I'm a casual international traveler and wanted something simple for emergency use only, the price and ease of this product made it perfect. Customer service is top notch, answering emails and phone calls almost immediately.
You get both a US and UK number making less painful for family to call you. Would recommed for your unlocked phones. Telestial Passport Lite Dual-IMSI SIM with $5.00 Credit
We will be using this SIM card on our trip to Italy. I really like the fact that relatives can call us for free using a toll-free number and we can receive those calls for free also. Calls to U.S. numbers from Italy are $0.99 per minute and texts are $0.79 per message, which are less than if we were to use our AT&T cell phones. It did not work on one of our phones because it wasn't unlocked (even though AT&T told us it was not locked), but worked great on our other phone, which is the one we will take with us to Italy. Rates for other countries can be found on the Telestial web site.
I was able to get service and place calls in Athens and Munich. I did not try receiving any calls. It took a few minutes to get service in each city the first time I turned it on, but once it did, the signal was strong.
This is a great option for occassional calling and for receiving free incoming calls in the listed countries in Europe. You can't beat the deal given free shipping via Amazon Prime and a $5 credit for only $4.50. The pkg arrived a day earlier than expected. Followed the clear directions in the manual, installed it in my unlocked GSM phone, the US number got delivered right away via SMS. I also logged on to check my account balance... voila $5 credit was already there! By the way, you don't need to remember all the 3 digit codes... the SIM has them preprogrammed to appear in your phonebook. Nice touch! The product is working as advertised. Looking forward to some happy touring in Europe!
Glad I went with this SIM card for my trip throughout Europe and the Middle East. Easy to set up, easy to use, gets great service. Shipping was quick and reliable. Only have positive things to say about customer service. Love that you get both an international number and a U.S. number. Overall, highly recommended.
This SIM card barely worked for us. My wife was going to use it at Heathrow to make contact upon arrival. We followed the instructions in the manual for activation, dialing 3 plus the pin in the UK, but without luck. Later, upon calling customer service, we were told that we should dial 1 plus the pin. This seemed to occasionally work. Most of the time it would give us an error message and seem to send a text, but not connect. Once it connected correctly at the airport on the way home.
When the trip was over, I sent an email to their customer support, but still haven't received a reply, one week later. I should note that with the SIM card we received a page indicating that we would receive an extra $10 credit if we wrote a positive review on Amazon. This might help explain all of the positive reviews. I would not recommend this item.
You can read the other reviews for more information. I'm writing about my experience with this card while traveling to Germany (not for the free talk credit like many of the reviewers here). First of all expect to add $10 to $20 of credit if you expect to actually be able to use this card at which point it makes sense to compare this card to the $25 version Telestial Passport Dual-IMSI SIM with $10.00 Credit. In Germany (region 1b) you will pay 85 cents per minute to receive a call compared to 35 cents for the connection charge for the $25 card. To make an outgoing call to someone's cell it will cost $1.49 per minute vs 84 cents per minute plus 35 cents connection fee for the $25 card.
So let's say that you add $20 to this card. With the $5 bonus that's $25 of talk credit. This translates to:
16 minutes calling a cell (1 long call, 16 separate short calls, or something between)
28 minutes receiving a call
With the $25 card (assuming you add no further money and just use the initial $10 bonus credit) it will be:
8 minutes calling a cell (for 1 minute each). It will be a little longer, e.g. 11 minutes if you just make 1 call.
Receiving 28 separate calls of unlimited duration (Free to receive but 35 cents connection fee, I think.)
To directly compare the rates go to the vendor web site.
For the lite card:
telestial.com/view_product.php?PRODUCT_ID=MSIM-PPL2
For the "regular" passport (might not be the correct link)
telestial.com/view_product.php?PRODUCT_ID=MSIM-PP02
I'm not sure if amazon sells the passport plus or the regular passport. Germany is in zone 1a for the regular passport but is in zone 1b for the passport plus so my calculations above might be wrong for the $25 card. Also the rates quoted when logged into my account look a little different than the web site I linked above.
It would be helpful if Amazon would include the rates clearly in the item description instead of relying on the reviewers to dig out this info!
Pros:
*Easy to add minutes via Internet
*Inexpensive initial cost
*Receive calls for free in zone 1a
Cons:
*Never received an SMS that was sent to me. (Other reviewers say to expect texts to take 1 day to reach you so tell your friends not to send time sensitive information via text. E.g. that they can't pick you up from the airport and take a taxi to the following address...)
*The $25 card is a better value if you will be talking for long periods of time or making many calls.
In conclusion this is a decent sim card for emergency use for short periods of time. It beats paying the outrageous roaming fees of the US carriers. However, if you expect to talk for long periods of time look into the other SIM cards (by this company and others).'
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