christianpfc
December 10th, 2011, 01:10
Keeping your mobile phone number as a tourist in Thailand
How is it possible to keep oneтАЩs SIM card and phone number as a tourist (visiting Thailand twice per year)? This is not the first topic I open about SIM cards in Thailand.
My tale of woe / The nightmare continues
August 2009: First holiday in Thailand. By arbitrary SIM card in MBK (a one-two-call Freedom SIM).
January 2010: Second holiday in Thailand. SIM card is still valid.
April 2010: SIM card expires. Two weeks before expiry, I send it to Farang (ex-) friend, including 500 Baht in the letter so he can charge it. It gets lost on the way (or my Farang (ex-) friend loses it when he is drunk or a Thai he lured into his room steals it because he didnтАЩt pay him).
IтАЩm a clever boy, I have a copy of all my phone numbers (during each holiday, I write them down on paper and save them in my phone; after each holiday, I type them into my computer).
June 2010: Third holiday. I go to MBK ground floor (I think the shop was called Telewiz), and there I get a new SIM card, onto which my old number is transferred. The service is free, I just pay for topping up. I register this card under my name (the form is in Thai, at that time I couldnтАЩt read Thai, so I donтАЩt know what I signed).
The card expires a few weeks before my following holiday.
December 2011: Fourth holiday. I cannot make or receive calls on this SIM card. The balance that remained after my holiday is lost. After topping up, everything works fine. So there seems to be a period of some weeks after the card expires, where the balance is lost but the number is still in the system and becomes reactivated upon topping up. I thought I found the solution to all my problems, but didnтАЩt write about it on the forums because I wanted to confirm my findings by a second experiment.
The card expires sometime in spring 2011.
August 2011: Fifth holiday. I try to top up. It doesnтАЩt work. Damn! The following day, I go to MBK ground floor shop and inquire. They send me to Siam Paragon 4th floor. The card expired and my number has been issued on a new card, which is not in use but somewhere out in a shop. I canтАЩt get my old number back. I get a new SIM card with a new number. Again, I pay only for top up. Clever boy, I took my old expired SIM card and they copy all my saved phone number onto the new SIM card.
(Current card has validity until January 2012, I will be back in December 2011.)
One solution I see for this problem is transferral of balance or validity. For a small amount of money (I think 3 Baht per transaction), you can transfer balance or validity from one card to another. My cards are usually valid three months, but my holidays are six months apart. So I just need 3 months validity from a Thai friend. (I wanted to try this validity transfer several times, but always forgot or postponed until it was too late.) So basically I need a Thai friend whose validity grows faster than time passes by, whereas for me itтАЩs the other way round.
(There were a few reports about Thai boys playing with your phone and transferring balance to their phone, but I wouldnтАЩt let someone play with my phone; and when I let someone make a call on my phone I watch closely what he dials.)
There are various call schemes (strangely, they call them тАЬpromotionтАЭ), usually top up 100 Baht gives a validity of one week. But I do not want to study telecommunication science, I just want one phone number and cheap calls and SMS, one price 24/7.
So far, I spent many, many hours research on the internet, about 1000 Baht and about two half days of my hard earned and deserved holiday and I still donтАЩt fell much closer to this very simple issue.
Do you have suggestions? I want something simple and easy and cheap.
At least I cannot complain about the service. In Telewiz and the AIS shop I was served with not much waiting and the people seemed competent and the service was free, I only paid for topping up.
Comparison to Europe: In Germany, this practice has been outlawed. I still have the same SIM card as then years ago and make a few calls every time I visit friends and relatives, which is once or twice a year. I keep my number and balance.
United Kingdom: SIM card expires after 3 months of inactivity, remaining balance is lost (personal experience). France the same.
From England, I have good experience with Lebara (cheap international calls and a very simple pricing scheme), so I took Lebara again in France. From France to Thailand 9 c/min to a mobile, 1 c/min to a landline, 15 c/SMS, 15 c/connection. Very simple, even I can understand.
Final notice: I am not a phone person, in Europe I make on average two phone calls per months, and on one average day in Thailand I exchange about ten calls/SMS.
