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Orange Holiday Esim Warning

I wanted to post a warning about my experience currently with the Orange Holiday Esim. I bought the Esim while I was in Italy a week ago because I needed to make phone calls to an Italian number about a customer service problem I was having. The Orange Holiday plan states that you get “unlimited calls from mainland France and Europe to Europe”, meaning all calls within Europe should be free. You also get 30 minutes to call anywhere outside of Europe. In the last week I have been calling the same Italian number using the +39 prefix while I’ve been in France and Orange has been deducting from the 30 international minutes and NOT counting it as part of the unlimited calls within Europe. I didn’t notice this until I got a text saying I had fewer than 5 minutes of call time left.

Be aware that there is no customer service number. The only option to contact them about a problem like this is to fill out the form on their website and wait for them to email you back. So far I’ve heard no response and my phone was just cut off and now they want me to refill the Esim even though I have three more days left of what should be unlimited calls inside Europe. I’ve run into a problem involving Italian bureaucracy and it involves me calling every single day to see when a solution will happen.

Don’t buy Orange Holiday Esims!!!

Posted by
5687 posts

Bummer to hear of your problems with this eSIM, Bill - thanks for posting the feedback.

FYI, for future reference, you can make cheap calls to international phone numbers with Google Voice or Skype - only a few cents per minute, though you do have to buy credit in blocks of $10. (So expensive if you need to make just a few calls, but reasonable if you are going to be making frequent calls.) Then you can make the calls using WiFi or mobile data. Google Voice in addition allows free calls to US phone numbers; Skype doesn't for free.

Posted by
6323 posts

I'm wondering if it's an Italy thing. I know other members here have used Orange Holiday in other countries with success and have not had this problem.

Posted by
199 posts

Orange is almost impossible to reach in my experience. I tried to add minutes in France, with a Spanish SIM - forget it. Orange is very good when it works the way you would like. When not, well... And when you try to get it sorted at an Orange manned office, they just tell you to quit moaning and buy another SIM. They wouldn't know what to do anyways