First of all, I wrote a review last week, and now it has disappeared. So I a back to write another review. Do not buy this product! It is a complete waste of money. Your final bill after shipping will be close to $50.00.
When I received the sim card I turned it on in the US. I did not have any problem. The packaging included a note stating if you write a review you will receive a $10.00 credit. So many of the reviews are when the person first received the sim card. I wrote a review and promptly received a $10.00 calling credit. Now for the real story. The card does not work in England or France. I tried in vain to use the card and only got a message that the service was unavailable. I paid for internet service in France and wrote an email to the company. They promptly replied and gave me a set of instructions. The card still did not work. They told me to call a toll free number.
The reason I spend $50.00 on this card (including the shipping) is so I could have an easy inexpensive way to phone the US. Please save your money on this product and research other options. Also, read the other reviews and research WHO wrote them. Many of the 5 star reviews come from people who only reviewed this one product or maybe two products. And they were written around the same time.
Amazon should be ashamed to sell such a poor product....and why did my first review disappear???? I'll keep writing them if they keep removing them. This is not a good product! Telestial Passport Dual-IMSI SIM with $10.00 Credit
This is my experience with 2 of these sim cards. The card came with $10 credit. However, shortly after trying to use the cards, 30 minutes worth of credit, which is practically the entire $10 was deducted when the minutes were in fact not used. I had to go through the trouble of calling customer service to get a refund. This happened with both sim cards. Customer support told me that it was not a glitch....so I don't know what it was but it's an inconvenience to have to call to get a refund when traveling overseas.
I received a refund for the 30 minutes which I didn't use; however, I never received a refund on charges for 7 minutes which I was charged for when I attempted to and unsuccessfully checked the voice mail. After dialing to listen to the voice mail, I heard nothing and hung up the phone. I tried checking the voice mail a few times and was never successful. The end result was that I was charged for 7 minutes of usage, which I never got a refund for.
Beware of getting charged for minutes that you may not have actually used. After deducting the credit, which resulted in a negative balance (and I don't know how it's even possible to get a negative balance), I received about 10 text messages saying that my balance had fallen to -$2.24 and that I needed to recharge my minutes.
A note about receiving a text message.....it was delayed for about a day.
A note on sending out text messages.....it was never received.
On the positive.....very clear sound reception and you can recharge your minutes right from your phone....but after all the hassle that I had to go through...I'll just find another global sim card to save from future headaches while traveling overseas.
This was my second bad experience with telestial sim cards. My last experience involved buying a sim card for a specific country. The card didn't work when I arrived in that country, and I ended up having to buy a local sim card at my destination. Again, very inconvenient when traveling overseas....and the whole point of purchasing the sim card in the first place was to not have to spend time purchasing a sim card overseas.
Just very frustrated about my recent experience and want to share it to save someone else from undergoing such frustrations.
Just received telestial Passport SIM card. Easy to set up and use. User guide easy to follow.
But, all rates and charges not clear - particularly receiving calls from people using the toll-free number.
No indication that using this results in a $1.00 per minute charge for you, no matter what. If you don't check, you may
think receiving calls within zone 1a are free. Not free for you unless the caller is using their own long distance plan.
On the website under toll free calling they say:
"Your family or friends will not be charged. You will be charged a
USD $0.39 per minute surcharge to receive the call, in addition to the
incoming per minute call rate for the country where you are." But the incoming call rate is free and $0.39 per minute is not $1.00.
I travel a lot internationally and finding SIM's, English instructions and knowing how to use them always seems to be a challenge. I even use Dual SIM phones just to keep a US SIM as a backup. You never know what to expect when you are buying something for use in another country. I have to admit, Telestial has simple, coherent, zero hassle and well documented instructions and customer service. Card works perfectly, web site is simple and clean, customer service was awesome (I checked it out before I left) This was the best buy for my trips so far and I am normally a very critical person.
I read the instructions which were written in plain English, checked out the website which was simple and easy to use, called them intentionally to see how much of a hassle it would be when in another country (I made a call to my Italy office from the US, and from Italy I generated a call to their Italian customer service number at 9:00PM EST which is 3:00am Italy time)No issues at all. I asked a few questions and all were answered with clarity. I decided to add minutes to my SIM through the website just so it could be done as an auto-recharge (which can be started or stopped by dialing a free three digit number.
There may be cheaper rates per minute (by a few pennies), but the hassle free factor with this SIM made it worth it. Also Free incoming calls and texts makes up for any price differences. I tested those as well and then checked my card balance on their website. They had up to the minute call records and no charges showed which is what is should be.
Only thing that you would want to know is you wouldn't want to buy Personal Business Cards with the US number on it as it expires after 2 months of inactivity. Telestial will automatically issue a new US number the next time the SIM is used in the US for free, and they do offer a way to keep the US number permanent for $.50/mo. The UK number is permanent so I'm good with that. - Global Sim - Kindle Devices - E-reader - Kindle'
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