Easyroam travelsim.co.uk review

[bbob]

Review of the travelsim.co.uk / easyroam card.

Ordering was easy through the web, payment was in pounds although there was also a euro price. As the pound is so low versus the euro the pound price was cheaper anyhow.

I ordered it during the weekend so the card would ship on Monday. Received an order confirmation and received the card in Belgium on a Wednesday. So delivery was fast.

A clear 3 page instruction manual came with the package telling you for the turn on/off voicemail, how to make call and so on.

Also written there is service life. The card is valid for 365 days after which you have to pay 21$ or 10 pounds to keep the card active. On the website it’s now 20 dollar or 12 pounds. It would be nice to know what the real value is. These charges can be found on the website but they are a bit hidden in the user guide part.
As the site also mentions: No Daily Access charge! My opinion is that it should mention more clear that there is a yearly renewal charge. But on the other side if I read the info correct if you buy credit within 90 days of there expire dat no need to pay any network fee and all credit will be rolled over for the next 365 days.

This does give me a question is you have say 30 pounds of credit which you bought at day 1, say 15 pounds is left at the end of the year. Will the card become deactivated or will they deduct 12 pounds from your credit leaving you with 3 pounds credit and still an active account ?

There is also a backed where you can login. This shows personal details you can set call forwarding, voicemail, see which incoming call you had, change password etc.
Also you can see rates here.

Rates.

All rates are in USDollar which is a bit strange for a UK based service. I would have expected a rate in euro but it might be that their service is targeted more to the US visitors coming to Europe instead of customers from Europe.

The rates on the backend differ 1 dollar cent compared to the ones on the easyroam website. The website shows the call exactly 1 dollarcent cheaper than the one on the back office. Although this is not a big difference/problem they might look at this small issue.

Price structure differs from country to country and I would prefer a more clear structure like UM or GT-SIM.

Some example prices.

From Netherlands Mobile network to German Mobile Network

Easy roam euro 0,52 per minute
Gt-Sim euro 0,39 per minute
UM euro 0,39 + 0,19 setup
Maxroam, euro 0,45 per minute (charges even when caller is busy or not answering)

From Italy to USA

Easy roam euro 0,29 per minute
Gt-Sim euro 0,39 to mobile and euro 0,29 fixed. As usa does not realy have different numbers for mobile the question is are you paying 29 or 39 eurocents.
UM euro 0,29 + 0,19 setup
Maxroam, euro 0,29 per minute (charges even when caller is busy or not answering)

You can compare more countries for yourself.

Easyroam is in my opinion not the cheapest solution, gt-sim is cheaper but does not roam free in switserland, GT-SIM requires minimum usage of $100 per year or $25 per 3 month to keep the card active otherwise a $9,95 fee is charged per 3 month’s.

How long will the card and the balance on the account remain valid (only for Prepaid customers)?
If there are no calling activities within a period of 3 months, a rental charge of Euro 9,95 for the number will be automatically deducted from teh account. To avoid these charges simply top up your account by Euro 25.00 and the life time of your number will be extended for another 3 month at a time. If you would add another Euro 100.00 your life time of your number would be extended for another 12 month.

Maxroam has good pricing but incoming call always cost money as they are using fixed numbers in different countries that are forwarded to your mobile. You can’t call the phone direct which is a big disadvantage.

Conclusion.

Easyroam offers a good alternative to UM card as they have pushed themselves out of the market buy asking 19 eurocents callsetup.

Easyroam do not offer the lowest call rates and thus it depends on how often you would like to use the card. If you use it weekly and make lots of calls GT-Sim offers lower rates but has rules to keep the sim active which costs money.
If you use it for say just a few business trips during the year or if you want to use it as a card going on holiday easyroam is a good choice.

For the moment I have mainly looked at Eu countries where most of the cards have free roaming, except UM+ for Belgium and Gt-Sim for Switserland. I have not looked at the rest of the world to compare in which countries easyroam has free incoming compared to GT-Sim and others.

Travelsim.com using an Estonian number has not been used in this review as in my opinion +44 numbers like easyroam, gt-sim and um+ can be better used to give to customers than an Estonian mobile number

[easyroam-]

bbob, Thank you for your review.

To answer so of your remarks.

service life
We impose a network charge to cover our operator fees.
This is a charge that we receiver every month to keep the number live with the telecoms operator.

When you have a customer that receives hundreds of inbound "free roaming" calls, but never makes any outbound calls. We still get charged to keep that number live. Hence we have to charge a network fee.

Customer who make calls as well as receive free inbound calls, We will not charge this fee. So when we say "Customers who purchase call credit within 90 days of there expiry date will not need to pay the network fee and all credit will be rolled over for the next 365 days"

This rule is flexible and at our discretion. We look at customer usage.

Rates
As this is a global sim card and our customers are globally. It is easy for our customers to convert US Dollar to there home rate. We do however have a comparison on our rates page giving a example of the cost in euro's and in GB pound Stirling.

As for the slight difference in back office rates compared to our website rates. Our website rates is rounded up to the nearest cent. This is for technical reasons for our online calculator to work correctly

Every customer has to look at each site for there best option.

We don't charge a daily or connection fee

We have 24/7 customer support (telephone & email) unlike other's that only offer 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday or just email support.

I think most people look at all these options and that why we have had a very good year and especially this Christmas.

My golden rule.

Keep the customer happy !

[depee]

Hello,

I have one question.

What is the rate to call from Russia to Germany?

On the homepage I can't find the information.


Bye,

depee

[easyroam-]

Russia mobile to Germany landline $1.06 (easyroam)
to Germany mobile $1.33

United mobile charge $1.62 (€0.99 + €0.19 connection charge)

[easyroam-]

easyroam customer's will soon be able to have data enabled on there travel sim cards.
We are just sorting our the rates and hope to be going live very soon.
Older 07624 sim cards will need to be activated before use. However, our new sim cards will be ready
for we go live.