Toggle Mobile Recommendation Withdrawn
 

I've been promoting Toggle Mobile here recently but I must now withdraw the recommendation because of their inadequate customer service. I'm disappointed because the company really has a technically ingenious system. Unfortunately they have not matched their technical skills with business skills. They prefer to blame the customer for a shortcoming in their own instructions.

I won't bore the forum with the very dull details, but I must suggest that users look elsewhere for international SIM cards.

We don't need the full set of details, but you have provided none of them. Without hearing something about what the issue was it's rather hard to follow this sort of recommendation. I just acquired one of their SIMs and was planning to use it next week. They were quite resp:pnsive when dealing with customer service to have it sent to me in the US.

Good point. Actually the service worked pretty well. I'm extremely peeved that their system charged me almost $11.50 for a call which should have cost $0.29. I registered for a US number on their system on Sept. 10th. The number was shown as active on my account on Sept. 11th, so I made a six-minute call to a UK mobile at what should have been £0.03/min. Instead it was billed at £1.23/min.

That didn't upset me overmuch as I assumed they would correct the error. This morning I received a call from a Toggle rep who explained that his technical department had determined my phone was "roaming" during that call. I had already deduced that.

The Toggle User Guide says "On the My toggle section of our website ... register for the countries you plan to visit and we will automatically give you a 'local' number for each of these countries. When you visit that country your toggle will automatically use this 'local' number for calls...." (My emphasis.)

I now know that I should have run the Toggle settings applet from the SIM card to manually select my USA profile, a process they call "latching". This process is described in the "How do I latch SIM when I don't have signal?" section of their web site, without defining their use of the verb "latch". It wasn't necessary in France where the process worked as advertised. The site does not explain how to tell whether or not your phone is roaming. In my case, the phone displayed this when it was roaming:


When latched to Toggle it displays this:


I don't feel particularly foolish for failing to know which condition meant I'd pay $0.05/min and which meant $1.95/min. :)


OK, thanks for letting me rant. Honestly I'll probably keep the Toggle card alive and use it the next time I travel in a Toggle country. I just really hate having a company offer an explanation instead of an apology, much less a refund. Their system promises to be completely automatic. They say not a word about how to verify that your phone is using the correct network. They just aren't an easy company to deal with.

Whew, there, much better now. If anyone needs detailed tips about how to use their Toggle cards, feel free to PM me.

Well, thanks for letting us all kn:)w about setting the SIM up when switching countries!

I found when traveling in Germany and Switzerland that I had to wait about 10 minutes for the latching process to be completed. Fortunately I didn't have to make any calls in either country right away.

I'm excited about the USA service... 5c/minute with no minimum is an solid rate for occasional per-minute use. I can use it with an old dumb phone when I want to sell something on craigslist and have it as a backup phone in my bag in case my regular phone runs out of juice at an inconvenient moment.

You'll need an unlocked phone but yes, that will work great. Incoming calls are free. You'd just have to make sure you kept the SIM card alive by using it at least once every 120 days. I think I was told that simply connecting it to the network would be enough to keep it alive, but I'm not certain of that.

When getting a local number in a country :eek:utside the UK, how long is that number active? I get the impression it isn't assigned permanently.

EDITED TO ADD:

Never mind -- I just saw the following when trying to register for a local number:This service seems to solve a number of problems for me including having a local prepaid SIM for friends from out of the US who visit me.

I just obtained a US local number (area code 201 - New Jersey) and look forward to using it in the US shortly. I called the number from the UK and my cellphone rang, so it's just about up and running.

For £5 a year, I'll probably retain the number permanently. No need to bother with contracts.

Given the flexibility with up to 10 local numbers, this looks a good prospect for international roaming. Just one problem for me, they offer no service from South Africa, probably the only SIM card provider without such service.

Toggle has been adding countries, so you should keep an eye on their site.

I'd be interested to know whether you can make a successful credit card payment on Toggle's site and, if not, through customer service. Every one of my attempts has been declined -- not by my card issuer but by Toggle's site's "random" security process.

If this happens to you, you should be able to make a payment through PayPal.

Do you have a US-based credit card? In my limited experience, Toggle only accepts UK-based cards to top up.

They wouldn't accept my US card. so I used PayPal. That w:)rked fine.

Yes, it's US based. On two occasions a customer service rep told me that was fine when taking the number. Then their system rejected the attempted charge both times and the rep told me it was a "random security" event. My CC issuer told me they never received an attempted charge from Toggle.

The Toggle rate for mobile data seems expensive.
Or am I misunderstanding their rates?

It is relatively expensive except in the UK: £0.15/mb. I used it carefully during six days in Paris and spent only £2.70. I looked up bus itineraries with the RATP app and did a little very constrained Googling, keeping my data turned off most of the time. (I installed a handy little Android widget to manage my data).

