TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin SIM card Maho area

Arriving Saturday and will need a sim with voice and data. Can anyone recommend where to get a card and activate it so I know it’s working before I leave the store? Thanks

There is a another sto UTS store in the Paradise Mall in Cole Bay that will take care of you . Also there is another good communications place within the Carrefour on Bush road which is very good too. I have used both with success.

Thanks. Do you know if they’re open on Saturday?

The one in the Carrefour (Tech Head) is open the same hours that the Carrefour is. I also have used both of the locations Elizabeth mentioned and found the one in the Carrefour to be more knowledgeable. The one in Cole Bay actually referred me to Tech Head in the Carrefour.

After dealing with both UTS stores, The Mailbox and Tech Hub (within Carrafour), I would suggest Tech Hub. Their hours are 10:00 to 6:30 so they are not the same as the store. Very knowledgeable people working there, unlike the other places. UTS office would be good if you just needed a SIM card but if you need anything else, Tech Hub for sure. UTS stores are not open open on Saturday. Not sure of the weekend Tech Hub hours but I did check their sign the other day when I needed to use them. I found the price of a SIM card to vary from between $18-$27 and they include about $10 in phone time credit.

Tech Hub does have a facebook page if that helps. TECH HUB

UTS is closed on Saturday. Mailbox open until noon.

According to their Facebook page, Tech Hub is open six days as week from 10 to 6:30; closed Sunday.

Does anyone know if the Tech Hub can ad wi-fi to a current Chippie SIM phone for the $30 fee? Elizabeth?

Yes, they can. I've had it done twice. Believe there is a $5 fee for their doing it.

Great, thanks Linda! I know we have the same little phone.

So this is the newly reopened Carrefour at the roundabout?

Yep!

Elaine mentioned to me that her Samsung can accommodate two SIM cards. Per what I've found on line, my Galaxy Note 8 will also do that. One of these days, I'm going to take my "little phone" and my Note 8 to AT&T and see if they can put the SIM card from my "little phone" into my Note 8. I would be thrilled if I could use my Note 8 all the time on SXM by switching to the Chippie SIM card.

You will love that option. Prior to getting the "little phone" I had a dual sim phone. You could have one for the Caribbean, and then one for Europe (or US).

Just be sure your Note 8 is unlocked.

Aha. I had forgotten about that.

Do you mean the $30 for the sim card? I got my new sim card for no charge at UTS and they transferred the money I had on my other sim card to the new one... no charge for the transfer either. I guess they just found me to be charming!

No, the $30 is to add data to the phone. Currently it is just cell/text.

I thought to add data to the phone cost $35 at Tech Head.

We may be talking about the same thing.... the $30 charge plus perhaps the Tech Head $5 charge?

For $30, Tech Hub loaded what I call "wifi everywhere" to the phone, for a cost of $5. That way I had internet access everywhere I went without having to ask for passwords. However, they did it by doing something on the phone so I assume I could learn how to load it myself.

Your response probably made us all smile.

Leona, I'm curious about this. Is it a Chippie sim? Supposedly there's a code you enter to purchase data on your Chippie phone, but when I tried that in December, it didn't work.

Ditto. I had looked it up on the Chippie sight, but apparently that only applies to Curacao and Aruba. I tried and tried to activate with the magic code. Got response texts that it doesn't activate in SXM. Perhaps that's why Linda had to actually go in to the UTS store? I shall see soon.

Let me know what you learn.

I ended up waiting till Monday and went to tel em in Simpson’s bay. $50 for a sim, 5gb of data and $10 worth of talk time. They set it up and had it working with it 5 mins. Zero issues with it.