Cricket Customer - we need a 1 week plan for kid going to Ireland/UK - need simple and works

[Hogan773]

Thanks for being a good sport. Sorry I couldn't help pointing out a few things, hope they come across as good teasing. I wouldn't use those words; just that we all know some of this can really take time (like you said, need to cut through the BS), and some of us do this as a hobby or to satisfy curiosity.

You cannot be a bad parent/person for providing your high school son with a European trip, and trying to figure things out like this for him.

I thought ecs0013 gave an excellent suggestion regarding Airalo and Wi-Fi calling through Cricket. If you follow along and click on "39 Countries", yes, you should be able to verify Ireland and United Kingdom.

You asked about buying locally, and if you also follow along (and scroll down on the traveltomtom website), you should be able to find information about buying a local SIM at various airports such as Dublin.

If your son needs to be able to call local directly without going through VoIP, Three UK may be the best choice. It's closest to buying a local SIM (it's from Three *UK* -- some Orange products have a little better ratings, but Orange is based in France, though maybe that does not matter anyway), but in the US instead of at an airport. But as you saw, it probably wouldn't work as well as Airalo, and you really need to be sure to set it up (and verify your allocations in the app -- see Caasi's post in "Top reviews") before the trip.

Airalo + WhatsApp suggested by cleocatsky is also excellent. You will just be sure to check Airalo on the Cellular Data screen. If you have WhatsApp on both his and your phone:

• Between you and your son, you can use WhatsApp. No need to figure out Wi-Fi calling through Cricket.
  If he needs to call a US number (that's not registered with WhatsApp), maybe he can have you relay the call, or install TextNow?
• Given how ubiquitous WhatsApp appears to be in Europe, he can reach just about any local business.

(It's not clear how/if iMessage would work without Wi-Fi calling, even though the SIM [with the phone number iMessage registered with] is not removed. Probably better not to consider iMessage if you will not figure out Wi-Fi calling through Cricket. I am not sure people are reporting the same things:
https://old.reddit.com/r/iphone/comm..._while_abroad/
https://old.reddit.com/r/Visible/com...hen_traveling/)

By the way, buying a SIM at an airport isn't necessarily problem-free. For example, the review by Mike B states: "My brother and his wife at first bought SIM cards for their phones (another brand) at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. They had so much trouble trying to get their phones to work that they put their original SIM cards back in and used an overseas plan provided by their United States carrier that charged $10.00 a day."
https://www.amazon.com/TSIM-Destinat...ustomerReviews

At some point, getting Verizon temporarily is worth considering.

Okay thanks

I don't need him to call back to the US. He will be with chaperones etc if there is a problem. I want him to be independent on this trip and he isn't the type to call back home every day. It is more just if he needs to contact a local business or if he got into any issue of confusion.

The reality is he will use this just like he uses his phone now....for internet searches, Amazon Music, Tiktoks and social media stuff. Wouldn't want to yank that away from him for 10 days as he may perish haha

[Hogan773]

And no I don't feel like I will end up doing some Verizon plan if that is going to cost 10 bucks per day plus additional cost for the monthly service. I will look at Three UK or Airalo first for much less money. There is a cost to convenience but that seems too high of a cost!

[robbyrobby]

Okay thanks

I don't need him to call back to the US. He will be with chaperones etc if there is a problem. I want him to be independent on this trip and he isn't the type to call back home every day. It is more just if he needs to contact a local business or if he got into any issue of confusion.

The reality is he will use this just like he uses his phone now....for internet searches, Amazon Music, Tiktoks and social media stuff. Wouldn't want to yank that away from him for 10 days as he may perish haha

one of things i notice when i talk to younger people in particular from Europe they tend to use far less cellular data we are used too. most use paygo type billing and make it an effort to connect to wifi as much as possible.

i bring this up also with the under standing open public wifi is much more widespread than stateside and your son may actually find it quite easy to stay connected using primarily wifi

[Hogan773]

@andyK88 I am taking a little time to click on things today

I read that top review for the ThreeUK sim card available on US Amazon

Interesting point here:

16. Had I bought directly from Three on the Amazon.co.uk website, I could have gotten 30GB of data for not even $3 more (including shipping to the USA) than I paid UK SIMs and not had to deal with a third party seller giving me less than advertised. The only downfall is it would take a week and a half to get it instead of two days via the American Amazon website. But, to me, that definitely would have been worth it!

[andyk88]

Great to hear you are looking into them in greater detail!


I am actually not sure which product Caasi was referring to.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B098F13K56/ shows £15.00 + £7.79, which is $28.65.
https://www.google.com/search?q=22.79+pound+to+dollar
(The final cost may remove VAT and add US tax.)


Like robbyrobby said, your son may not need too much data.

Note that if you read the description of:
https://www.amazon.com/TSIM-Destinat...dp/B0BR5BDGN7/
It sounds like you get no more than 12GB outside the UK, and up to the max in the UK.

Also note that with only the Three UK product (and no VoIP, no Wi-Fi calling), your son cannot call the US, meaning:

• He cannot call you physically located in the US.
• He also cannot call his friends in the same trip physically located in Europe with US phone numbers.

I got the impression that many kids who play video games now use Discord.
(They don't even text anymore.)
So Discord may be another way to communicate as long as there is cellular data or Wi-Fi connection.

[Boz1]

If I've understood what I've read about iPhones, WiFi calling will work using the data from an eSIM, so if that's accurate, the child could use their US phone # via WiFi calling, using the data provided by the eSIM.

