Last month we were in France for a few weeks, and some friends joined us for part of the trip.

(I promise to post a trip report before too terribly much longer-- twenty lashes to me for procrastinating! )

Anyway, I have an unlocked GSM phone that I use in France with a local SIM card- no problem. It's convenient and reasonably cheap.

This was my friends' first trip to Europe, and they wanted to be able to keep in touch with their family, so I suggested that they do the same.

So I helped my friend buy a cheap GSM phone on Ebay and told her I'd help her get a SIM card for it when they arrived.

Well, when they arrived at the house we were sharing, my friend said, " Guess what! I got a good deal on a SIM card for the cell phone. There was a place right next to the car rental booth at the airport, so I just got it there."

She explained to me that you save money by not buying a SIM card, but basically just borrowing it.

She said they take your credit card number, then just charge you for the calls you make. At the end of your trip, you return the SIM card.

She said that incoming calls were free, calls within France were something like 79¢ a minute, and calls to the US were $1.22 a minute.

Well, I told her, those are not the greatest rates, but I guess if you don't make too many calls maybe it's not too bad a deal. But I'm always concerned that there will be hidden charges.

Anyway, they used the cell phone occasionally during their 2 weeks in France, and returned the SIM card at the end of the trip.

A couple of days ago, my friend got her credit card bill, and the charge for the SIM card was, get this... <b> $1,600.00 !!</b>


She's contesting it through her credit card company (American Express), but I don't know whether this &quot;phone service&quot; was just a bunch of crooks, or whether she missed some important detail in the &quot;fine print&quot; of the contract!

Anyway, just a word of warning for anyone thinking about using this &quot;service!&quot;

We've seen such horror stories before usually about renting a mobile phone and letting them put charges on your credit card for convenience...

Going pay as you go is far far safer...the very worst you can be out is the last top up....

When you consider the fact that with a phone card, the rate to call the U.S. from France is 60 euro cents an hour, one really wonders why people still want to use cell phones.

In Italy one can buy a phone card and call the US for about 5&euro; and talk for an hour. That is what my friends use when they call me. But having a cell phone to call people in the European country you are in (or so they can call you) is so convienent. Marcy what a shame your friends didn't wait until they met up with you to get their SIM card. A disaster! I hope AMEX can help them solve this.

Your thread is a good warning to everyone.

1,600$ hard to believe - what do you mean by occasionally - perhaps they used it a lot more than they let on? If it's a rip-off i'd contact the CDG Airport Authority and complain.

That type of post-paid plan the OP was talking about isn't unusual, and certainly not necessarily a scam. For example, Mobal is the same way. You give them your credit card number, but is only charged when you use it.

Would help to know the name of the co. she got the card from. Just terrible. Hope Amex can help.

Question: can a credit card company fix this, or was it a 'buyer beware' situation? I assume they signed a contract? What is the responsibility of CC company, only to cancel fraudulent activity or more?

There was a thread about Rentacell here a couple years ago. There was a post about Rentalcell with a similar story on the SlowTalk.com site. The owner had to remove the posting under threat of legal action from the company.

Here's the thread:
http://tinyurl.com/yh77xw

Wonder if this company is also Rentacell, and are they going to kill this thread?

People used to travel quite well before telephones were even invented.

The day I have to reach out and touch someone is the day I stay home; even here I don't have to reach out and touch someone. One landline is more than enough!

Using a calling card is, without question, the best way to call out if you can access a phone to make the triggering call, usually from your hotel room at night or a public phone and in many cases, but not all, the triggering call using the calling card's toll free number is free however...

1. That doesn't make it easy to receive calls...of course you can leave your hotel list and have people call you if they can remember just what day it is. ADVANTAGE mobile phone.

2. That doesn't make it easy to get info from somebody about a great restaurant and go running off to find a public phone, figure out how to use it and call the restaurant. No such problem with a mobile phone, just dial the number. Besides in Europe, much as in the USA, with the proliferation of mobile phones to the extent that no 10 year old kid would walk around without one, public phones are slowly becoming relics of a past age. ADVANTAGE..mobile phone.

And to the poster who wrote what did we do before phones, you are absolutely right. What did we do before jet planes? What did we do before television? Before radio? Before the invention of the steam engine?

