SUNSIM experience in Germany

[snaimon]

Back from Germany. Purchased a SUNSIM card with my US based credit card Monday. Overall favorable experience with it. If they are still around and family goes next year, I will be buying one or two more of these jewels.

I had it sent to the hotel where I was staying in Duesseldorf. I was a bit frustrated as the card did not arrive before I did on Friday. Also did not arrive on Saturday. It did arrive on Monday, however. I was able to activate it right away by dialing their customer care. I had purchased a 15 Euro additional balance and actually needed to add another 15 Euros. That done via internet while in Berline

My wife did most of the calling. Land line calls were 8 cents and sound quality was generally good. A few dropped calls from the hotel room (we were on first - well ground floor). It works on 1800 as did the SIMYO card. Experienced some few problems with SIMYO. Also needed to add 15 Euros to the SIMYO balance.

The hotelier in Duesseldorf said he could not make cell phone calls from within his own hotel with his cell phone. Probably an older model. Last time we had D1 cards (900) and they worked a bit better than the 1800 frequency.

After the SUNSIM card arrived, I used the SIMYO for SMS and calls to cell phones and the SUNSIM for land lines. Also used SUNSIM in conjunction with the local (German) ENJOYPREPAID line for calls back to US to children and voicemail numbers. 8 e-cents + 4 us cents to call US. Not bad.

Also managed to burn up 50 Euros of my 64 Euro UM Riiing balance. I have upgraded to the UM+ and now regret using up that much of the balance. For the first 3 1/2 days I used the Riiing card to call local German numbers and USA. I also used it at the end to call the rental car company at a 180 number billed at the same rate as regular German landline calls. I was a bit surprised that it allowed me to dial such SERVICE numbers. I thought they would be treated as 800 toll free numbers which supposedly do not work with the Riiing cards. It was worthless for sending SMS, however.

I did make a few calls on the ATT calling cards, but not many.

Pleased with SUNSIM.

Stan

[GSM-Fan]

Originally Posted by snaimon

I also used it at the end to call the rental car company at a 180 number billed at the same rate as regular German landline calls. I was a bit surprised that it allowed me to dial such SERVICE numbers. I thought they would be treated as 800 toll free numbers which supposedly do not work with the Riiing cards.

0180s are shared cost numbers. They can be called like any normal german landline from everywhere abroad. And the price from abroad is also like calling a regular landline.

So it's quite normal that you can call them with an international prepaid card.

[andy]

Originally Posted by snaimon

Also used SUNSIM in conjunction with the local (German) ENJOYPREPAID line for calls back to US to children and voicemail numbers. 8 e-cents + 4 us cents to call US. Not bad.

You could also try callthrough from one or two Betamax brands, such as DialNow, JustVoip or Voipcheap.

DialNow is the cheapest, at 0.5c/min, and also the most flexible, as access numbers for all the available countries may be used (with a PIN for other than the registered caller ID) rather that just the country where the account is set up