Samsung Shop In Market Village

[bluemoon]

Hi, was in Hua Hin last week and bought a cheap phone to use while i was out there. I bought a true love sim and was assured that i could use both back here in the UK. Having turned my phone on it will only allow emergency calls only so i assume its blocked. Any ideas?

[wpcoe]

What is the make/model of the phone you purchased?

[bluemoon]

hi, its a samsung GT-E1200T and i bought a true move sim

[nikster]

hi, its a samsung GT-E1200T and i bought a true move sim

What? Why would you even try using a Thai SIM card in the UK? It won't work. If you want to keep your number to send SMS to your teerak or whatever, you have to get a post-paid SIM card in Thailand and make them enable international roaming before you leave.

Just pop a UK prepaid SIM in your phone and use that. Probably better rates to Thailand than a Thai sim with roaming enabled.

[wpcoe]

My original concern was that the phone's frequencies were not compatible with your UK provider(s), but I overlooked that you can make emergency calls, so that is not the issue.

I second nikster's recommendation suggesting that you get a UK prepaid SIM, as roaming charges with the True SIM can be pricy:

Note that you need to sign up for the roaming service in Thailand while you are still in Thailand. See the "Preparation before abroad" tab on this page for post-paid plans (or change to the pre-paid tab if that is appropriate.)

[lomatopo]

International Roaming can be enabled on most Thai Pre-paid and post-paid SIM cards. Some service providers even allow you to enable this feature via their web-services interface; I know both AIS/One-2-Call and DTAC/Happy do. Some post-paid customers have reported having to put a limit or cap on their account to avoid the 60,000 baht sticker shock when returning to Thailand.

It looks like TrueMove requires one to register in person to enable IR, and to provide a passport, while still in Thailand.

http://www.truemove.com/en/ir-out-pre-ready.htm

Note that local calling rates, in-bound or out-bound, might be on the order of 80 - 100 baht/min, maybe cheaper calls back to Thailand on the order of 40 - 50 baht/min. SMSes might be 10 baht/min. These are all rough estimates; you can verify the charges on the TrueMove website.

Your phone appears to support GSM 900/1800 so should work in most/any/all GSM countries.

When traveling internationally (Japan, U.S. mostly for me) I often leave my Thai SIM in a phone, but do not answer in-bound calls, choosing to return those from my current "local" SIM or via a calling card. The downside here is that you do have to pay for in-bound SMSes, which typically run 10 baht per or less.

Edited March 9, 2013 by lomatopo