Not all phone companies are equal
This is a cautionary tale. I know that here in the U.S. it's important to check out different mobile/cellular phone companies before deciding on the one to subscribe to, because not all of them may meet your particular needs, e.g. regarding national coverage. But I didn't translate this knowledge to my experience in France. I bought a used phone over ebay that was gsm unlocked, so I could buy a sim card in France and have personal telephone service. It cost me about $23, and I didn't get an instruction book with it. When I got to Bordeaux, I went to a Tabac, a tobacco store,because I was told that SIM cards could be bought there. The one I went to, near my hotel, said they were out of them, but suggested I walk down the street into the Centre Ville pedestrian shopping area and I could find an SFR store. SFR, I found out later, is the French affiliate with Vodafone network. So I did that. Didn't find anyone on the store who spoke English, but I negotiated the business successfully, I thought, in French. Paid 45 euros for a phone number, and a SIM card that gave me a month's worth of phone service (only about 30 minutes worth of calls). I made a point of asking if this was good for all of France, and was told yes. However, as soon as I got to Plum Village, I found out that I didn't have any service there. Then later, when I got to Henri's house outside of St. Remy de Provence, I got a message that said Emergency only. So the phone was practically useless for me except when I was in Paris (I didn't have any calls to make when I was in Bordeaux. Then, when I got to Paris, I tried to set a personal ID number for accessing messages, and the instructions were all in French. Then I tried to access the messages that appeared on my phone, which were from SFR and in French. Had to ask someone to listen to them for me, and to help me set up my PIN number. Turns out that the SFR office in Bordeaux hadn't returned my passport to me, after asking for it for identification, and were sending me messages that they had it. I hadn't needed it so far, so I didn't notice it was missing, but I was going to be heading home in four days, so I had to ask my cousin to help me get it to Paris in time, and his secretary successfully searched for the phone number of the Bordeaux office and had them send it to his office. Since I got home, I tried going to the company's web site to write a letter of complaint to them. However, every time I clicked on "contact us" I got directed to a page that had nothing to do with contacting them. After I complained about my lack of service to Nicole, a French friend, she said she would have recommended another company, Orange, which has better coverage.
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