Cell phones rentals for use in France

If you go into a "CARREFOUR" supermarket in France, you can buy a cellphone with a few euros credit for under 30 euros.

Emma, there have been some posts here about "problems" experienced by some customers that have used Rebelfone. I'd be very cautious! I'm assuming you've checked the other "travel phone" firms? You might find that it's actually less expensive to buy an inexpensive unlocked GSM phone, rather than renting. Good luck!

so...I googled rebelfone in this domain and I actually couldn't find any specific posts describing problems with it. Where did you see it? I wouldn't be shocked since their prices really are a lot lower than other companies but I haven't seen anything.

I guess you missed this one, posted in April of this year: Anyone requiring an international cell phone or international sim card? When I travelled abroad this year to Europe, I needed a better solution for my cell phone. I go on a trip every year and when I come back, I'm always faced with huge roaming charges on my cell phone bill. Deciding to try another route, I soon heard about Rebelfone, a company that provides temporary cellular service for those who are traveling. Unfortunately, that's all I knew about the company and I didn't bother with researching any more about them before I packed my bags. I soon found out that the 35 networks they say are in partnership with don't cover even the most populated areas of service. And if you have a problem and want to talk to the people at Rebelfone, I wouldn't bother. They are either unavailable or rude. I wish I had done more extensive research on Rebelfone before I decided to give them a try. If I had, I might have found out that the Better Business Bureau has given them a rating of D-. This means that not only does the BBB find nothing of value in this company but that they also strongly advise using caution when choosing them. I might have also found out that there were customers just like myself who had the exact, or worse, experiences. I'm sure there are other companies available that can help reduce the cost of roaming cell phone charges while you're abroad. But Rebelfone certainly isn't one of them.

That's not the only bad report I have read, just the most recent one.

OK then...scratching "rent a phone from rebelfone" from my "to do" list with one hand as I type with the other. I guess I'll just go with Verizon who, because I have a plan with them, will give us free use of a phone (except for shipping charge of $9.99)abroad with a cost of .99/min and .50 for outgoing texts and .05 for incoming texts. I haven't heard anything bad about Verizon's phone is France but I haven't done much research either. Anyway, I don't know if I can do much better than that costwise. Really wasn't planning to use it much but I do need to stay in touch with family. Thanks for the info.

Emma, I don't deal with Verizon so don't have any first hand experience, but others here have commented very favourably on their "loaner" phones for travelling in Europe. With reference to what I mentioned previously, you might also look at Roam Simple, Call In Europe, Cellular Abroad, Telestial or Mobal. Check their websites for rates and terms. ¶ If you're planning to travel to Europe in future, it may be less expensive in the long term to just buy a phone rather than obtain one from Verizon each time you travel. One other point to keep in mind for "future reference" is that Verizon will be adopting the new LTE technology in the near future, so when that happens and you upgrade your handset to the new technology, your phone should work in Europe. Happy travels!

Sorry to revive this zombie, but I was searching for any new postings on this board about rebelfone. We're planning to use them for our trip to Europe in May. I see that Nancy has reposted a negative review from a now unidentified person (who if memory serves put only that one single posting on this board before disappearing). That's the trouble with cut-and-pasting someone else's posting rather than linking to it. And it's a very suspicious posting. For one thing, Rebelfone does not have a D- rating with BBB. They have a B rating based on only one complaint. See for yourself: http://tinyurl.com/RebelfoneBBB I'm not vouching for rebelfone at all. I just hate to see a potentially innocent company get slammed by what appears to be a nasty technique used by competitive companies. They hire people to search bulletin boards for references to their competition, using fake profiles. Then they slam their competition with some story about how bad they are. The common elements with these is they're the first posting by that particular person and they often revive old threads (since they're searching for archive references to their competition). Anyway, for all I personally know rebelfone might not be any good, but I have seen some positive reviews on this site and just hate to see ones that appear fake being perpetuated. Getting down off my soapbox now. Thanks. :-)

so how did the verizon phone work. I just bought a verizon phone with a SIM card i understand I can replace with a buy as you go SIM card in Italy and France.
any thoughts

I bought a universal calling card from Nobel for about $20 or $30,got access codes to call Europe, and codes for in Europe to another country in europe. Am very pleased.
Jackie