Hi all,
Have tried searching previous posts but none quite have the answer. I'm landing in Vancouver in February for a 2 week recce and then coming back to the UK for a while to sell-up etc before returning for good (all being well on the job front!). Question I have is about cell phones in Canada - is it possible to rent or hire a cell phone for 2 weeks or is it more cost effective just to buy a pay as you go equivalent in a supermarket for example? (Tesco's here do a PAYG for as little as 30 quid) - does anyone have any suggestions on where is the best place to buy if so?.

Thanks again for any help. This site has made my immigration plans so far a whole lot easier.

Dr Glitz.

Make sure your phone is unlocked. When you arrive in Canada go to a Rogers store and buy a sim card. DO NOT agree to the extra charge of having the shop activate the sim for you. It is so simple an untrained monkey can do that.

Activate the sim and off you go.

If you try get it for a long validity as you can then when you return to Canada after having sold up in UK, you can still use the number and I believe you can transfer it to a pay monthly if you want.

Good luck

100%.
I took my pay-as-you-go TRIBAND phone to NS.
Only TRIBAND or QUADBAND phone will work (N.America has a differenct physical carrier layer to UK).

Like YYZ says, get a Rogers SIM and 20 bucks credit for you unlocked Triband.
Dont get 10 bucks - tariff is bad. 20 bucks minimum gives you better tariff.
If its a recce, be aware Rogers credit disappears after 30 days so next time you go you will be dry. So dont blow $50 on credit unless you intend to use it.

You can buy credit anywhere, eg gas station. Pay money, get a piece of paper with a number on it. Phone #153 (I think) and tap in the number. Bit like PAYG over here.

DONT reply to any incoming unsolicited SMS. Rogers is rotten with SMS scams, and here they have interfaces to things like Hotmail. To make things worse Rogers recycles old numbers. I got about 8 texts from "Samantha" wanting to know where I was. Rogers said it was either a scam, or it really was Samantha tying to contact an old friend who had since ditched her phone contract.
DONT call Rogers support on the 1800 - its costs you airtime. Use 116.

All North American telecoms firms suck, BTW - I dont have a particular downer on Rogers. But the tariffs, rules and systems are complicated if you are on a recce with no time to waste. Be sure to ask the assistant at Rogers for an idiots guide.

wbx

remember that you pay for receiving calls as well. Even if you haven't moved out of your area code.

Also, fido does sim cards as well but it is technically the same company as rogers as Fido is owned by them.

Check rogers and fido website for info to see which will work best for you.

I agree with the above - but bare in mind it would be really easy to spend $50 on credit here in a couple of busy weeks, especially if people are phoning you back about interviews, appointments, etc (because you also pay for incoming calls too).

Another option, which was suggested to me and worked well - buy a cheap PAYG Virgin phone and stick $100 on it. I got a phone for $69 from a Virgin booth in a mall. The $100 credit will last up to a year - so if you are coming back again in a few months, it's still useable.

Sorry to butt in but as a proper landed resident on a TWP (and I know that isn't proper landed) you know what I meanWhat is the best phone/contract or company for us to get?

We elected to go the route of Rogers Pay-as-you-go sims for our unlocked UK GSM phones because we were not up to speed on the options available and what our usage might be in our new lives.
In the UK we had monthly contracts with free minutes which we pretty much used up.

Our Rogers plan is $0.34 per minute daytime and $0.01 per min eves and weekends. (There are plans). We buy $20 airtime each month as the top-up expires after 30 days. Sometimes we have lost our credit as the time has lapsed! We will now buy a $100 credit to keep the phone and credit active for a year. We will do this because we are findng that we use less than $20 per month as local landline calls are free so are used way more.

Our long distance calls, both national and international, are done through Skype where some are free (Skype
-in) and others a reasonable cost (Skype-out).

In time we might get monthly contracts but at this time it really does not pay us to when one looks at all the contracts on offer and takes things like monthly connection fees of $8/9 on top of your monthly airtime!!!
We also use text messages (SMS messaging) quite a bit too. Costs are about $0.10 local and $0.20 international.

There is going to be a new Service Provider later this year and the hope is that they will break the monopoly (collusion) of the current providers and thus bring down the costs. Cells phones in Canada are a MAJOR rip off. Beware when roaming in the USA - some networks charge $3/4 per minute and remember you pay for incoming calls too.

For now we are happy with our setup and will wait and see what happens later this year.

Rob.

I'm on a frequent flyer forum as well as here and I see an increasing amount of business travelers, corporate ones, moving from contracts to PAYG deals instead.

Phones are ripoffs so you who are about to land, hang on to your old GSM phones and ebay them in Canada to the north american continent. You stand to make more money on them there then selling them to a shop in UK.

i don't blame them... i spent hours of searching for getting the deal which suits me most combined with the most convenient coverage (one thing that plays against rogers here). i'm still on pay and talk (the telus equivalent of rogers payg) - and my cell is the only way to get hold of me.
in combination with long distance cards for the calls outside my local area and europe my monthly communication costs vary in a very small range. if i had to pay for a plan with exactly the same benefits the plan itself would cost me 10% more than my total monthly average - and the long distance calls wouldn't be covered yet.