for 1gb data. Works well for me, but I understand that it's not a solution that will work for everyone.