We supply a welcome sheet with a step-by-step guide to activating your SIM. This costs £10 which gets added as credit, but you’ll also get £5 free (so £15 in total – which could last for months). 

GiffGaff are an entirely third party site to us, we only pre-install SIMs for your convenience. You will create and manage your own online account with them (it takes just a few minutes to set up when activating the SIM). You can log in any time to see credit, usage, top up, change auto-renewal or switch to or from a Goodybag. 

Its all very simple and user-friendly, and we never hear of problems or issues. 

The only requirement with the pre-installed SIM is that at least one text (5p) needs to be sent every three months.

If not, then you’ll have a chance to reactivate the SIM, but after a period of time GiffGaff may deactivate the account, SIM, and any remaining credit.

If you have the £5 Goodybag set to renew every month, then the SIM will never be deactivated for lack of use – but then you should be using it a bit more anyway to justify using the Goodybag. 

In the unfortunate event that you lose or damage your GPS Tracker beyond repair (it seems unlikely but things happen), and you order a replacement, then your SIM number, credit and account can all be transferred to the new device.

If you lose your device, you can register your SIM as ‘lost’ via your account to stop anyone finding and abusing it. 

GPS itself works anywhere in the world, but the pre-installed SIM cards will only work in UK and EU (there are no roaming charges for EU either!)

If you live outside of EU, you will need to find a suitable SIM card for your country.

Please note if you are intending to use it in North America, Canada, Australia or New Zealand then you will need the 3G version. These places have very limited availability of networks offering availability for 2G devices.

Another limitation is SIM network coverage – if you’re out in the middle of nowhere then your tracker will still get a GPS signal but it won’t have a chance of picking up a cell phone network signal – so there will be no way to text the information out. Most urban areas will be fine.

Its up to you to research the SIMs that are available in the country that you’re going to be using it in (if not UK or EU). Make sure that its not a pure 3G SIM – the SIM cards should be 2G to work properly with the trackers, and micro size rather than nano. Your choice of SIM provider will depend on costs, associated fees, Pay as you Go vs contract deals etc.

If you are going shopping for a SIM card in another country, you basically want to find the cheapest option, preferably Pay As You Go without any long contracts. The Tracker will primarily be used for receiving and sending texts – but you might also want to have call time as an option if the wearer might be using the SOS or call-out button. 

In that scenario, you wouldn’t be able to locate the GPS Tracker – texts won’t be received or sent. You will need to wait for coverage to return (if its a temporary issue) or swap to a SIM network that you know has better coverage for your area.

The GiffGaff SIMs we supply free with the Trackers are with GiffGaff who use the O2 network. They generally have excellent coverage in the UK, but may have small blindspots in certain rural areas – you can check the coverage here.

Please note that ALL networks are prone to the occasional ‘downtime’ if there is a temporary issue with a local mast tower for example. During these periods, your GPS Tracker won’t be reachable. Because this is always a possibility, you should never rely on a GPS Tracker for absolute safety e.g. by encouraging a situation that would be dangerous without one. They should be used as an assistance only.