Thanks to another helpful member here, I now have a TM PAYG SIM and Ecard.

Do I really need to carry the Ecard with me? It seems to save entering 16-digit codes and such but one less thing would be good (unless people find it a very useful feature).

What's the best place to buy the top-up? I'm only going for a week so the minimum £5 might be enough. Most of my calls will be back to NA, through the number I can't quite find to hand right now, though some will be to mobile and landline numbers while I'm there.

Are there discounters (like CheapPhoneCards in the US, or eBay sellers) who can be trusted to sell just the top-up? That's the other reason I'd leave the Ecard at home, if I buy £5 online and don't use it all, I won't be buying more at a shop in the UK.

Even if I buy it in advance, I'm thinking I should hold off adding the £5 until I arrive, to make sure nothing goes wrong with my phone, service works, SIM's okay, etc.

Thanks!
=aw

Try ebay.uk. That's where I usually get my virgin UK topups.

Great, thanks for the advice! I did look at ebay.co.uk but most are £10 or £20, which is more than I need. How long are the top-ups good for? I won't use more than £5 this trip and wonder how soon I have to return.

=aw

The topups last forever. If you can pick up a T-Mobile signal in the US (I don't think prepay will roam with AT&T) you can use GPRS and spend a few pence every 179 days to keep the card active. The website also suggests it will roam on Rogers in Canada.

Be careful since the current T-Mobile sim even if never used will eventually be cut off (though this seems to be a year or so from when T-Mobile first issue them) before the first top up.

If you can't find a five pound voucher (I don't think they exist!) try to top up in the shop with e-topup, but I'm not sure if you can get £5 e-topups either. You could try registering your phone on 'my t-mobile' on the website, but I really doubt it'll take a non-UK credit card.

Also, rather than using a call through - have you considered a 50 minute bundle for £2. This works out at 4p/minute, which is a lot cheaper than even the callthrough.
http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/services/...the-uk/bundles/

You can buy upto 6 bundles at any one time, does anyone know if that means you could buy say 150 minutes of the above for £6? Seems pretty good for someone who wants to call US/Canada directly without bothering with a callthrough.

A friend of mine is going to the UK next week, I just lent him an extra phone I had and gave him a new T-Mobile UK sim card.
I went to the T-Mobile UK website, registered the sim, giving my name and used my step daughters UK address. I was able to top-up the sim on-line using my American express card (thats registered in the US) Minimum top-up was £10.00
Once the card was topped up, I added the US, Canada calling bundle by texting
the letter A to 48011
This deducted £2.00 from the £10.00 total plus 60p total for sending the text twice from America. The £2.00 bundle gives you 50 minutes of calls from the UK to America and Canada (thats 4p a minute) If I waited and had him do the text when he arrived in the UK, i think the text might have been free. I added 2 of the £2.00 bundles so it worked out that he is going over with 100 minutes of calls back to America and £5.40 leftover for calls in the UK at 15p a minute. I believe that the limit on the bundles was 3 at a time. Again, there was no issues using my American Amex. Enjoy your trip

Thanks for the info and suggestions. I'll reply to them all in one message.


So the topups are fine but the account expires after 180 days of inactivity? Roaming in Canada just to keep it alive would be cute, depending what it costs. Or I might give/lend/sell (for airtime) to a friend to use.


Uh-oh!


I don't have it with me (boo!) but I thought something in the package said the minimum was £5. It could be old, in which case see previous. If I can't buy £5 I'll look more closely at prices on eBay for £10 vouchers. Don't want to spend £8-9 on a £10 voucher if I can get £5 for £5.


I did consider that, though I wasn't sure I could buy it from my existing airtime. Knowing now that I can, it could be worth it. Though I've seen at least two callthroughs that cost only 3p/min. It might be worth 1p/min not to have to dial both the 0775 number (for YCW) and then the NA number, assuming the Bundle allows direct dialling. Am I misunderstanding how much YCW costs?


Thanks for the detailed description. I may do that (will use a friend's UK address if necessary), would that tell me if the SIM has expired unused? Knowing from your experience that the bundle can come from existing credit makes it more appealing, I don't expect to use up a full £5 so I was concerned having to put in yet more money for the Bundle was wasteful.


Thanks, and the same to your friend!

=aw

The costs are fairly expensive - 55p/min, BUT you can just make 1 call, 1 text or 1 GPRS session and you're set again for another 179 days. Using GPRS the cost per year would be no more than 20p I suspect!


Looks like you can get £5 top-ups
Question number 3 on: http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/services/...elp/topping-up/

Seems it doesn't even need to be an e-topup, also see..
http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/services/...-up/electronic/
Although I'd take the e-topup card anyway (make sure it's the one for that number!) since you run the risk of the shop not having any £5 topups with the voucher payment - and judging by your ebay experiences this is quite likely!


