We will be traveling in June with 8 people from two families throughout the West and South of Ireland. We also hope to visit our son who will be studying in a program at UCC in Cork. Since we will have two cars after arriving in Shannon, what is the best cell phone system to use during our 8 day visit to Ireland?
Welcome to the forum! If you want the easiest system and don't want to fool around with purchasing phones think about renting them. The phones would be mailed to your first accommodation and waiting for you. When you are finished pop them in a prepaid box and drop them in the mail.
I have a discount on cell phone rentals (called mobile phones in Ireland) on my "Discounts" page. Just click on IrelandYes Index and on discounts.
Thanks Michele for your advise. We will follow up on your suggestion and look on your discount page for mobile phones that can be rented during our trip. Any tips that assist us in our trip planning are appreciated. We are arriving in Shannon, plan to spend 3 nights in a Galway B&B with day trips from there, then travel southward to Cork with a stopover B&B somewhere en route, and finally in Cork for three nights to spend time with one of our sons who will be studying at UCC before heading back to Shannon for our flight home. Only my husband and I have been to Ireland before(we took the Southern route Dublin to Shannon)- the other six family members will be on their first trip!
I just found a great deal on Ekit Mobile. We are getting a motorola phone, charger, extra battery, UK wall plug adapter and $30 US call credit shipped to me for a total of $72! Everything I saw in rentals for our two week trip came out a lot higher.
I was on ekitmobile.com. http://www.ekit.com/ekit/MobilePurchase/Phones.
They are running a special that gets the phone with sim card and $20 call credit for $44. each of the extras ran $5 each.
Another option is getting a phone off of ebay, or from a friend who has t-mobile or cingular service. I ws going to get an old phone from my nephew who is on t-mobile and have it unlocked for foreign use, but this deal was just too good to pass up!
I went on the website www.ekit.com but could not find the $44 special offer. I did however find another site, www.rangeroamer.com that allows you to rent for any number of days and they provide a quote immediately. They will ship the phone to your home address for no charge and you ship it back to them when you return, also at no charge. For us to rent it for 10 days, the cost was $47USD. Incoming calls were free, outgoing calls within Ireland and to the US were $.69/ minute. Thought this was also a great deal and we'll probably rent these phones.