[ecs0013]

If I've understood what I've read about iPhones, WiFi calling will work using the data from an eSIM, so if that's accurate, the child could use their US phone # via WiFi calling, using the data provided by the eSIM.

Yep, that is exactly the case - they'll just have to make sure they have Wi-Fi calling turned on before they leave (some providers don't let you go through the initial setup outside of US soil) and then select the US line in the Phone app when dialing.

My area had an AT&T outage last week, but that line fell back to "Wi-Fi calling" over the data provided by my T-Mobile SIM.

[Hogan773]

So I bought a Three UK sim with 10GB from US Amazon with the TSIM seller. Came next day. The sim had several labels with activation instructions (you need to contact TSIM thru email). They replied quickly and said the card is activated. I need to pop it into sons phone tonight (he is still in US) but hopefully it is all fine. When going to the Three UK website and entering the phone number that was provided as part of the activation the website was saying Technical Problem Please Try Later. Will let everyone know the outcome

[Boz1]

So I bought a Three UK sim with 10GB from US Amazon with the TSIM seller. Came next day. The sim had several labels with activation instructions (you need to contact TSIM thru email). They replied quickly and said the card is activated. I need to pop it into sons phone tonight (he is still in US) but hopefully it is all fine. When going to the Three UK website and entering the phone number that was provided as part of the activation the website was saying Technical Problem Please Try Later. Will let everyone know the outcome

Did you let the TSIM seller know about the error message you received?

[Hogan773]

Did you let the TSIM seller know about the error message you received?

No I havent yet. I wanted to try putting the sim into a phone first as maybe it is not "registered" on their system yet if it hasn't been in a phone. These generic errors from websites are hard to translate...what does "Sorry, We're Having Some Technical Issues Right Now, Please Try Again Later" even mean. It sounds like a problem with the Three UK website, yet it has been the same for multiple days so I assume it isn't that

[Hogan773]

No I havent yet. I wanted to try putting the sim into a phone first as maybe it is not "registered" on their system yet if it hasn't been in a phone. These generic errors from websites are hard to translate...what does "Sorry, We're Having Some Technical Issues Right Now, Please Try Again Later" even mean. It sounds like a problem with the Three UK website, yet it has been the same for multiple days so I assume it isn't that

SOOOO update here

I was able to add the sim card to son's iphone. Got all the activation texts from Three UK. The phone number to create an online account starts with a 0 and doesn't include the 44 etc.

The phone was working here but the account showed GBP 0 balance and no data pack

Apparently they (Three UK) provide 100MB of "free data" when you activate the SIM

I chatted twice to Three UK and they confirmed NO DATA PACK was on the account

I called the TSIM seller number shown on the sticker they put on the sim card I bought from Amazon. A very heavily accented Indian voice was there. I explained that I activated SIM but no data pack. He asked for phone number and I gave it. In about 15 seconds he mumbled something I couldn't understand then grunted for me to check the account. The phone got a couple texts of "GBP 10 added" and then "10GB data pack added". After a few mins the online account also showed a 10GB data pack now in effect, and unlimited calls and texts in effect too. Prior to this when I tried calling the UK phone number for the SIM it said "the account cannot accept calls" but now if I dial that 44 UK number even from the USA it rang through to my son's phone

So, fingers crossed it should all be working now

Moral of the story? Not sure. With all the horror stories from Amazon reviews, basically people buy this, then TSIM says it is activated and you should be all set, but I think they do NOT add the GBP 10 pounds of credit to the account. Is that because they can't actually add it until the SIM is first activated? OR, is this sort of their scam where they claim that it was added, and only when you contact them again to complain then they add it right away, but seemingly at least 25-50% of the people don't figure this out when they land in Europe and so they just give up and go buy a SIM card again over there and then write a nasty review for TSIM but TSIM still got money? Hard to know

I will say that it's not like the TSIM guy pretended that it had already been added once or anything. He just took the phone number and added the 10GB data pack for GBP 10 immediately without question.

Who knows, but again it seems like it did "work" now but took a little back and forth

[Boz1]

Thanks for the report. It's good to hear you stuck with it and got them to provide what you paid for!

[Hogan773]

Son just returned from trip. All worked fine for him and he didn't use up the 10GB data over the 10 days haha. As he had a UK number he was able to receive SMS texts from me but apparently wasn't able to respond (this Three UK apparently didn't include calls or texts outbound to US numbers). But he was able to text with my wife because they both have iphones and so it went via Apple Messages. So all in all happy it worked and happy I spent 16.95 or whatever it was in total vs the people who just went ahead and added international service to their plans for 10 bucks every day x 10 days haha

[andyk88]

Thanks for the updates, including that iMessage worked.

So I was wrong to assume iMessage would not work after replacing the Cricket SIM with the Three UK SIM (because iMessage was registered with the Cricket SIM / Cricket phone number).
My guess is that iMessage was then able to register with the Three UK SIM, because the Three UK SIM does support text messages.

If the replacement had been data-only instead of Three UK, then iMessage might not have worked.

After iMessage was registered with the Three UK SIM:

• with another iMessage user, communication happened over data, which worked both ways.
• with an Android user, communication (using the Messages app) via SMS (not via the iMessage service) was one way only, because the Three UK SIM cannot call or text to the US.

(The Apple Messages app can communicate via either the iMessage service or SMS.)

[PaulCrawhorne]

Are you saying iMessage uses carrier texting?

I thought it was data only, just uses the "anchoring" number for identity purposes