Cellular Abroad

I was ordering an unlocked GSM phone and SIM card for France from Cellular Abroad for my wife and daughter who will be there next month. It’s a pretty neat concept and all told, a good value – especially since we can use the phone back here in the US once they return as it is unlocked.

I placed my order on their website and after providing all the required demographic and payment information and hitting “Submit”, I received an error message that there was a problem with my order and to please call them, which I did. I spoke with a nice young man who looked at the order and initially said that everything looked okay, but then said “Uh-oh. Here’s the problem. You’re not accessing our website from the same area where the phone is being shipped.”

I was doing this from my work laptop through a VPN connection and our corporate data center is located in the Midwest, so the IP address that was read by their website showed that I was in Minnesota, and not New York where the phone was being shipped.

I was told that since there is big business in fraud related to no-contract phones, their website has numerous fraud prevention methods built in, including matching IP address and shipping location.

The geek in me thought this was the coolest thing ever, and I told him so. This elicited an interesting response – he was very thankful. Apparently, others who get caught by these and other fraud prevention tactics are often annoyed and angry, and he has to deal with these folks. It was an apparent ray of sunshine for him to speak with someone who not only appreciated their efforts, but found them to be cool.

I really am a geek at heart.

So if you’re traveling abroad and need a local cell phone with great rates for calling back to the US, check out Cellular Abroad.