jimdtrvl

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Does anyone know if I can buy sim card and minutes for my "unlocked" cell phone at CDG
or do I need to buy in city. Will be in Paris for a month so prefer sim cards as I have traveled extensively internationally.

Which cellular service is reasonably priced in France etc.

Thanks in advance.

jimdtrvl

Seamus

Lebara is great, and you can actually order in advance for delivery via mail to your home if you have a few weeks before departure. Last time I was at CDG I saw Lebara signs. www.lebara.fr

greg

Many people say to have SIM delivered to home. How do you do this? If you actually go to www.lebara.fr and try to buy SIM, the address has

1. no place to enter the name of the State
2. no place to enter the name of the country

and furthermore, the conditions says:

<i>Offre uniquement valable pour les consommateurs résidant en France.</i>

It helps to explain how to get around these pesky issues.

Lady1

We'll be spending September in France and plan on changing Sim cards. I've been hearing good things about Lebara and plan to use them, but not till we get there. Too much of a techno-dummy. Don't trust myself to have them delivered here and get it going on my own. I understand there are some steps involved. I'd just as soon have them change my cards and make sure I'm up and running.

StuDudley

We purchased Lebara SIMs each of the last 2 years and had them mailed to us in the USA. We just put our state, Etats Unis, and zip somewhere in the address areas - and it got here. We'll buy another one in about 1 month.

Stu Dudley

StCirq

greg, the form is based on European addresses, phone numbers, dates, etc. It's easy to fill out if you ignore that. I have had Lebara for several years now, and have never had a problem getting the SIM delivered to my US address.

I also have SFR, because many of the folks I need to talk to when in France are on SFR, and SFR-to-SFR calls are free (same with Lebara-to-Lebara, so I have both on my tri-SIM phone).

Getting Lebara, or SFR or any pre-paid service, up and running in advance doesn't require special skills. It's pretty intuitive. Just follow the online directions or the ones that come in the mail.

If you do decide to wait, the Relay stores at CDG have SIMs, but aren't always stocked with the particular ones you may want. If they're not, you can get SIMs at any Phonehouse store in Paris, or FNAC, or even tabacs.

Lady1

We aren't flying in. Coming into Paris by Chunnel. Know where the nearest store is from the station?

Sarastro

From Gare du Nord, you can walk 5 minutes to Gare de l'Est which has a FNAC at the front of the station. FNAC will have many options for pre paid SIM service.

Another way to obtain a free SIM is to have either Lebara or Lycamobile send one to your hotel. Let the hotel know it is coming and have them hold it for you. With any of these options, don't ask for a SIM earlier than a few weeks before you arrive because they have a shelf life of no more than 30 days.

jimdtrvl

Thanks everyone for the info. Got it.

jimdtrvl

FairfaxCA

I requested 2 free Lebara Sims on April 6th and one arrived in California yesterday. Hopefully the other will arrive soon. If you want more than one you need to fill out the request form twice; I used different names. I think Sarastro forgot to mention once you activate the sim online it is good then for 90 days. You need to use it within that 90 days or then it will expire. If you don't activate the card it probably expires sooner as he wrote. We leave in about 3 weeks and will add credit online then.

For those in the USA who want a Lebara Sim card but don't have time to wait there is an alternative. They can be ordered pre-activated with 7.50E credit from aerobile.com. The cards cost $24 each, which isn't as good as free. It's the best price I have found for delivery in the USA.

StuDudley

I just tried to order my Lebara SIM card, and there is now an edit on the postal code. Seems that they only allow French postal codes. I don't think this happened last year.

Any work-arounds??

Stu Dudley

greg

Stu,
I would like to read EXACTLY how to enter US addressed into the French address form. As you found out, there are fields, such as postal codes, with validations preventing entering just anything into them. It is not possible to just ignore the type of fields. I have sent in a form three weeks ago, and I have yet received a SIM. Except for the street number and name, I crammed city, state, zip code, and Etats Unis, into the "ville" field since it seemed to have the least number of restrictions except for the number of characters.

StuDudley

If you submitted it three weeks ago and haven't received it yet - it doesn't look good. We usually receive snail mail from France in about a week.

Stu Dudley

StCirq

I just filled one out with absolutely no problems.

Mme
First Name
Last Name
Street address with number
City
Postal Code
Type of identification (passport for me)
Passport number

I don't know why you crammed all that into the Ville box. All you have to put in the ville is the name of the city/town. There's a separate box for postal code. It accepts my postal code with no problems. They don't need to know your state - they have the postal code if you fill it out right. Just don't mess with the telephone box, but it's not a required field anyway.

StuDudley

StCirq - have you received your SIM yet???

How is the French post office going to know that your SIM is to be shipped to the US?? I realize that Washington DC is a giveaway in your case, but if the city is St Pierre & postal code is 46152????

Stu Dudley

StCirq

Hi, Stu.

I just ordered it this evening, so no, don't have it yet. I did get this by email almost immediately, though: "Merci d'avoir choisi Lebara Mobile ! Vous avez commandé votre SIM sur lebara.fr et la recevrez dans les prochains jours. Votre numéro de téléphone Lebara Mobile vous sera communiqué dans le courrier accompagnant la carte SIM."

This will be the third or fourth lebara sim I've ordered. They all came to me, most within a week, one within about 12 days, from England, with my US address on them, followed by "France." That doesn't seem to have fazed anyone in any post office on either side of the ocean.

StuDudley

I got the instant e-mail response too - and everything went OK the last two years with Lebara. But Greg ordered his 3 weeks ago & hasn't received it yet.

Stu Dudley

StCirq

Well, I'm sure it's because Greg "crammed" all that information into the one field on the form, which is entirely unnecessary. Lebara is probably scratching heads to try to figure out how to reach him. What he did probably makes no sense to the Lebara computer system (just a guess). Anyone these days can easily figure out online the correlation between a US Zip Code and a town, no matter how small, so if you fill out the form as I suggested, I assume there would be no problem. On the other hand, other people have reported waiting 3+ weeks to get their SIMs, so maybe it's in the mail.

lhodder

Hi, everyone. I just 'chatted' with the Lebara.fr agent, and she said no problem ordering SIMs for delivery outside of France. Just enter the city, state/province, country, and ZIP/postal code in the "City" field, and enter "99999" in the "post code" field. I did so, and had no problems. She said it would be up to 15 days for delivery.
Cheers.
Len

StuDudley

We received 2 Lebara SIM cards in the mail Monday. They took 10 days to get here (San Francisco area). We purchased "time" on-line, and to our surprise - these SIMs work in the US (AT&T carrier) - but I don't know what the cost would be.

We worked with various scenarios with the hope we could keep them alive for our 2015 trips - but it doesn't even come close to making financial sense (more than $150 wasted). We'll order a new SIM next year.

Stu Dudley