Telcel Amigo Plan Rates in English

Last updated: August 16, 2010

The following information is directed to the English speaking community in Playa del Carmen and the rest of the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico.  Much of this information is useful elsewhere in Mexico, but please note the rates are different depending on your specific IVA tax rate.

All prices are listed in Mexican pesos, MXN.

Purchasing Credit for your Phone

Below is a table of recharge costs. Along with your recharge of $150 pesos or more, you get bonus credit as well. Here’s a simple chart showing the bonus offered:

(1) The additional airtime has a nominal value, only applicable for calls and sending SMS messages to another Telcel subscriber.

Where can I recharge my account?

Amigo credit can be purchased in a variety of ways. The most common is an electronic recharge at convenience stores (Oxxo, Extra, Super City, Walmart, Mega, Soriana, Chedraui) or authorized Telcel stores throughout the city. You can rarely walk more than a block or two without seeing a Telcel store – stop in, say hi, purchase your card. Easy. Note, as of August 2010, Super City charged an additional $2 for a recharge.

You can now recharge via the internet, if you have an account with the following banks: Bancomer, Inbursa, Banorte, ScotiaBank, Inverlat IXE.

How long does your credit last?

Your credit is typically valid for 60 days. Purchasing more credit will extend expiration of ALL your credit. If you do not purchase more credit before it expires, you will not be able to make calls or send messages. Your phone will continue to work for receiving calls and/or messages. Purchasing more credit will re-activate all previous unused credit – credit continues to rollover as long as you add new credit every 60 days. If you do not add more value to an expired number, Telcel will eventually cancel the account and the unused credit will vanish. Sorry, I don’t know the cutoff period.

 

Checking your Credit Balance

The Amigo service number is *333. Dial that and follow the menu. Option #1 is to check your balance and Option #2 is for adding new credit by entering the number from your Amigo phone card.

An alternate way to check your balance is by entering *133# and pressing your call button. You will receive a text message with your balance and expiration date.

Please note, you cannot use *333 or *133# to check your balance if your credit has already expired!!

 

Ok, now you have credit. How much do calls cost?

Quintana Roo is in Region 8 for Telcel. Region 8 covers Yucatán, Tabasco, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Chiapas.

A call within region 8 costs:

$0.00 to initiate, $3.98 each minute in Cancun, Playa del Carmen, and Tapachula – these are frontier rates. 

$0.00 to initiate, $4.16 each minute in all other locations.

Roaming rates outside of Region 8 are higher and not included here.

Mexico has instituted a “caller pays” policy. The caller is charged for the entire cost of a phone call, the recipient pays nothing. 

Also available are monthly Amigo Rate Plans that will likely save you money.  Information coming soon…

 

SMS and MMS Rates

SMS (also known as “text”) messaging costs $0.83 in Region 8 per message to send. The cost is $0.88 outside the Frontier zones.

MMS (also known as “multimedia”) messages to an individual costs $1.81 per message to send. Other rates apply for other MMS services. 

WAP/APN Configuration

Here are the current Telcel WAP settings for internet use:

WAP GPRS Settings
IP: 148.233.151.240
Port: 8080
APN: wap.itelcel.com
Username: iesgprs
Password: iesgprs2002

For additional WAP/MMS settings, please view this post in our discussion forum: Telcel WAP/MMS Settings.

Here are the current Telcel APN settings for 2G/3G internet use, for use on Blackberry, iPhone, Android and other smartphones:

Name: Telcel
APN: internet.itelcel.com
Username: webgprs
Password: webgprs2002

Passing Time (7373)

Telcel has a feature where you can send phone credit to another Telcel subscriber. The feature is called Pasa Tiempo Amigo, or “Time Pass Friend”. Telcel has a micro-website devoted to this feature: Pasa Tiempo Amigo. 

You can use it to send a minimum of $5, and up to $100 (all prices are in pesos) of credit at a time. It works like this, send an SMS message containing the recipients number, followed by a space, followed by the amount of pesos credit you wish to send, to phone number 7373. For example, to send $50 to a friend, enter “9841010101 50” and send to 7373. 

There is a $0.83 charge for sending the SMS message, and the recipient gets charged $3.00 for receiving the credit. You can use this service up to 10 times a month. You can send only paid credit, not bonus credit. 

One less excuse your friend now has for not returning your call. 

It is quite interesting, when doing research on this, I found that it is a very popular scam in Mexico to use this feature to trick people into sending them phone credit. The scams try to convince people that there is a secret code to double or triple their credit. You’ve been warned. 


Rates are valid as of August 10, 2010 and are subject to change.

There is plenty of other information available at the Telcel website. It’s all in Spanish. If you are looking for additional information, please post a message in our discussion forum. You do not need to be registered to post a question.