Here’s how to get a pre-paid SIM card in India, or at least my experience. It’s not quite as simple as going to Best Buy and signing a credit card receipt…
Thursday: pick up application form.
Assemble the following:
o Application form, including father’s name.
o Passport-sized photograph.
o Photocopy of passport.
o Letter from company HR department.
o Reference from an Indian person.
o Rs 510 (about $13).
o Borrow a phone.
Friday: return to the dealer with stack of paperwork, wait an hour, sign name about 20 times, fork over the cash. Discover that one more passport photocopy is required… the office next door that has a photocopier is too busy, so agree to send that over later in the afternoon.
Wait one hour for the phone to be activated. Two hours later, call Customer Care. “No sir, it will take four hours.” Four hours later, “It will be done by tomorrow.”
Weekend: No answer on the Customer Care line.
Monday: “No sir, you have to go back to the dealer to complete the activation.” At the dealer, “What, it hasn’t been activated?” Over the next hour, various people at the dealer make about a dozen phone calls each. “It will be 10 minutes.” Ten minutes later, a few more phone calls, and… I have a working phone! Woo-hoo!
wow, i’m amazed. It was much simpler in mumbai. Phone was activated in less than an hour. The problem was when we went to Delhi we couldn’t refill the card as they didn’t have the same dealers! If you travel somewhere make sure your card has enough money, at least we couldn’t use the credit card to fill up the card :-(.
You have to admit though, its so much cheaper than here. It was 10 paisa/text message and in canada I pay 15cents/text message.
I think something was screwed up; it shouldn’t have taken so long for me either. The phone was partially activated within 24 hours, because by Saturday I could check my balance with the phone, and just couldn’t make or receive calls. As you say, it’s very cheap: that price included 200 minutes of talk time at Rs 1 per minute (2.5 cents) vs 30 cents per minute on my Virgin pre-paid in Canada. Plus, it claims to roam internationally.
Sounds like Verizon’s high standards of customer care have finally reached India.
Can you hear me now???!!!
Did you also have to have permission from your father to buy the phone? lol.