SFR PrePay Data SIM
 

A brief outline of my experience trying to use the above..

The management summary is that I'm an unhappy customer and wouldnt use SFR again nor recommend them.

The outline is that I'm travelling by boat, currently around the Atlantic coast down to SW Spain. The boat has an Ericsson W25 which takes the mobile signal and creates an internal WiFi onboard using the mobile internet access. So the plan is to buy pre-pay data SIMs for each country along the way. I do also have a 3G adapter for the laptop to test the connection away from the boat.

Story is that I bought a PrePay Data SIM with a 1Gigabyte topup for €65 from SFR in Concarneau on August 2nd. It would connect to the 3G service but would not connect to the internet. Went back to the store 3 times without resolving the problem, each time with a slightly different thing to try - as far as my poor French and thier poor English could understand. Time came to leave Concarneau and the next port with an SFR shop was Vannes, 10 days later.

Situation at Vannes still the same as previous except there the man in the SFR shop says he's stopped selling that product as there were too many problems. Also says that as each store is a separate franchise I have to return to Concarneau for a refund - this is not feasible.

Tried the various customer service numbers given for SFR, each of which says that the number is out of use. Also could not find any email address to write to on SFRs website - at least I could have used Google translate to handle the language.

Eventually, on about the 21st, the internet connection magically started to work but the 1 Giga data topup was missing so no credit. Online credit purchase failed so unable to add more data or time.

As we'd been able to get WiFi at most ports we stayed in, it wasnt a big problem but it would have been good to have the 3G connection for the more isolated anchorages.

Basically it seems SFRs systems have some big problems and they appear to want to use forums to deliver customer service. Understand that we're in a country with a different language but that can be overcome if one's able to write and consider the responses.

I'll get off the soapbox now - basically I wouldnt use SFR again though.

You are not the first person having such problems in France!

The good news is that you will only have 'easier' countries along the way :)

Moved on...
 

Thanks for the encouragement, picked up a MASMovil SIM in Bilbao & all is now well!