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Orange Esim, FYI

Posted by (Vancouver, BC, Canada) on

I've always been a fan of Orange esim (which gives you a French telephone number which allows you to make regular phone calls and texts and provides you with limited minutes to make international calls back home), but not so much anymore.

I need an esim for an upcoming 21-day trip. On the Orange app and website, Orange markets a 20GB esim for "14 days". This led me to believe that I would have to purchase the 50 GB "30 days" esim. The 50 GB plan is about 10 times the data what I normally would use during a vacation and would cost me about CAD$70, which is quite expensive.

When I start looking at Orange resellers, it appeared that I could buy the same 20 GB plan for 30 days. After checking with people on Reddit and then chatting with the Orange representative, it turns out that the so-called "14 days" is only a recommended usage and that the plan will actually be valid and active for a full 30 days. IMO, this false advertising would lead many people to end up paying for the more expensive 50GB plan if their trips are longer than 14 days.

Just FYI. Now I am going to switch to Roamless for my trip.

Posted by
597 posts

I think the Roamless would be cheaper than the Orange prices. I like that it is Pay as you go, and the money never expires. So any unused money in my digital wallet remains for me to use on my next trip. And you can make outgoing calls worldwide from the Roamless app.

Posted by
1593 posts

Travelguy

You are correct. At almost USD$30 for 20 GB, Orange charges about USD$1.50 per GB. Depending on where you are traveling, for instance, in Europe, Roamless charges USD$2.45 per GB. At first blush, it looks like Orange is the better deal. However, I usually use only about 5 GB per trip. The rest of the unused 15 GB of Orange data will expire after 30 days. So effectively, I'm paying about $4 per GB for Orange. So, at least for me, Roamless is the better deal. And any unused Flex credit does not expire.

There is another pay-as-you-go company called Bcengi. In Europe, Bcengi only charging about USD$1.26 per GB. However, Bcengi does not offer in-app telephone function which is very important to me.

Posted by
597 posts

Funpig, I also have an account with BCengi (I learned about them on this forum). I use it "up north", where my Tmobile account has no cellphone coverage, but I can get Verizon with BCengi. What I did often, was get data from BCengi on my tablet, and activate a wifi hotspot on the tablet. Then I connected my cellphone to the tablet's hotspot, and enabled wifi calling. So then I could text and call like normal with my normal phone number. I could have done this with Roamless, but they are only Tmobile and AT&T, where BCengi was Verizon and AT&T (in the U.S.).

Posted by
1593 posts

travelerguy

With non-expiring credits, I guess there is no really good reason not to use both Roamless and Bcengi. Being able to tap into different and possibly better networks is always a good thing. But my esim collection on my phone is starting to get cluttered.

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