Keeping your US number and getting a French one - cost, process, tips

what do you do about phone service when moving to France this is one of those videos about something no one really wants to have to think about but you do so good news it's going to be cheaper and easier than you think to set up your phone service here in France stay with us hi I'm Raina this is Jason and we're bag at bound if you're an American moving to France you're going to need to do two things for phone service get a local French number but first you'll want to keep your Us number for certain authentication needs and those family members who just refuse to use WhatsApp why we're going to go over the quickest easiest cheapest way we found to do both of these and give you an overview of what it's like to set up new Sal service here in France yeah first you are going to want to keep your Us number also even if you're planning to stay in France forever why well I mean first of all of course just keeping your same number is going to make it easier to keep in touch with people you know but maybe more importantly sometimes allow you to continue to access all those accounts and applications in the US that require two Factor authentication you know those little like access codes for various accounts that get sent to your phone um via text or voicemail so and then you know you have to put them in whenever you're logging in somewhere so you might be considering for this the idea of just you know keeping your us provider Verizon T-Mobile whoever it is and adding international coverage calling it a day and saying it's done yeah and you know while this may seem like the easiest path this may not be the best way to keep your number first it's going to cost an arm and a leg us plans in general and especially those with coverage in Europe are outrageously expensive but maybe even more important is that if too much of your usage is coming from here in Europe most Us phone providers have the right to cancel your plan remember these are temporary travel plans not I'm moving to Europe plans so this may not be ideal yeah I didn't even realize that was a thing yeah but there is a good solution we found Google Voice to be the easiest most cost-effective solution to keep your existing Us phone number Google Voice is an app that you can find on all of the app stores and it works on all smartphones tablets and computers uh while using the Google Voice it looks and feels and operates just like regular cell phone service all your calls and text or manage through the Google Voice app instead of your phone's native calling or messaging functions I actually really like this because I know if Google Voice is ringing it's someone calling my Us number if my phone's native phone program is ringing it's someone calling my French number I can Goose myself up for what language I need to to be ready to to answer phone that's true but definitely for me the best part is that there's no monthly cost to keep your phone number active and there's no limit on the number of calls or texts you can make either yeah okay so if at this point you're like oh sounds amazing what's the catch here well this isn't a cell or data service I mean Google voice only works when you are already connected to the internet so maybe by Wi-Fi or a data plan by an actual provider so you will need a separate cell plan or data plan or be connected to Wi-Fi at any time to be able to use that Us number we're going to cover doing that in a few minutes the second thing that you want to know about Google Voice is you must switch your number before you leave the US which means you could have a gap in sell coverage before like from the time you port over your number a few days before you leave the US soil um to Landing here in France and getting yourself to a sell provider to set up sell coverage there could be a gap where you don't have any you know data or phone service outside of if you're not on Wi-Fi okay a few Us phone providers also will not allow you to Port your number over to Google Voice and some providers will charge a small fee for this like think like 20 bucks um and then of course the last thing is if you're in the middle of a long-term contract GH yeah uh you are probably going to get stuck paying an early termination fee to move your phone number away from your current provider and transfer it to Google Voice so there are a few constraints we have a link to Google Voice down in the description that will allow you to test whether your number can be transferred to Google Voice or not so you can figure that out first and but overall like although there's a few constraints you need to just plan for that we just talked about overall this has kind of been the best long-term lowcost option we found to keep that Us number um in France yeah definitely you know and when you're ready to transfer your number here are a few simple steps on your computer tablet or phone first open a Google Voice account you select the option to port or transfer your existing us cell phone number into Google Voice the phone number that you request to Port over will then receive a text with a six-digit code that must be entered into Google Voice to kick off the transfer process next you're also going to need access to whatever your current phone billing plan information is you're going to have to provide specific information about your existing account to just ensure that it is your account then you have the authority to transfer service after you start this process porting or transferring your Us number will automatically cancel your existing phone plan so make sure you're ready for that too yeah this usually takes a day or two um to complete and finish up yeah so again clearly we feel like we can't say this enough you got to do this before you leave the United States Google Voice States very clearly you cannot transfer your Us number while you are physically located outside of the Continental us we know this for sure because we try this with my number after we arrived in