WORLDSIM – ANYONE ELSE HAVE PROBLEMS?

Fed up of being fleeced for data every time I travelled, I recently purchased a‘WorldSim’ from the same named company.

A warning to others, it has simply not worked for me in several countries (the phone has worked, the data not) and their so called customer service is beyond a joke.

1. Spent an hour chatting on-line to their help desk without result. They had to email me from their tech team. 2. The advice I received from the tech team was exactly what I had already told them I had done in the first place. 3. Emails go unanswered. 4. Called the 24-hour helpline (chargeable) and gave up after waiting for 35 mins the first time and 43 mins the second time to talk with somebody. Based on my experience, I can not recommend WorldSim to anyone. It’s been a waste of money, time & resource.

Sad that these shabby operators carry on like this. Not sure if this was the same company, but I listened to a presentation by a “world sim” company who promised me the world (literally), but came up with jack sh*t – as they forget to tell me they would only do business with a Limited Company.

I am now finding though, the availability of free data when overseas increases with every trip.

In Europe – I have a data/call allowance within my contract.

USA – calls included within my allowance – free data available sufficiently.

Far East – many hotels in the region provide free mobiles for local calls and data – hotspots and free wifi available in most restaurants and cafes.

I tend to buy data when I am sitting on an aircraft before take off, realising I have missed one email/WhatsApp message, or when in a taxi/car for longer than an hour and I have nothing better to do than check mail/messages. More and more taxis now have free wifi.

The other option which is always available is if I am with a local colleague or friend with a large data allowance, I ask them to create a hotspot for me from there phone.

The only local sim I now have is for Thailand and that’s only for voice. I have also been using Truphone for the last three years or so. Have both my HKG and UK numbers on the same SIM, which removes the hassle of swapping over SIMs or carrying multiple phones. So far it has worked very well and with something like 60 “on-net” countries (US, essentially the whole of Europe, Oz and the main Asian countries), I rarely incur charges beyond my monthly allowance despite using it for both voice and data.

Couple of things to bear in mind though: • It is not cheap (approx GBP 70 for 1,000 mins and 1GB of data). • It may only be available to companies and not individuals (but this may have changed and/or be dependent on country of subscription). • The company continues to post losses, and despite Abramovich being a major shareholder, I wonder whether one day soon it will close shop.

For the moment though I am overall a happy customer.