It only gives me the option to upgrade to 5G for €19.99 which I’m not interested in. No downgrades available in Mon Compte. Maybe I’m locked in to this tariff and the only way out is to cancel and order a new SIM…
Ahh, are you on the “special” deal 11 quid for a year and then 20 quid? If so you may not be able to change mid deal. I have the option to chnage my 20 quid deal to a 2 euro one.
If you can be faffed, order a £7 p.m. from iD Mobile using any old UK address, get someone in UK to initialise it and send it to you. Unlimited calls, unlimited texts, 4Gb data, all over Europe. I have this deal and it works perfectly well.
Unless you are a heavy user of calls you will not run up against the ‘unreasonable roaming use’ wagging finger. I had their £5 p.m. 250 min deal all the 5 years I was in Spain - never had any trouble.
Agree UK phone deals cheaper BUT I think it really odd to not have a local number. I have a kind of friend that I literally hardly speak to any more as it is just such a pain as she only has a UK phone regardless of having lived here for 6years. I love beign able to just send a text which I can’t do on my plan to a UK number so it is very easy to slip out of the habit of staying in touch when you can’t call or test easily. I’m also guessing for French businesses / bank texts etc it would be a problem as well.
You should be able to, my hubby certainly did when we were chasing up the teen having upgraded his account.
Thanks @captainendeavour I had a similar GiffGaff number which worked well for the first 3 months I was in France and then they sent a message saying under their reasonable use policy I had to use it at least once every 3 months within the UK. Hence the switch to Free, plus as @toryroo says I prefer having a French number.
Sounds good - I think I need to review our UK contracts.
I suspect for EU users who are out of the UK for extended (i.e permanent) periods the wagging finger might wag a lot more post Brexit.
I do have a FR number for exactly the banking reasons you mentioned. Free @ €2 p.m. And filling in forms - most will only accept a local number.
Same for ES. I must maintain a Spanish phone number. I have an account which was originally broadband, landline and mobile. When I cancelled the account because I was not going to be there [being in FR now] they put me on a mobile tarriff that costs 0,00€ p.m. ! I only have to pay for calls I make- which I never do on that SIM.
So the problem is not so much at her end [tho’ I agree she should have some sort of FR account] but that your account won’t allow you to contact her - which is a bit strange. I guess you wouldn’t be allowed to contact me on my +44 SIM, or anyone else’s, either. I wouldn’t put up with a deal that imposed that restriction - why do they?
In the years I have had an iD mobile account - I took their intro offer when they started up - and used it in FR and ES, including it being my principle comms account once I became full-time in ES, I have never had any ‘roaming abuse’ notices. Their system must be able to see that the usage in UK is minimal compared to non-UK.
Doesn’t seem to bother them. It may become an issue. We shall see.
Indeed, that’s the problem I’ve run into with Vodafone.
The other problem is that it also led to them realising I’ve not worked for them for over 2 years, and to subsequently cancel my staff discount that I’d been using with my mum’s and son’s phones too 
it’s on the Free €2 sim,I’m broke (and a bit tight with money as a result 
) and would have to pay €10 for the pleasure plus not cheap per text so I have just never bothered.
I already changed my SFR number to Free…the problem is nowthat I can’t change anything related to the old SFR number as it’s not the main number.
I tried changing to the 19,99offer with the old temporary number…something may have worked but of course, no idea until it actually does.
I think I’ve tried everything…even phoning again several times & even an email ffs.
I am using the service offered by Leclerc, called “reglo mobile” €25 a month, no contract, you pay via internet, when they send you a reminder. 100 GBs and calls to all kinds of places. I was using SFR,20 gig, plus calls etc, but they only do it via bank order and you have to write to them to cancel.
The Reglo service stays open for two months, if you forget or can’t recharge. Its only fault is that it works on a proper month, so you have to start on the 1st of a month. If you start before that date, there is a small charge to bring it up to the correct start date.
Hope this helps.
My wife is also with Réglo Mobile, 60gb and unlimited calls for 9.99 euros per month. She gets much better signal than me of Bouygues.
Sosh (sosh.fr), which is the low cost arm of Orange, comes highly recommended. It’s practically sans engagement. Cheap for a few Gb of data per month and unlimited calls to most types of number.
If you don’t need any data and a lowish number of call minutes then go with Free for 2 euros per month. Also theoretically sans engagement. But to terminate you absolutely must send a letter to the address they say - and DO take the avis de reception option in the case of Free.
If you do get unhappy with a network then just as in the UK you can port to another network which avoids having to give a notice period in the prescribed way - having to give notice to terminate seems to require paying a chunky fee to send your official notice as a registered letter and having to make a physical trip to the Post Office to do so.
Free is a nightmare if you hit any real problems but at 2 euros a month you may be very happy.
Wow! I didn’t see that offer with réglo.
Mind you, I just saw the poster on the Leclerc door and went for it.
I was with a visiting friend who was in France for 6 months and didn’t want a bank system and was looking for GBs!
A friend who has a Coriolis franchise could only offer 3Gs, which was no good, as he did a lot of watching of films and motor racing etc.
In fact, he got better reception than I got with SFR, so when he went back to Germany, I held onto his service and dumped SFR.
I could live with 60Gs, especially if it only costs 9.99.
One problem is the variety of offers and being able to locate them!
regards
Another friend of mine has FREE and had a very odd problem.
She went over her set fee by €1.64 and they shut her down, because they only had a mandate for the set fee.
After a great deal of phone calls, she had to make a ET to pay the 1.64.
SFR have a system where they can collect any over use such as non French mobiles. They’re not tied to the set fee.
It was the “2 hours” mobile allowance she went beyond.
That’s bizarre Vincent. I suspect the issue is at the bank end. Standing order vs direct debit sort of thing, because Free bill me my 19.99 each month plus anything I’ve incurred outside the plan.
This is a screenshot from my account.
I don’t know what I did…or maybe you did somethingJohn…but it appears to have worked, & I am grateful for your input
The power of prayer Bob 
Rather than start a new thread thought it better that I should pick up on this one.
Anybody know of a tariff that alllows for maybe a fixed monthly charge calls to none French mobiles…eg to uk. For example in the UK O2 offer their customers via an “International bolt on” option for a £3 fixed monthy charge unlimited calls to none uk mobile numbers for 1p a minute. Or tariff option that has cheapy calls to none French numbers…other European networks and USA?
I think a network with good coverage Orange, SFR or Bougyes is advisable rather than a VNO who often can be flakey with iffy customer services as they don’t own their infrastructure so just pass network issues to the infrastructure operator.
The low cost tarriffs generally have poor data of sub 2gb which then becomes expensive when exceeded and then packages seem to jump up to 50+gb.
In France, Syma and Lebara
The main networks did include this in their standard packages till around January 2021. But since then sneakily redrawn their packages not to include outgoing calls from France to UK and EU. In the case of Sosh, they forced migration onto the new packages without this, without even mentioning this change to customer before forcing the package switch.
Orange do offer an add-on for these calls, last time it was 10 euros per month. Otherwise it’s included in their top end 50 euros pm package.