Dual SIM card by SimCardGlobal.com - why do I need dual SIM

[RoadRunnerUS]

Well, I have to say the people I know are not quite like this. I don’t fill comfortable calling someone, especially on a business trip, and tell him “hey, I want to save some money, please call me back”… I also want the people that usually call me, to know my number, and to know it is always the same, wherever I am. Therefore, carrying 5-6 different SIM cards is not an option. I truly believe the “Isle of Man” concept, as you call it, is the better one.

What I don’t like in e-kit concept, is the fact, in my humble opinion, they are misleading people. A US tourist is going for 3 weeks to Europe and is looking for a good solution to carry one phone, be in touch with his family, and making some local calls. With e-kit, he see $9 card, and he is taking it, as one of the post above says “you can’t be wrong”. But after a week, all these extra surcharges added up, and he is already paying more than he planned. I am not talking about exotic places around the world. Russia, Indonesia (Bali), Argentine, China, Philippines, Ukraine, Peru, Thailand, they are all at $1.84. And the cream, India at $4.04… You know what? At least 5 Billion people are living in these “e-kit expensive” countries.

So to claim e-kit is the ultimate solution, while there are 100 companies over there with overall much cheaper solution is pure misleading, IMHO.

[bbob]

I did not look at the rates, just because it would cost to much time to compare them.

For me hidding rates in terms and yearly fees says enough but if you say there rates are to high well that speaks for itself not to consider this company. Ekit is a good choice. For the moment the have no fair use crap, no yearly fees and rates seem to be reasonable and their cards are cheap to get.

ekit is a good deal.

[RoadRunnerUS]

bbob, you are writing "I did not look at the rates". You have to realize that many readers and potential buyers are reading the posts here and what you are doing is IMHO irresponsible. How can you compare between companies without looking at the rates? Just by saying e-kit product cost $9? that is the only factor?

You are “promoting” e-kit, while it is clearly a bad choice, at least for most of us. I gave in posts above several examples where e-kit rates are almost double than SimCardGlobal.com, e-kit has lousy incoming calls and SMS policy and I also compared e-kit to other leading companies in the market. I did the research after your initial post and concluded that by the end of the day, e-kit are much more expensive than the others, and let’s face the reality.

I also don't understand why you do not consider hidden fees by e-kit, such as $0.19 per minute on receiving calls on USA number, $0.35 connection fee (I wonder what is the rational to pay double on a 1 minute call...), $0.10 on incoming SMS and whatever additional hidding fees they have in their bag of tricks, also as "hidding rates in terms", as you wrote above.

I hope the smart readers of this chain will decide for themselves based on the facts and overall total cost and not by the hype.

[MATHA531]

Originally Posted by RoadRunnerUS

bbob, you are writing "I did not look at the rates". You have to realize that many readers and potential buyers are reading the posts here and what you are doing is IMHO irresponsible. How can you compare between companies without looking at the rates? Just by saying e-kit product cost $9? that is the only factor?

You are “promoting” e-kit, while it is clearly a bad choice, at least for most of us. I gave in posts above several examples where e-kit rates are almost double than SimCardGlobal.com, e-kit has lousy incoming calls and SMS policy and I also compared e-kit to other leading companies in the market. I did the research after your initial post and concluded that by the end of the day, e-kit are much more expensive than the others, and let’s face the reality.

I also don't understand why you do not consider hidden fees by e-kit, such as $0.19 per minute on receiving calls on USA number, $0.35 connection fee (I wonder what is the rational to pay double on a 1 minute call...), $0.10 on incoming SMS and whatever additional hidding fees they have in their bag of tricks, also as "hidding rates in terms", as you wrote above.

I hope the smart readers of this chain will decide for themselves based on the facts and overall total cost and not by the hype.

Roadrunner.....

None of the fees you mentioned about e-kit are hidden...they are right there in the open. I believe the vast majority of North Americans will find that the majority of countries most (I agree not all) visit are listed in e=kit's zone 1 and hence those rates are quite competitive with most of the other international cards....now if I were going to Russia (BTW I need a visa to get there, I just can't go down to the airport and catch a plane to Moscow the same way I can to get to London or Tokyo) I would agree with you, e-kit is not a good choice. I would love you (or anybody else) to tell me of the best deal of a card that:

1. Has free reception of calls everywhere in the world (or at least less than say 20¢ US)

2. Dirt cheap calls both locally and internationally without surcharges to mobiles..

3. Free sms everywhere

4. Low initial cost (after all, we've now seen in the last year how fragile so many of these companies are. If you were to have told me a year ago that both O9 and United Mobile would be reposing in peace today, I wouldn't have believed you). So you don't want to have to make a big initial investment just in case nor have minimum recharging prices. You can recharge e-kit for as little as $10 via the internetl

5. A US direct dial number (as rates to call US lines are relatively cheap throughout the world).

6. No fair usage policy (I don't use it for business like most tourists don't and have problem with asking somebody to call me back)

7. No annual fee....

When you come up with such a card, let us all know. But as for me, and I would say for most tourists who need an international card (if you're visiting one or two countries, in some cases you might be better off with a local sim) e-kit is not the worst choice in the world.....but I indeed respect your opinion.

I just don't see why you have this hostility towards e-kit. They, at least to me who has read their stuff, quite up front with what they charge.

