I found an Edgars with the free SIMS. I did the RICA thing, which was pretty quick - within hours.
I bought a small recharge voucher, which I loaded.
I checked the balance (always advisable) and it appeared OK.
I didn't make any calls. I tried to send an MMS, which failed. It didn't just fail, but a message kept coming saying "unable to deliver", over and over. I had to remove the message from the outbox.
I checked my balance again using their USSD system and it said 0!
I rang the call centre. They seem determined not to speak to customers. Everything is routed to solve everything through USSD. I reached the bit about MMS settings, and was told to send a USSD command like *18 something #. I hung up and tried that. Instead of getting a nice response, I got another request to send an SMS to 180 in the form "setup <phone model> <make>.
Of course that didn't work either!
I rang the call centre again and finally got through to a human. She said she would send the settings. Nothing came through for about 7 minutes. She said I needed an "authentication code" from the SMS in order to get the settings. So I had to put her on hold to get the code. Even then I didn't get settings.
I asked about the disappearing credit. She said no money had been loaded as far as she could tell. I needed the voucher code to query this or she "couldn't do anything".
There is an 8ta Menu that appears on the phone if you put in the SIM. It has a "services" option. If you select it once, nothing happens. Select it again and it says "Bad url".
All in all, this is quite a disaster.
If you feel brave enough to try it, at least keep your vouchers.
I bought a small recharge voucher, which I loaded.
I checked the balance (always advisable) and it appeared OK.
I didn't make any calls. I tried to send an MMS, which failed. It didn't just fail, but a message kept coming saying "unable to deliver", over and over. I had to remove the message from the outbox.
I checked my balance again using their USSD system and it said 0!
I rang the call centre. They seem determined not to speak to customers. Everything is routed to solve everything through USSD. I reached the bit about MMS settings, and was told to send a USSD command like *18 something #. I hung up and tried that. Instead of getting a nice response, I got another request to send an SMS to 180 in the form "setup <phone model> <make>.
Of course that didn't work either!
I rang the call centre again and finally got through to a human. She said she would send the settings. Nothing came through for about 7 minutes. She said I needed an "authentication code" from the SMS in order to get the settings. So I had to put her on hold to get the code. Even then I didn't get settings.
I asked about the disappearing credit. She said no money had been loaded as far as she could tell. I needed the voucher code to query this or she "couldn't do anything".
There is an 8ta Menu that appears on the phone if you put in the SIM. It has a "services" option. If you select it once, nothing happens. Select it again and it says "Bad url".
All in all, this is quite a disaster.
If you feel brave enough to try it, at least keep your vouchers.