Technology marches on....the exotic todahy will be the common place of tomorrow. Today, rates and procedures are dropping very quickly and while using a mobile phone today can be relatively shape, one would assume it will be even cheaper in the not so distant future...should we just say I'm a 20th century person or is it besxt, for us, to join the 21st century?

Said with all due respect to anybody who disagrees.

We just got back from 4 weeks in France. We purchased a 30E French SIM card from SFR, which came with 6 E of calls - at .55E per minute. We also purchased a phone card that costs .017E per minute within France. We purchased an interntional card also that costs .025E per min to call the US. We did not &quot;re-charge&quot; the SIM card with more minutes. To &quot;re-ccharge&quot; you can buy &quot;blocks&quot; of minutes - but they expire in 15, 30, 60, etc days. Also, if you do not &quot;re-charge&quot; your SFR SIM card, they give the phone number to someone else in 6 months after the last re-charge.

We spend 2 months in France most years. We won't do the France SIM card again. Our plan is to:
1. use the international card to call the US
2. Use the French card to call within France.
3. Activate &quot;International Roaming&quot; on our Cingular phone, and if anyone needs to call us from the US or from France, it will cost us 1E per min ($1.29).
4. If we need to call a restaurant, hotel, chateau (for opening times) and are not near a phone booth, we'll use the Cingular Cell Phone at 1E per min.

BTW, we could not access the two different calling card's access numbers from either our cell phone with the French SIM card, or our Cingular SIM card. We never had trouble calling the phone card's access number from a hotel.

About 15% of the time, we could not get a signal on the cell phone - but we stay in some remote places at times.

Stu Dudley

Everybody has different styles of travelling and different needs. When I am in Italy I NEED a cell phone due to all the friends in Italy that need to call me or I need to call them..to set up times when we are going to get together, make plans etc.

Others go to Italy (or elsewhere in Europe) and do not have that situation so their need for a cell phone is not that important.

I don't know what the name of the company was (but I'm sure I can find out from my friend).

She said that for one day alone the bill was $800. They would have to have to talked for more than 10 hours to the US to rack up that much of a charge if it truly was $1.22 per minute.

I'll see if I can find out more and report back.
I do think that if they are scam artists, the management of CDG should know about it to prevent this from happening to others.

I bought the Mobal $49.95 phone 2 years ago. It is great.

I just returned from several weeks in France. I used it upon arrival at CDG to call some French friends. I used it a number of times throughout France for restaurants etc.

I also give family and close friends my itinerary..hotels, dates, phone numbers etc.

It is very convenient, good rates and a good deal.

&quot;It is very convenient, good rates and a good deal.&quot;

Convenient....no more so than using the very same phone, getting it unlocked and getting a local or international sim.

Good rates...R1.49 or so to receive a call and the same to make a call are not my idea of good rates.

Local sim cards...local calls in France $0.48/minute or thereabouts...receiving calls in France with a French sim...FREE

I'll take FREE over $1.49/minute any day of the week.

But again, it really comes down to what one wants in a mobile phone...some people say it's just for emergencies, may use it twice or thrice over a two week period and I suppose that in that case, paying $1.49/minute to receive a three minute call (remember they round up to the next highest minute BTW) is fine and dandy.

But once having discovered the pleasure of having my very own mobile phone so that I can be reached or be able to talk to friends and colleagues 24/7 at not too bad rates...well as Karl Malden once said I wouldn't leave home without it. (was he talking about mobile phones or Amex tc's?)

But then again, as I admit, that's me.

And I still allow myself the luxury of not being reachable during a vacation.

XYZ123,

My Mobal phone charged me $67.50 for 21 calls for a total of 54 minutes. $67.50 divided by 54 = $1.25 per minute. That appears to be the rate charged. I had not looked at it that way as I was pleased with the use and the chage for same.I only checked it because of your message....evidently not the $1.49 that you thought it was, but $1.25. Is fine with me.

Well...I pay 14¢/minute to call the USA from Europe...so 54 minutes would cost me...$7.56! If you want to overspend for &quot;convenience&quot; that is certainly your perogative and who am I to say anything bad about it...I certainly wouldn't.

However, there surely are cheaper alternatives with very little loss of convenience.