Cancelling a Free Mobile SIM in France

Salut! I'm Yoko, the food blogger who was traveling around Europe.

There are only two ways to cancel Free, the budget SIM that's popular in Europe:

1. Go to a Free shop and cancel in person
2. Send Free a letter

That's it...!! (sob) This post explains option 2, cancelling by letter.

If you're reading this in Europe and heading back to Japan, annoying as it is, go to a Free shop before you leave...

I didn't know this while I was in Europe and just assumed I could cancel on the Free website.

When I got back to Japan and went to cancel, I found out I had to write a letter. So be careful...

I couldn't find a cancellation page in my account on Free Mobile, so I googled it, and the answer was "send Free a letter saying you want to cancel."

I didn't believe it at first, but Free's help page really does say "go to a shop or cancel in writing."

Asking Free Customer Support by Video Chat

I still didn't want to write a letter, so I kept digging and found a service called "Face to Free" where you can talk to customer support by video chat.

I wanted to speak French again anyway, so I gave it a shot, expecting nothing.

Agent: "Bonjour."

Me: "Bonjour, I'd like to cancel."

Agent: "Okay. Can I have your number?"

Me: "(!! ...Maybe she can cancel it right here?) It's XX-XXXX-XXXX."

Agent: "Okay. Then please send a letter saying you want to cancel to the address on your screen."

Me: "Ugh... A letter is hard. I'm in Japan right now."

Agent: "No problem. You can send a letter from Japan."

Me: "Well, yes, but... couldn't you cancel it for me?"

Agent: "I can't. We only accept letters."

Me: "Hmm. Isn't there any other way...? I want to cancel online."

Agent: "Madame... that's the third time you've said that. A letter is the only way."

Me: "...Okay, I get it... Merci, au revoir. (sob)"

Agent: "Au revoir."

~ End of chat ~

...So in the end, I obediently wrote the letter.

So, if you want to cancel Free: if you're still in France, don't forget to go to a shop before you head home!

If you're already in Japan, give up and write the letter (sob).

The Text of the Free Cancellation Letter

A postcard works too, no envelope needed. Postage from Tokyo was ¥70.
You can choose surface mail or airmail, and it seems to take one to two weeks.

Write the address horizontally.

The message goes like this.

————————
Address
Free Mobile
Résiliation
75371 PARIS Cedex 08
————————
Message
Bonjour,
Je voudrais résilier mon contact tout de suite s’il vous plaît.
Parce que je suis au japon maintenant.

nom/prénom: LAST NAME / FIRST NAME ← your name in Roman letters
numéro de ligne: 0612345678 ← your phone number

Merci beaucoup.

EXP: XXX XXX Tokyo Japan 1230012 ← your own address
————————

I was on a plan that renewed automatically every month, so I was pretty anxious.

Just in case, I wrote on the third line that I wanted to cancel immediately.

How to Check That Free's Automatic Renewal Has Stopped

If you're on an auto-renewing plan, you probably get a billing email every month like this.

After you send the letter, check that the amount shown there (the arrow above) is 0€ in the next billing email!

I mailed mine on May 19 and wasn't charged for June, which was a relief...

Honestly, I wonder if they make cancelling a hassle on purpose to discourage people from doing it??

Now that it's all cancelled, I'm fairly happy with the service overall, since it's cheap and the data allowance is huge.

After all, it's 100 GB a month for under 20€. You can hardly use that much.

I recommend it if you're thinking of signing up. Tethering works, and you don't have to worry about data, so you can use it freely.

There are also 0€, 2€ and 15.99€ plans, so pick one that suits the length of your stay!

Budget SIMs I Recommend in Japan

Finally, a bonus for anyone heading back to Japan who plans to buy a new SIM.

Japan is in the middle of a budget SIM boom right now!

It used to be dominated by the big three, docomo, Softbank and au, but more and more people are switching to budget SIMs.

As a rough guide, 3 GB of data a month costs ¥1,500 to ¥1,800.

5 to 6 GB is around ¥2,000.
(There are SIMs with voice calling and data-only SIMs, and the voice ones are a bit more expensive.)

There are more than 20 budget SIM companies, and the ones I recommend are mineo and LINE Mobile.

Budget SIM pick #1: LINE MOBILE

The best thing about LINE MOBILE is its "Communication Free" plan.

It's a plan where using LINE, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram doesn't use up any of your data.

In months when you watch a lot of videos, you can run low on data toward the end of the month,

but with LINE MOBILE there's nothing to worry about.

Budget SIM pick #2: mineo

mineo is the budget SIM I'm using now!

There are three things I like about mineo. First, unused data carries over to the next month.

Second, if you run out of data at the end of the month, you can take 1 GB from something called the Free Tank!

The data in the Free Tank is donated by other mineo users.

People with leftover data put it in. I use it from time to time. Thank you, kind strangers.

And third, there's a community site called Mineo-oh where users can ask each other questions, so you get a nice sense of being part of a group. lol

By the way, my average bill from January to March 2019 was ¥2,287. So cheap!

Also, if you sign up through the link above, it counts as my referral and you get ¥1,000 in e-money that you can exchange for Amazon or Suica points.

And both are faster than my Free SIM was in places like Paris. lol

So that's how to cancel the Free budget SIM, plus the budget SIMs I recommend in Japan!

See you next time. Au revoir!