How is it possible to keep oneтАЩs SIM card and phone number as a tourist (visiting Thailand twice per year)? This is not the first topic I open about SIM cards in Thailand.
My tale of woe / The nightmare continues
August 2009: First holiday in Thailand. By arbitrary SIM card in MBK (a one-two-call Freedom SIM).
January 2010: Second holiday in Thailand. SIM card is still valid.
April 2010: SIM card expires. Two weeks before expiry, I send it to Farang (ex-) friend, including 500 Baht in the letter so he can charge it. It gets lost on the way (or my Farang (ex-) friend loses it when he is drunk or a Thai he lured into his room steals it because he didnтАЩt pay him).
IтАЩm a clever boy, I have a copy of all my phone numbers (during each holiday, I write them down on paper and save them in my phone; after each holiday, I type them into my computer).
June 2010: Third holiday. I go to MBK ground floor (I think the shop was called Telewiz), and there I get a new SIM card, onto which my old number is transferred. The service is free, I just pay for topping up. I register this card under my name (the form is in Thai, at that time I couldnтАЩt read Thai, so I donтАЩt know what I signed).
The card expires a few weeks before my following holiday.
December 2011: Fourth holiday. I cannot make or receive calls on this SIM card. The balance that remained after my holiday is lost. After topping up, everything works fine. So there seems to be a period of some weeks after the card expires, where the balance is lost but the number is still in the system and becomes reactivated upon topping up. I thought I found the solution to all my problems, but didnтАЩt write about it on the forums because I wanted to confirm my findings by a second experiment.
The card expires sometime in spring 2011.
August 2011: Fifth holiday. I try to top up. It doesnтАЩt work. Damn! The following day, I go to MBK ground floor shop and inquire. They send me to Siam Paragon 4th floor. The card expired and my number has been issued on a new card, which is not in use but somewhere out in a shop. I canтАЩt get my old number back. I get a new SIM card with a new number. Again, I pay only for top up. Clever boy, I took my old expired SIM card and they copy all my saved phone number onto the new SIM card.
(Current card has validity until January 2012, I will be back in December 2011.)
One solution I see for this problem is transferral of balance or validity. For a small amount of money (I think 3 Baht per transaction), you can transfer balance or validity from one card to another. My cards are usually valid three months, but my holidays are six months apart. So I just need 3 months validity from a Thai friend. (I wanted to try this validity transfer several times, but always forgot or postponed until it was too late.) So basically I need a Thai friend whose validity grows faster than time passes by, whereas for me itтАЩs the other way round.
(There were a few reports about Thai boys playing with your phone and transferring balance to their phone, but I wouldnтАЩt let someone play with my phone; and when I let someone make a call on my phone I watch closely what he dials.)
There are various call schemes (strangely, they call them тАЬpromotionтАЭ), usually top up 100 Baht gives a validity of one week. But I do not want to study telecommunication science, I just want one phone number and cheap calls and SMS, one price 24/7.
So far, I spent many, many hours research on the internet, about 1000 Baht and about two half days of my hard earned and deserved holiday and I still donтАЩt fell much closer to this very simple issue.
Do you have suggestions? I want something simple and easy and cheap.
At least I cannot complain about the service. In Telewiz and the AIS shop I was served with not much waiting and the people seemed competent and the service was free, I only paid for topping up.
Comparison to Europe: In Germany, this practice has been outlawed. I still have the same SIM card as then years ago and make a few calls every time I visit friends and relatives, which is once or twice a year. I keep my number and balance.
United Kingdom: SIM card expires after 3 months of inactivity, remaining balance is lost (personal experience). France the same.
From England, I have good experience with Lebara (cheap international calls and a very simple pricing scheme), so I took Lebara again in France. From France to Thailand 9 c/min to a mobile, 1 c/min to a landline, 15 c/SMS, 15 c/connection. Very simple, even I can understand.
Final notice: I am not a phone person, in Europe I make on average two phone calls per months, and on one average day in Thailand I exchange about ten calls/SMS.