Ethical Homes

Living abroad, and planning to come to the DC area to find a new home, research investment properties or cash in on the hot market and sell a property? If you’re working with Ethical Homes, one thing you won’t have to worry about is where to find a short-term cell phone to use while you’re here.

Most of our expat clients are only in town for a few weeks or months (or in some cases just a few days or hours). It’s nearly impossible to get service for a rental mobile phone here for that short of a period, and unlike most of the rest of the world, the US carriers still don’t have good support for swapping SIM cards, which would allow easy short-term use of phones from other countries. That’s why we’ve purchased a supply of mobile phones for our clients to use with Verizon Wireless IN-Pulse prepaid.

Detailed prices are available on the VZW website (go to “Personal -> Pay As You Go”), but here’s a quick summary of the costs:

• $30 activation fee. (If you are using one of our phones within 30 days of it last being used by another client, and give us adequate notice, the activation fee can be prorated according to the number of days that the phone is unused; if you will start using the phone 20 days after the last client, for example, you would only have to pay $20.)
• $30 per month (pro-rated for months beyond the first), which includes free calls to other Verizon customers (including, of course, your Ethical Homes agents) and to any other domestic US phone numbers called at night (so you can keep up with friends and family while here); all other domestic calls (including weekend days, unfortunately) cost 10c/min. (If you will be using the phone for less than a full month and we have other clients who can take over the phone during that same month, we can pro-rate the $30 monthly fee.)

It’s not exactly cheap, but it’s still better than any of the other short-term alternatives that we’ve found.

If you think you might need to use one of our phones while you’re in-country, let us know ahead of time.