Back about a week now from a trip to New York and before going I bought a Maxroam SIM card for my second phone. Had heard it talked about a few times before and all reports were good.

There are 2 SIM packages available on the Maxroam website costing €25 or €50. The SIMs come with call credit of €15 or €40 pre loaded which can then be topped up any time by logging on to the website.

Once the SIM is received it’s simply a matter of activating it on the website and away you go. I did have a bit of difficulty activating my SIM which was down to a technical snafu on the server. This had to happen at the exact time I tried activation on a Saturday morning of course. The problem was sorted out swiftly by the CEO of the company who heard about the issue via Twitter – impressive.

Once the SIM is activated, people can then ring you on the +32 number of the new SIM card or you can divert your phone to that number. What’s a +32 number I hear you ask? It’s the country code for Belgium. This means if someone wanted to call you directly, they would need to dial Belgium. Not exactly ideal and when I found this out, my enthusiasm waned a little bit.

What I didn’t realise is that you can add extra numbers to the SIM card for a small cost. I added a Dublin number to the card for €3 for a month. Now, I was contactable on an (01) Dublin number instead of the +32 Belgium number.

The Maxroam system allows you to add up to 50 (I think) additional numbers on the same SIM. The numbers can all be different and in different countries. This was something I didn’t realise until it was pointed out to me. I don’t think the Maxroam website explains it well enough. They could do with some graphics on the site explaining it on the About page rather than all the text they have there at the moment.

In New York, the service worked as advertised. I switched on the phone after landing in JFK and was connected to AT&T. Over the course of a 4 night stay, €38 of credit was used up. I calculated how much it would have cost had I switched on O2 roaming – almost €80!

There’s really no reason not to buy one of these SIM cards if you’re going on a trip. The savings really do stack up. Highly recommended.

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Now for a couple of niggles.

There is a charge of €3 for standard postage in Ireland and most other countries (the company is based in Cork, Ireland). One of my pet peeves is being charge over the odds for postage. In this case, the postage fee is 54 cent. Add on the cost of an envelope and a plastic “Documents enclosed” sticker and the cost can’t come to more than 60 cent. What’s that you say? A business has to factor all costs such as staff costs involved, and that includes shipping. Very true of course but given that the Maxroam SIM is a small item and there’s no big Amazon style warehouse shipping staff to be paid, I honestly can’t see justification for a €3 charge to post a small envelope. Easons can send heavy books for free when you spend over €25 and I would put a good bet on that the margin on a book is a lot less than mobile phone talk time so Maxroam should offer free regular shipping on the SIM card.

Niggle number 2. I couldn’t get data working at all. Followed all the instructions before leaving but nothing I tried worked. I emailed the support team 5 days before travelling and heard nothing back. Emailed again 3 days later (and 2 days before travelling) – no reply or acknowledgement after saying I was heading off soon. Emailed again 2 days after my return – still nothing. All told, that’s 17 days with no response.