So Far, I'm Loving Lebara
 

Ordered my free Lebara SIM card only 5 days ago, and it arrived today! Wow!

My quad-band, dual-sim unlocked phone also shipped yesterday. Now just hoping it all works.

If you like it I must need it.

What is it?

It thought you misspelled the tar pits.

www.lebara.fr - free SIM card for France, and cheap rates once you have it. Heard about it from some cell phone expert here on Fodors. Ordered it online 5 days ago (had heard it would take about 2 weeks to get here). Got it today.

BTW, I ordered the phone on e-bay (yes, I did look through hundreds and hundreds of models). It was #31.00. Takes two SIMs, which means I don't have to take out a US SIM card and insert a French one - they're both there - is unlocked and works on all frequencies, has a camera, video, and (drum roll) flashlight (useful extra IMO).

BTW, Lebara emailed me my French phone number the day after I ordered the SIM card.

We ordered the Lebara Sim card for France, they arrived about 2 months before we were to arrive in France. We had some trouble activating them so we ended up buying new Lebara Sim cards for 3€ with 5€ of free time at a Tabac. Since my DH rides his bike through the mountains long distances, it's important that we can reach each other in case of an emergency. I think we put 10€ on each card because we didn't know how much we would use and ended up with over 7€ on each after 21 days in France. One of the best features was that our calls to each other were free.

We've used Lebara now in France and another free card from the UK for our two week visit there in Feb. We loved using Lebara it was so easy and cheap.


We also bought two quad band phones on ebay, they both worked fine when we tested them before we left, but once we put the French Sim cards in, my phone went wonky, it would work sometime but not always. We ended up buying a new unlocked phone for me for €39 at a phone store in Belley. The clerk was fantastic, her English and my French combined made the transaction smooth. She even programed the phone making sure all the menus and prompts would be in English for me. We then used our new Lebara cards and had no further issues with our phones.

That should have been $31.00, not #31.00.

Well, as I said, we'll see. I have an old quad-band phone that worked fine for me all over Italy in France in the last 8 years, so if the Lebara SIM doesn't work in my new phone, I suppose I can always use that.

good to read - I have been debating what to do. My local Sprint store said to pick up a phone in the Paris airport It has a certain limited amount of minutes and no international roaming fees etc for about $40.

I am there one week so it should do the trick?

It will probably be more expensive to buy a phone at the airport, so I would wait till I got to my first destination.

As I said my unlocked phone was €39. Make sure you know how much each minute will cost, we were offered a phone for €29 but the minutes were very expensive as each top up of €25 only bought 30 minutes. So in the end the more expensive unlocked phone and the Lebara Sim was much cheaper for us.

That also includes a phone call of about 30 minutes to the States to our insurance company to report that my husband's bike had been stolen.

Most people report not being able to find a phone to buy at CDG.
There have been reports of Lebara SIMS available at Relay shops
at the airport.

I bought a Samsung a187 on eBay for $29.... it is used but looks quite good, only one small rub spot, otherwise new-looking. Phone is quad w/qwerty keypad, for calls and text (maybe internet but it is not a 'smart' phone). Got a Lebara SIM about 12 days later. My 'resource' for instructions on setting up the SIM is 'Sarastro' on TA-Paris forum; trolled enough postings to see what needs to be done.

Update: Yesterday I received my quad-band, unlocked, dual-sim phone that I bought on Ebay for $31.00. I was a bit shocked at first to note that it was bright (and I mean BRIGHT) pink (not my color at all), but then I figured, well, it'll be hard to lose, right?

Charged it overnight and put the Lebara SIM in, and today, when it was totally charged, started to read the User Manual to make sure I understood all the functions.

Well...it's all in Spanish. Hmmm...why is that? I can deal with Spanish fairly OK (never studied it, but did decades of Latin and French and Italian, so it's kind of intuitive), but it's not what I was expecting. I'm sure there's a way to change the language (and I'm working on that), and I'm sure I can pop into a Lebara store when I get to Paris and have someone change it for me....but WHY would it be set for Spanish? Oh, and I've already gotten two text messages in Spanish on it that I don't know how to access yet, but I'll figure that out, too. More confusing than I expected.

I haven't put a US or other SIM card in it yet, so it's operating only on the one SIM card.

GOD, it's PINK!!!

My spare phone switched to German when I put in a German SIM card and reverted back to English when I put my English SIM back in so maybe try your regular SIM and see if it changes to English.

Thanks, CarrieAnn, but I want it in French.

Good job, StCirq!