What's YCW? If you use a 3p/min callthrough from a T-Mobile phone it almost certainly WILL NOT be 3p/min, since the 3p/min is the quoted rate from BT residential landline. I'd get the bundle, it's pretty cheap.


On all UK prepay packages any bundles come from the airtime credit. If you have an unlocked phone you can use then see if you can register on Rogers, if you can - you most certainly have an active sim still. If the SIM has never been used in the UK, I'm not sure if it'll work - but worth a try.

I agree that 55p after 170 days would be reasonable to keep the account alive. Outgoing of course, since incoming is also 55p, plus the cost of calling a UK mobile (at least 31c).

Would _receiving_ a text keep the account alive? That's free while roaming in Canada and US.


Yeah, it's just one more card. I guess the way it works is I present it to the shop with a fiver, they punch some buttons and swipe the card, which then adds the airtime? I don't expect to go over £5 but you never know. I don't know for sure what £10 goes for on eBay, but if it's about £8 that's certainly a better rate overall.


And I think it's worth 1p/min not to dialaround.

www.YourCallWorld.com/payg/ makes it sound like there's no airtime cost.


I have an unlocked tri-band phone and I'll try it on the weekend. The SIM has never been used, I got it in a sealed package. No airtime with it (which I didn't expect as it was generous to be given the SIM as it was -- I'm not mentioning my benefactor's name as I was contacted privately).

=aw

I doubt it, I think it has to be chargable. I mentioned using GPRS since you'd only need to transfer a few hundred bytes of data to keep it active. Might even be possible to do it for 1p each time (so say 3p per year!)

If your phone can't do GPRS the next best thing would be to send a text to your own UK number - which will cost 40p/msg.

I'd do this maybe every 5 months since it'd be a shame to miss it by 1 day (though I'm not sure it's that strict!)


That's exactly right. Just walk into the shop and say something along the lines of "five pounds on here mate/please" and they swipe the card and it goes on the phone. Should be on there by the time you walk out the shop - it's pretty quick. If you should forget to bring it to the UK you can pick one up in any of the stores offering topups. I've certainly seen loads of these cards available to be picked up free from Sainsbury's and Tesco's.


It does - but I can't see how that'll work. At minimum I think it'd be treated as a normal call - so 15p/min. Perhaps a prepay T-Mobile-UK user can advise you if they have tried it.


Yes, although the sims are very cheap over here now, it's still very generous for items to be sent FOC.

If your phone registers on Rogers it might also be worth trying to send an sms to it - this should work with no credit. Try www.cbfsms.com (this is free, they don't spam or anything either)
If the phone registers and you get the sms you're absolutely 100% set, without a doubt.

When are you going and whereabouts btw?

It will, at least it did with mine a couple of weeks ago

Correct. I have both Virgin UK and Orange UK (used to) that I bought on ebay.UK brand new and worked here in the US out of the box. I did have to activate the Orange one by calling them from here but, there wee no problems doing that at all. They SMS'ed the number to me. Not aonly did both work, GPRS also worked out of the box. I still have the Virgin but gave the Orange to a friend. I only use the virgin card when in the UK or for GPRS access when I travel internationally, because they charge the same for GPRS roaming or not. Have not used my virgin card to make/receive calls in at least 3 years.

Put the SIM in my Rogers tri-band phone and after searching, it reported Rogers Wireless.

I tried cbfsms.com and got this message:



GizmoSMS.com said it sent the SMS but nothing's arrived.

Then we just tried calling 011-44-750-etc. from a landline and got a British voice saying, "we're sorry we're unable to complete your call..."

Should I be worried?

=aw

I wrote to YCW and got this reply:

I wouldn't be surprised if YCW is owned by TM or at least has relationship beyond what's obvious.

It means the choice is one of convenience: 3p/min to call the access number and then the number you want, vs. 4p/min to call directly.

Also the packaged LD at 4p/min has a 90-day expiry, which could be an issue. I'll probably buy 50min when I arrive, and if I run out the first day, buy more. But if it takes me until Friday evening to use them up (leaving Sunday morning) I'll probably switch to YCW. Don't expect to make lots of calls to lots of people, my experience in 2006 (with MobileWorld) is that it's much much cheaper for me to note the caller ID and call back (for 3p/4p/5p per minute) than to answer and have them pay 31c and up per minute from a landline in Canada. The wonders of technology!

I'm going to Oxford for a week later this month. Arrive Tuesday morning and fly back on Sunday morning.

=aw

They'll be no credit on the phone. If you PM me the number I'll try from cbfsms.com

Thanks for the offer. I forgot it costs 55p to receive a call (though I wasn't going to answer it). Sent PM.

I just put the UK SIM back in my phone and there's no sign of the SMS I sent from GizmoSMS. I do see two old messages sent to my Rogers phone, I guess they're in the phone not the SIM?

=aw