Story Telecom www.storytelecom.com

Please don't waste your money with them.

I made three calls which were all unsuccessful but funds were deducted which were three times of the advertised rates.

I called helpline but after listening to weird music for over five minutes while on hold the call was dropped by the agent without saying a word.

I called my parents up while they were on holiday abroad. I got about two minutes of actual conversation when my mum started to repeat what she had already said. I was getting worried about her health until I realised that story telecom were playing back a recording of our conversation on a loop. Not accusing them of fraud but I can't see how something like that can accidentally happen by accident.

Terrible - very expensive (when it worked), no one in the UK EVER received my texts and we rarely received any from home in all the 14 countries we visited. Nearly everyone struggled to get through too. Money disappeared from the account which couldn't be explained by Story (they said it was due to data being used but that was disabled on phone and could hardly get reception let alone data services!).

Customer service from Story is non existent, usually was ignored when emailed and when asked about missing money they said they would charge 10 pound to tell me my bill!

Use Story sim in free to receive calls countries but otherwise buy local sim, or use any other option - this company really should be avoided - cowboys come to mind.

I dont know about the mobile topup and online but i am a consistent user of their calling cards since 2005. Service quality sometimes drops but i dont have good experiences with other calling cards as well. Atleast they have a helpline.

Story has a lot of payment options which makes it easier for me to topup as i want and rates are not bad either if you know the difference in charges when using a local access number and a free phone access number

I used Text and Talk service as they advertise the international rate to many countries as 1 pence per minute. However, they have hidden charges and you are always going to pay more than 1p/minute. I don't like this kind of advertisements and unfair service providers. They say the rate is 1p/minute but you pay 4pence/minute because of connection and other charges. I don't recommend

I bought their international sim with roaming mobile phone and it worked great. I was in Italy for a few days. I suppose it works much easier with their international roaming mobile where you don't have to add any prefix before your number. Well I am happy about their service. Hope it stays like this.

Their service is much better this year, also i have noticed quite a lot of new changes on their website now i can topup my sim using paypal which is very handy for me

Well i have used it in USA & France in 2010 & both places it worked fine with my nokia phone

I have used the Story Telecom Travel Sim for about 3 years now-- in Australia, Austria, Brazil, France, UK, Taiwan, Holland-- when it works it is great ( but do NOT use it in North America-- the roaming changes are really high-- rather buy a cheap 7-11 phone in the States or Canada ( they are not interchangeable). But they list the roaming charges on their web page and show that the N American prices are high )

But for the rest of the world the prices are great.

The problem is that on almost every trip I have had some problems with them-- suddenly the phone will not work-- I dial the number and get no callback (They work by the sim altering the number and sending a brief message to their central computer, which then calls you back from the Isle of Mann or someplace like that. When you answer the callback it connects your call to the number you dialed).

I just had this happen again in Holland. I would get "Number not allowed". Usually it would still give me a callback, but not always. But trying to phone the Story numbers-- 802 for voicemail or 803 for a money remaining message-- produced nothing, except yesterday I suddenly got 4 messages telling me how much money was left-- I presume it was that the requests had gotten through and had backed up on their system.

Ie, when it works ( and it has usually worked for me) it is great. By far the cheapest way of travelling the world. When it does not work, which is too often, it is of course the pits.