Club Arnage

Can someone help me out with info about buying a French pay as you go mobile?    Keithk is out in Le Mans at the moment and he wants to buy a (possibly 2) French PAYG mobiles to avoid some of the huge phone bills that we generate out there.

He’s been into the local Carphone Warehouse but couldn’t find anyone who spoke any English and his French is not good enough to work out what he wants.

What should he be looking at? We want cheap and cheapful PAYG phones (pref. Nokia) and Sims – something that we can top up fairly easily.  Is there anything about call costs etc that we should be aware of?

Also is this something that he can do in Carrefour – I seem to remember them having phones?  
 
Cheers

Piglet

Could you just by a sim card Piglet? I know you can in Spain. Sounds like a job for Gilles to me

I think you probably can but we need to keep running our UK phones as well as French phones and it seems easier to just buy cheap mobiles complete with sim cards and not have any problems with our UK phone's being locked to UK networks etc.  

Where's Gilles when you need him!

You can email Gilles on  belair-gilles@wanadoo.fr :)

I've already a job !!!

And I ready don't know what you need.

There's tons of mobile phone stores here in Le Mans and you can ask advice at Carrefour.

Gilles is, of course, right. He does have a job to do to earn a living, and the closer the race gets, the busier he is.
Stroll into Carrefour, find the phone section - normally near the entrance, but it's near all the computers etc. you need a portable sans abonnement - if you cant say it, write it down.
As a guide, I bought a Motorola with an SFR prepaid card 5 years ago for 500FF - 50 quid. It still works fine. You can re-chip the card back in the UK.

Wonderful, thanks Kpy that's what I was looking for - I'll send Keithk off to have a go at it tomorrow.

Thanks again all.  

Thanks a lot Christopher...
... so you didn't come for PQ ?

When will you arrive at Lm? Can we plan a drink or a meal?

I begin to be really busy, first by my job, second by all the stuff I'm sourcing (Fridges, BBQ, pools, camping gear, bicycles,..., hostess bars,...)  :D

You have PM !!

Get your existing phone "unlocked" in the UK, then you can use a French payg sim card, about 25 Euros. Saves having to buy a whole new package.

As using a UK phone overseas, and making calls to overseas from the UK can be expensive, it may be worth contacting iyr existing provider. As I phone to overseas, and call back to the UK from overseas quite a bit, I have  adeal with Vodafone which I believe is something called "International Call Option" or something like that. I get a huge discount off standard tariffs for overseas calls and receiving/making calls overseas!

OK, so how did you manage then before the mobile phone was invented ? I am sure you managed then, so why not now, still its your money I guess.

By using a land line and a BT chargecard.

When abroad, it's generally courteous and endearing to chat to one's wife once in a while!

This is setting a dangerous precedent.

Not so much a dangerous precedent as a necessary evil. It makes future Le Mans negotiations much easier if she believes that you are thinking about her all weekend. Personally the only way I can achieve this image is by putting an appointment in my phone reminding me to ring her at a sensible hour (i.e. the ten minute gap between one night's drinking ending and the next days drinking beginning).

If you're on Orange you might be able to get a "try it for free" package, I can't remember what it's called but they let you have about £5 worth of calls internationally (only if you've not done this with your phone before), did this last year, very handy.
Or else use your company phone & try to pass it off as expenses, it help if you work for a french company ;)

Personally I'd just use walkie talkies once on site seeing as how cheap they are & good for pranks with other peoples conversations!! ;D

Thanks for all of the help and suggestions.  We're both on Orange and we've bought a chunk of international call minutes but if we use those to call each other whilst we are both out there we'll pay for both sides of the call.  For various reasons we both need to keep our UK phone's on so just swapping sims isn't a goer.  We've also got radios but again for various reasons won't always be in a close enough radius to use them.  

Keithk was going to head off today with the right phrase to see what he can find!  

Thanks again

Orange on payg did do 28 day money back , Any help?