Refill Orange France in London?

[hryee]

I am traveling to London next month with unlocked GSM cell phones with French Orange prepaid SIM cards.

Will these cards function in London?

What is the easiest/cheapest way to refill minutes?

Great forum!

H

[MATHA531]

Originally Posted by hryee

I am traveling to London next month with unlocked GSM cell phones with French Orange prepaid SIM cards.

Will these cards function in London?

What is the easiest/cheapest way to refill minutes?

Great forum!

H

The French are among the biggest sob's when it comes to matters such as this...after a very limited amount of time, they bloody steal your remaining credit (depending on the last refill...this period can be as little as 15 days with a €10 refill..1 month with €15 and son on...they then give y9ou six months before they take back the number and there is nothing you can do other than to refill the card.

With Orange FR, while with a French credit card you can refill on the web with a French credit card, about the only way to refill, that I know of, is with Orange FR voucher purchased before leaving France...in that case you dial 224 followed by the voucher number followed by send...do thiis within six months of their theft of your credit and you keep the number..if the six month period passes, you're out of luck. Why they haven't instituted something such as allowing use say of an Orange UK voucher is beyond me but this is the way it seems to be.

They have also embraced the eurotariffs, probably not voluntarily, but that means your card, provided it has credit and they haven't stolen your credit, will function in London at eurotariff rates, what is it something like 0,39€ to call within the eu and 0,24€ to receive calls outside France.

I don't know how to obtain Orange FR vouchers other than in France...I haven't seen them on ebay or anything like that.

Sorry for such a pessimistic report. But maybe somebody here has a better answer....

[PhotoJim]

You may want to pick up an Orange UK card with the Call Abroad feature. 5p a minute to Canada and the US.

I don't know the answer to your question unfortunately, but this information might be useful.

[andy]

I won't look up the rates for calling Canada or USA with these SIMs in the UK, but only guess it will be between €1 and €2 per minute. Calls to each other will probably be 59c a minute, 29c receive

Get UK SIMs, and save the French ones for onward travel to France.

There are several options for calling Canada or USA from UK at 5 pence a minute or less:

T-mobile + Yourcallworld callthough 3p, T-mobile's own add-on package 4p, virtual operators IDT Lebara and Nomi at 4p, MobileWorld (from Carphone Warehouse) 5p, Orange CallAbroad seems to have sneaked up to 7p, or or for really intensive users, 3 has a £15 option with up to 3000 minutes of international calls in a month