France and it didn't work uh we had to wait until I went back to the US for a business conference to complete the transfer could beat the system but yeah we did we thought anyway doesn't matter but and you yes you can try doing this with a VPN um but we have seen very mixed reviews online about the success of doing this and I mean again it didn't work for us so so far the only problem we have encountered with using this for authentication text was from one of our financial accounts and it was basically for a brief period when we moved but we were able to contact them and change uh to get authentication codes to email instead um but we haven't had any other problems with it yeah works great okay now for getting a French phone number and cellular service here in France yeah okay first you will need a French phone number end of story if you're moving here you'll need it for everything from text notifications from immigration very yeah it is yeah to setting up a you know an account for new insurance to just getting deliveries delivered to you at your home yeah so there's no avoiding this one and the sooner you do it the better now if the thought of having to deal with the phone plans the moment you step off the plane and doing it all in French is filling you with Dread I completely get that oh my God but hang in there there are some good options and it really just isn't that hard yeah um first there's four big cell providers in France these are free cobal orange sfr and Bo um they all offer pretty good coverage in most of the country yeah you'll find sometimes just like in the US there's Pockets where oh one provider might be a little better for you if you live rule but all offer a map system on their websites that you can look up where the coverage is stronger where the coverage is weaker so you can look at the specific coverage areas for each of these there are stores all over France um you can walk into any of them and walk out with a SIM card for service and be all set up these companies also do have websites that allow you to sign up for new service but there are going to be two potential problems that you may run into as a newly arrived person in France and these are going to be a lot easier to work around in a physical store location yeah okay so problem number one they are going to ask you to provide a French mailing address for your account when you set up service very common and normal um but the problem is a lot of times right after you arrive you may not quite have settled in long term yet and this can be a little tricky but you're going to need a phone pretty fast before you usually have that long-term permanent address so just know they don't usually ask for like the justification deos it's just an address that they can send billing notices and things like that at so you really just need to make sure that as you move you're updating this address on your account because if there's a problem they'll be sending mail there um we didn't do this and um on like keep the address updated once we had set up our first phone service for phone line and um we thought we had canceled the account but we didn't realize there was still a small small balance due and since we hadn't been updating our address as we'd been moving airbnbs those first that first year we weren't getting any of the letters that were being sent and low and behold a year later somehow collections tracked us down to the Jeep we were Curr ly renting and sent us a collections bill yeah I was horrified I mean I have barely ever had like a single late payment in my entire life let alone ever being sent to collections and I was like oh my God I'm a criminal they're going to kick me out of France I was freaking out um but Jason was a much calmer it really did turned out to be no big deal we just like paid the overdue Bill there was a very small fee there are credit scores here in the way there are in the US so my whole life here in France was not wrecked um and we moved on with life okay so that was a very dramatic story just to illustrate you're going to need to provide an address and it's okay that it's not your permanent one just make sure you keep updating it online right the second potential problem though is you may be required to provide a French or european bank account in order to set up monthly billing it is very common here to have recurring bills deducted directly from your bank account each month and as as an American this felt very invasive to us first what yeah you know in the US we put all of these kinds of recurring Auto Billings on our credit card in case of fraud you know I think that the the credit card can usually act like another layer of protection between you and anyone else uh having direct access directly to your bank account you know but credit cards as we know them in the US are quite uncommon here in France they don't really exist not particularly no and some providers will not allow you to to set up any kind of regular monthly phone service with just a credit card they will require you to enter a French bank account number which you are going to have eventually but maybe not that first week when you need your phone right so don't panic we have a little bit of a workaround for this problem for when you first land so uh the free mobile stores and we've seen this in multiple large cities so I don't know about if you're in a really small town but they have these like super convenient electronic kiosk machines inside their stores that allow you to put in your credit card type in your name your address the phone plan you want and voila a French phone number is generated and a SIM card pops out then you just take that SIM card pop it in your phone and you are set up to go and auto billing will start to that credit card so you just bring your passport to prove your identity and the credit card to pay um and same thing as I mentioned before while you do need to give them an address to set up this account um dur during this process with the kiosk you it's not necessary to provide