Claro & Orange contract times with own device

17844

New member
Feb 2, 2013
46
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0
Dear all,

Having just arrived in the country I was planning to fire up one of my old iphones with a local service and hoping to pick your fantastic brains.

I have equal many bars from Codetel and Orange in my house in Punta Cana so I am not sure which one is better - any general recommendations?

I want to call my office in New York and have them call me, I seem to remember you can get a US phone number for your DR cell phone - am I hallucinating?

If I bring my own iPhone (unlocked of course) - would I still have to commit to 24 months contract? If so, has anyone paid a breakup fee and how much?

Cheers
Sam
 

Castle

Silver
Sep 1, 2012
2,982
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Why don't you get prepaid SIM cards from both and see which one is better? It will only cost you the amount in minutes that you purchase, no cost for the card itself. I don't know about Orange, but in Claro the contract is for 18 months even when you bring your own device, which kind of defeats the purpose because if you're going to get a contract instead of prepaid, you should take advantage of the subsidized phones they offer with the contract, and sell it at market price or just keep it.
 

agw

Member
Feb 14, 2010
156
2
18
Prepaid is the way to go unless you stay here long term! We have one Orange sim in our own phone because it costs the same to Call Canada as a local call and one Claro sim in the other phone, also one we brought, to see which one gives us better overall coverage as we travel the country. It would be cheaper to call each other if we had both with the same company, but we wanted to try Claro as well this year.

Also for anyone wanting to buy a prepaid USB internet stick, Claro has a promotion on for February that will give you 6 GB for the price of 3 GB for the 30 days. So far is working well - but I just bought it an hour ago.
 

17844

New member
Feb 2, 2013
46
0
0
Thanks everyone - I did some more research.

I went to the Orange store in San Juan where there was a really nice guy speaking english. He said I would not have a contract time if I did not get a new device BUT I needed three months worth of banking statements to get a postpago plan as I have only a foreign passport. I set up an account this friday... So no luck there. They had no prepaid plans for both voice and data for the Iphone at Orange he said.

Next door at Claro the woman did not speak english making it a little harder for me to understand what was needed for a postpago plan and what the contract times were, but I understood I could not set it up on a saturday there with only a foreign passport. Her suggestion was a prepaid plan, 3GB during 30 days for about 1800 pesos, plus calls for $RD8 per minute. I decided to start with this.

This plan at $RD8 per minute was quite expensive. But we will be here a year at least so I am still considering a postpago plan to get down in cost, they had plans for about $1500 I think could work including data and voice.

Anyone knows for sure what is needed to get a postpago plan with Claro except foreign passport (I will not be getting a residence card here)?

Any input on the US number tied to a DR cellphone? Only dreams?

Cheers