-Andy

Compared to the $15/mb that some US carriers charge it's quite reasonable. H:)wever, they also have plans available for 500mb, 1gb or 2gb within 30 days. Those are £5, £7.50 and £10.

Those rates are available in the UK only. Actually they've got a much better deal available this month in the UK: 3 GB free data for any top-up.

Just sent them an email as my card was declined, hopefully I get a SIM card in the mail in a day or two. Looking at a trip to London by the end of the year, so this should be perfect.

That being said, two questions. I know you need activity every 90 days to keep the account active, does paying for a permanent number nullify this time limit?

Actually the activity requirement is every 120 days according to their user guide. Their system sends you a text or email after 90 days warning you the card is expiring. (Typically of Toggle, their site contradicts itself. A FAQ says "We automatically deactivate SIM cards if you do not make a call or send a text for 90 days" but their downloadable user guide says you get 120 days.)

Pages 12 and 13 of the user guide say you have to use the card or top it up to keep it active. They don't mention an exception if you pay for permanent Toggle-country numbers.

The permanent-number feature applies only to Toggle countries not including the UK. The UK phone number is permanently associated with the card as long as the card is active.

Their downloadable user guide currently says 90 days, unless I'm missing something.

From pages 12 and 13 (re-typed because the PDF is all images):
The 90-day period plus the additional 30-day period make 120 days.

Do make sure you keep track of everything you do with Toggle. Their technical service worked well for me but they have not demonstrated any understanding of customer service in my interactions with them.

-Andy

Thanks for the clarification.

I've had two different interactions with them. Facebook interactions have been phenomenal, while email interactions seem almost robotic. They have to be just copying a script, because the responses don't make sense, and the words they are using don't really fit with the context. I'll just make sure I'm always latched to the correct provider.

I've never looked at their FB page, sounds like a good idea.

Yup. I'd prefer to rely on the automatic system (which worked for me going from France to the UK), but if you can remember to do it manually you should be OK.

-Andy

Yeah, from what I understand it takes about 10 minutes to latch, but I'm a little unclear as to how it displays when latched, as I've seen information differing from that in the OP about when a phone is latched.

I can't remember exactly what displayed on my Droid Razr phones in France, but it included the word "toggle", maybe in all lower case.

Here in the US I can only use an old unlocked dumb phone. The phone always says "T-Mobile" in bold at the top. The next line is the key: when latched it, says "toggle" (all lower case), when roaming it displays "Toggle Mobile". The difference in cost is almost $2.00 a minute.

I've taken your advice and posted a couple of messages on the Toggle Mobile FB page. One is a polite expression of my frustration with the 6-minute call that used up $11.40 worth of airtime. The other is a question to clarify whether the SIM expires with 90 or 120 days' of inactivity.

-Andy

The more and more I use this company, the more and more I can't wait for KnowRoaming to send me my sticker. Their email support is atrocious, and their facebook page, while staffed by people that can speak english, can't help with anything. Ugh.

I don't know. I used toggle in OZ for a week and never had issues. Also no problems in the usa. But I manually select the country in the sim options everytime.

My text messages aren't going through, and since submitting the support ticket my normal cell phone has been getting test text messages all day that won't stop.

Replying on this very old thread with my experiences.
I also really like the Toggle service while it works. With the new abroad data plans and the US launched it is even more attractive than before.

Everything worked for over one week, but mid second week, my data stopped working. Turned out despite an active data package, it suddenly took data charges from my credits instead of the package, until my credits were zero. I didn't want to top up again because the mistake prevailed. Two days later it started working again, however it seemed to charge approx 10x the data used so my package went down very quickly.

Customer Care is very friendly, however I keep getting told since 5 days now that the issue is under investigation, as well as the billing, and no refund happened yet. Now my trip is over, and I had to buy another sim card for the end of my trip...

Hmm, that seems to be the experience here. If it works, it's excellent. If it doesn't than it's a pain to get any issue resolved.
I used it this summer in the USA and in Asia, and either paid nothing for incoming (USA) or just the 19p connection fee (like in Thailand). I'm currently using it in Poland. I'm having huge issues with Skype to go (seems to cut out every minute) when I'm driving in Krakow, so I decided to carry around a spare phone with the Toggle sim. I just use google voice callback from my main phone (via data as I have a contract here) and get free incoming via the Toggle sim and I can talk all I want in the car (with my bluetooth headset, of course) with no dropped calls. I have no issues on having a hr+ call with Toggle.

Be persistent. When you've reached an impasse, ask for "a deadlock letter for submission to Toggle's alternative dispute resolution scheme." Use those exact words. If your experience is like mine was, you will have your credit within a few days.