any like official documentation for the address like it is in some other to set up some other things in France um there's also another temporary option which we will talk about at the end of this video the orange tourist plan they will also accept a credit card um when you set it up online so hang around for info for that one when we get to it but there are ways to get through this period before you have a iban number associated with a French bank account you may still be breaking out in a cold sweat about having to go into a cell store you know we want to just put your mind at ease and talk about what that experience has been like here because I think it's been really different than when we were in the US yeah every time we had to go get new phone service or a new phone in the US it was like we had to prepare to run the gauntlet and if you were going in the store it's a just a dreadful experience that I don't really wish on anyone I mean I don't know like our Fring fearers are probably going to be puzzled by this because we just haven't seen the same things I mean in the US like you go in and there's always a sales guy who's going to get a bonus if he tries to convince you to upgrade to the $3 million a month plan with 12 options that I don't understand and I will probably never use and then they're going to throw out the throw in this upgraded phone for free and you go through all of that usually to just get okay service with limited data for like $100 a month after you've lost 2 hours of your life you'll never get back anyway the experience for us has felt just totally different here in France yeah um you know for starters every American we know has been just completely shocked at the price of sell Service uh here in France for our family uh we personally we have three lines with free mobile each is a 5G connection 300 gabyt of data each month unlimited calls texts unlimited calls to North America important plus you know additional 35 GB of data for when we're traveling out of France all this comes in at €20 a month per line yeah that's right Juliana has a phone now and we are still paying less than a hundred bucks a month for all three of us to have phones it's crazy we found the biggest variable specific to our situation from plan to plan and provider to provider is probably the international calling that you want to look at um at least when we're making this video at this point free mobile currently seem to have like the best price international plan for us for calling and texting um back to North America and also a strong coverage in the area that we live in so we chose them um so of course when you arrive you'll want to compare plans but the good news is it's felt much simpler and more straightforward um to like compare and choose a plan here than it did in the US yeah I think so you know those long-term multi-year contracts that lock you into phone service with the exact same provider that are so common in the US those do exist here but they're really only useful if you need to finance a phone that's the only place we've seen them so if you already have a phone there's just no good reason to choose one of these fixed contracts especially when you first arrive yeah so it's another reason not to worry because if for some reason a phone service isn't working well for you you can just change so one last potential problem for your first few days of France for your first few days when you land in France and you're figuring out this whole phone thing so we did talk about like you've got to Port that number before you leave the US so if you've done that already you're going to land in France with no cell provider right so that's okay if you can use the airport Wi-Fi and maybe go straight to everyb me that has Wi-Fi but then when you're out walking around the city the first few days I mean you're not going to have coverage to use Google Maps or anything like that so um if you don't want to have to think about this like going straight from the airport to you know set up cell phone service there is another option we want you to know about um to cover that Gap so that you have got phones service when you land the short-term solution to bridge the gap that you can set up before you you leave the US is Orange has something they call a tourist plan you can buy it online ahead of time and it will give you a French phone number and you can use it for up to four weeks of phone and data coverage that you can turn on literally the moment you step off the plane in France so you'll set this up ahead of time um by opening an account online and you can do this using an American credit card they will either mail you a physical SIM card ahead of time um to put in your phone when you land so make sure you have enough lead time and an address to actually receive this or if your phone is eim capable they will just email you a code and you'll use it to activate the plan when you're ready um so after the four weeks if you want to keep this same French number they've assigned you on the tourist plan then you're going to have to do a few more steps which will include like providing proof of identity and you know setting up an account and they'll give you instructions on how to do this um but this is a really nice option if you just want to make sure that you are going to have coverage the moment you land and you know just buy yourself a little time to figure out who your long-term provider is going to be and not think about it the second you show up in France and you really just want to go get a crystal yeah easy as best you know we hope now that you're feeling empowered to just say goodbye to the highway rock of us cell service and hello to a brand new French number that's going to give you everything you need at a lower cost we've linked the French phone providers in the description down below you can also download our moving to France resource list to find lots of other helpful resources for moving to France all right good luck thanks for watching [Music] AO count oh [Music]