Talk:France/@comment-194.73.86.146-20120418120024

I recently bought an Orange Mobicarte SIM in the UK on eBay. On the off chance, I emailed the contrats.blois email address with the SIM card number (not the phone number) and a scan of my ID (driving licence) before I went to France. They replied pretty quickly and had registered it.

Once in France I struggled to top up my account. First I tried it through the #123# menu. I used my Sterling (VISA) Debit Card, a Euro (VISA) Debit card and a Sterling (MASTERCARD) credit card. None of them worked with a message of a problem with the card (or payment?).

Tried to log onto the website to top up. Asked for password to be SMS'ed to my phone, but that didn't work until after I'd received the SMS that said my line was identified which took about 14 hours to arrive after I'd first switched on the phone after entering the country.

Once I had a the password I logged into the Orange Customer portal to try and top up there. The three payment options we CB (Carte Bleu - French only Debit Card style payment), CB Visa and Mastercard. I tried my Mastercard Credit Card with the Mastercard option but got a message back saying something about "impossible". I don't know if the payment system has problems with foreign registered cards or whether it was my banks that were blocking it.

In the end I bought a 5 EUR topup from a Tabac on the Champs Elysee and entered the 14 digit number from that through the #123# Menu system, and selected Internet Max. A couple of hours later, I tried it and it worked, without debited further credit. I don't know how much data I used, but I used it at a normal rate most days, and one day it was updating RunKeeper for four hours as I did the Paris Marathon :-)

I don't know if it is possible to by top-ups before getting to France, but if you can I wish I'd bought another 5 EUR (ontop of what came free with the card) so I could have topped it up and started using the Internet Max sooner, but it wasn't a big drama.

Hope that helps someone