Search For World's Most Expensive Sim

[RTuesday]

Originally Posted by andy

I know someone from Guernsey whose daughter, who lived in London, was stopped driving his car with Guernsey plates on. They were forced to pay the tax to import it.

You're allowed to drive a foreign-plated car in most countries for 6 months from when you arrive as a visitor. So, unless she had become a resident (with a job/home that's quite likely), she could have solved that by driving over to France and back for the weekend (and kept proof), to start a fresh 6 months.

[andy]

she is resident here; if her father had been driving his car it would have been fine

[Stu]

Originally Posted by RTuesday

There are a few people who've got in trouble trying to use those at borders.

The main "use" for them was to use as "id" for opening bank accounts, but they've just been laughed at by banks for the past ten years or so.

One of the best products of this type was a "Sark Drivers License".

(for those that don't know, Sark is an island in the (British) Channel Islands with no cars).

Another product that seemed to sell despite being useless was a registration (with plates) for your car in somewhere like Vanuatu. With this you were supposed to be able to drive your car all over Europe without worrying about import taxes etc (since you're just a visitor). The Vanuatu plates could be issued without them seeing your car - you buy the car as a tax-free export somewhere, then put these plates on.

They never explained how you're supposed to insure the car. Also, driving around Europe with Vanuatu plates is hardly low-profile! Imagine explaining to a traffic policeman or at a border why you're driving around in a Vanuatu car, with Sark drivers license, British Honduras passport, Thai mobile phone number etc...

The camaflouge passports are mostly a joke. Many of these countries have been overturned in well publicized insurrections, etc. Moreover, many of these countries changed their names in the 1960s or 1970s, e.g. Zanzibar, South Vietnam, etc.

Gee, I wonder what they charge for a "camaflouge passport" from the Confederate States of America, the British Mandate of Transjordan and Palestine, the Ottoman Empire, the British Overseas Territory of Newfoundland and Labrador, or the Trucial States. H---, if they offered an inexpensive holographic passport from the Holy Roman Empire, I might just buy it. While some banker's might be naive, I think you are playing with fire presuming that these individuals don't have a clue what countries exist or not.

I am not going to give the name of the site, but there is a Russian site currently offer "camaflouge passports" from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Nothern Ireland. The passport lacks the EU endorsement on top, but is maroon in color, has the same seal as modern UK passports, is machine readable, and is consistent in style with a British overseas passport issued in Hong Kong prior to 1997. I knew that the British Empire was compacting and I suspect that the "sun might now set" on it, but defunct?

I get a kick out of the notion of fooling terrorists with these fake passports. Of all the people in the world, who do you think would be the most tuned into the details of fake passports.

By the way, I have a stealth Nokia 6310 triband that I wouldn't mind offing. It has the special feature of not having the GPS stuff built into it. That was a popular "feature" in 2002. I wonder what I can get for it.


A Qatari national just paid US$1 million dollars for the mobile number 666-666. I guess he was not a Baptist.


Stu

[andy]

aha - I just thought of adding the mention of the expensive number, but see it is already here

[Przemolog]

Originally Posted by Stu

A Qatari national just paid US$1 million dollars for the mobile number 666-666. I guess he was not a Baptist.

When I read about this purchase on a Polish GSM portal, the info was provided with comment that unlike Christian, muslims and Jews consider 666 to be a "holy" number.
And the Chinese like 8's. According to the portal, the previous record of the fee for a single number (8888 888 was 270000 GBP paid by Sichuan Airlines.

BTW, Citibank Poland uses a shared cost line 0 801 666 666 as an info line for their credit cards :
http://www.citibank.pl/poland/homepage/english/3024.htm

[andy]

aha, now I've found the world's most expensive contract

but it seems to be getting more and more discounted all the time, down from $1500 sign-up and $500 a month

http://news.techdirt.com/news/wireless/?_d...%253Fdir%253Dup


some nice other stories there, like Boston Airport being told off by the FCC for telling Continental Airlines it can't offer free wifi at the airport ["security issue"!]

[AndreA]

Originally Posted by andy

some nice other stories there, like Boston Airport being told off by the FCC for telling Continental Airlines it can't offer free wifi at the airport ["security issue"!]

security issue, the new joke of 2000 :help:

[andy]

yeah, anyone can set up a forged wifi access point and try to steal credit card details, but I doubt if the airline would do it

oh, not that kind of security issue ??