Oh, the things I’ve done to get connected to my phone while travelling overseas. Hovering around Starbucks. Lurking outside of airport lounges. And many years ago, to the mortification of my husband, opening up my laptop in the middle of a small Italian town and waving it around to try to find an unsecured wireless.
In the meantime, while I used to be able to follow a guidebook, or could prepare in advance for travel enough that I didn’t have to always rely on the internet on my phone, these days I’m too lazy and too used to be able to use my map function to get around, and use the internet to find random pieces of information and (ahem, embarrassingly, to play Pokemon Go).
So, knowing that I’d be in New York City for a whole month, I researched my options and came up with this. I signed up for a month for $60. It took less than a week I think for a SIM card to arrive by post. It was activated upon arrival. It was… a godsend.
I could make restaurant reservations and have them confirm them. I got a ticket to Sweeney Todd, a hot item, by lottery through TodayTix, calling my local mobile number. I didn’t get lost too often, as it is so easy to do. I was able to access random information anytime, and not just when I was at a hotel or AirBNB with wireless. It was totally marvelous and I think well worth it.
I think I ended up using about 2.5GB of data. The only issue that I had was that though you could sign-in to a page online, it didn’t really tell me anything except data usage. Since calls and texts with the USA were free, none of that info was listed. And, which was a problem at the end, it didn’t tell me from what day the service was activated and therefore, at what time exactly my service would expire. However, I did get a text in advance of this happening.
All in all though: a very useful service. If you think you might need it, I can recommend SimCorner.
My wife and I purchased two Simcorner sim cards each to cover of 7 week trip to Italy.
We used them very little but still we had the problem of being disconnected quite a few times by their agents in the UK and then ask to pay 20 pound each to top up the cards.
The deal was for near unlimited calls and text, however we did not use them more than 20 times on each card.
I ask for a refund on our return in May 2019 but as yet I have had nothing but stall tactics. Very disappointing. My advise is to purchase your Sim cards from a local phone carrier when you arrive in Europe. You can buy them at any main station or airport.
What a disappointment for you. Since I wrote this post in 2017, I switched my Australian carrier to Vodafone which has a deal to use your own plan, internationally, at $5/day. You’re only charged for the days you use it, so if you do have access to wifi, or don’t need your phone for the day, it saves money.
Probably that’s what I’m going to try from now on. And especially with your advice here, I don’t think I’ll need SimCorner again. Thanks for sharing your experiences.