[RoadRunnerUS]

Well, we both know such a card does not exist... And if it is exist - don't buy it, because the company will go out of business soon! So we need to pick up what is important to us. Some will prefer low initial cost like e-kit, some will prefer low rates and many countries with free incoming call like SimCardGlobal.com, which are giving 65 countries with free incoming calls. I have nothing against e-kit, I just don't like when they charge you a connection fee on each call. Most of the companies already stopped it.

[Bossman]

RoadRunnerUS, As mentioned already I think, most of us here have more than one international sim card. Because there is no one solution. It's a matter of just determining your needs and what is more important to you and use the sim card that suits you. I will agree that for imcoming calls in most of Europe and the other countries I am likely to visit, Ekit is not bad. I already have something similar in TelnaMobile that works for me.

[bbob]

Roadrunner, for the us number and the connections fee, you can easlily just setup your own us number and forward this to the +44 number. This is the cheapest solution. I am using this now with one of the betamax brands and they only charge 5-6 eurocents per minute to forward this.

This is cheaper that using the +1 number that comes with any of these cards.

Bottom line – buy e-kit and you are doing the mistake of your life. You get it cheap to begin with, but you ended up paying more, much more, much, much more.

Who are you to tell us that we are ending up paying much much more without knowing the usage of an individual users and they countries they are using the card in.

Free incoming calls in over 65 countries it is stated on the main page.

When checking rates for different EU countries, NL, DE, BE, FR it says +44 atlas incoming call cost around $ 0.10 yes there is a list that gives the countries with free receiption but these are not main EU countries there are some others ones like russia that is free. So depending on your travel plans some countries are offered free that ekit does not offer for free.
This means if you visit Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherland, Belgium you pay for incoming call and this can be much more expensive that using ekit. That said for other countries ekit might be more expensive.

So roadrunner your statement that using ekit means paying much more is false it depends on individual use.

This does bring me back to the following problem on the website:

In the FAQ it states:

How long will my service last?
When you purchase Atlas +44 from SimCardGlobal.com it is good for one year. Toward the end of your service you will be reminded to renew your service for another year. The reminder will be sent to you by the type of communication you chose, SMS or E-mail. The cost for renewing the service for additional year is $21.

How long does my credit last?
Your credit last as long as your card is active. If your card expired, your credits expired as well.

Above statements can although not be found anywhere in the terms on the website and the on the frontpage it says:

Main features:
Your unused airtime never expires

So which one is the right one the faq or the mainpage ?
Never expires and expires untill the card is active and having to pay to keep it active the complete opposite.

[RoadRunnerUS]

I have to tell you guys, you are not representing the voice of the general public. The general public does not want to go with 5-6 different SIM cards. The general public does not want to set a US number that will relay your calls. Hey, now I need to search the Internet how to do that? And I probably have to pay for the service even if I am not using it.

To tell you the truth, the general public have hard time to replace a SIM card in the phone… So to me, all these suggestion sound like “The academy said”, bla, bla, bla. If you guys enjoying it – fine. If you feel comfortable calling someone and ask him to call you back, that is fine too. The rest of us will use SimCardGlobal.com, RoamSimple.com and the rest of the good guys.

It might cost us a little more, I am not even sure about that, but it is easy to use. You buy it once in a life time, and the number is yours forever. You don’t need to think, hey I am traveling to Estonia today, which card should I use. Is incoming calls in Russia free, so maybe I need to purchase a local SIM? Get real, talking on vacation is part of the vacation, not a rocket science.

As for SimCardGlobal discrepancies you mentioned, I do not see it on the web site now. Maybe it was fixed. It says "Your unused airtime credit never expires as long as your card is active"

[bbob]

As for your last point. I clearly wrote read the FAQ and in there it's says the credit is valid as long as the card is active. The card remains active if you pay a yearly fee. It's there it's unclear. So look more close like I did.

It's interesting to read that you come up with different answer everytime. You do have a point that most user will not check rates whenever they buy a card, but many will and it might be true that the average user is not on this board.

That said you are now really saying it does not matter which sim you buy so why make those statements people are paying to much when using ekit compared to simcardglobal.

Using your latest argument the general public doesn't care and if they buy either of these card they are still paying less than their at&t or other card.

As I said it's interesting to see that if you have no answer when someone makes a point you really end up saying the general public just want 1 or 2 cards and in the end they will not look at rates. Were not you who was telling me to look at the rates when giving an advice. It now seems that the different rates are not really interesting for the general public.

So what will be your next point ?

[petkow]

A lot of strange squabbling going on here! Roadrunner, if I did not know you it would sound like with the amount you want to plug SimCardGlobal and diss the rest, that you work for them! Oh hold on, I do not know you!

Originally Posted by RoadRunnerUS

If you feel comfortable calling someone and ask him to call you back, that is fine too.

I think most people do not really do this! The truth is that most savvy users (especially the ones who use this site) and especially those who wish to make longer calls will make use of the free/cheap incoming facility on a roaming SIM and then setup a callback using a 3rd party provider! This works out much cheaper than all the rates that are being squabbled about! Of course this is something that the providers of the SIM do not like, but hey that's life!

The rest of us will use SimCardGlobal.com, RoamSimple.com and the rest of the good guys.

Yes, or we use a combination of the good guys, the bad guys and the ugly guys! Whatever floats your boat!