On a recent trip to Peru I purchased a SIM card for my unlocked T Mobile cell phone in Cusco. Just $5, as my Peruvian friend said it would be. At the Movistar service store in the center of Cusco I asked for a phone # with a city code for Lima, as most of my calls would be made there. The card came with 15 minutes of free service. Away from the store I tried to make a call and got a message telling me to purchase service. Back to the store where they told me to wait 15 minutes for service to be activated. After 15 minutes, same deal. Back to the store where they said wait 24 hours for service to be activated. Next day, same deal, no service. Back to the store, they try it out and demonstrate that the phone works by calling to a cell phone in the store. I left and tried to call a Peruana in Cusco, no service. Back to the store. Now they tell me that the free minutes are only good for calls to phones with Movistar service, not service with Claro which the woman had. So I had to purchase a phone card for service and made the mistake of purchasing a card for Telefonika, which is apparently for land lines. I ended up using that from my hotel in Lima and purchased another card with minutes of Movistar service. I also made the mistake of burning out the cell phone charger. The charger was a step down transformer from 120 volts to 4.8v and Peruvian outlets are 220v. Fortunately and to my surprise I easily found a transformer from 220v to 4.8 in Lima for 20 nuevo soles, less than $7.
