The first procedure when you arrive with the WHV to New Zealand is to buy a SIM card. You will need to have a New Zealand number to be able to take out the IRD number, to contact van dealers, to call you for a job interview, etc.
But, How to buy a SIM card in New Zealand and which phone company is better? Well, let's go to the mess ...
As soon as you arrive at the Auckland airport you will find two stands together: one of Vodafone and another of Telecom, which is now Spark. These two companies are good and offer the same promotion in “prepay”: 100 minutes to NZ phones, 500 megabytes of data and Unlimited SMS basically. But Spark it also offers something very interesting: Hotspots or points with Wifi (they are normally pink telephone booths) where you can connect to your phone and your computer if you are a Spark customer. They are scattered throughout New Zealand (see this map) and you have up to 1 gb per day.
The problem when hiring is that the phone where you want to put the SIM has to be compatible. In our case, at the airport's Telecom / Spark store they checked our Alcatel phone that we bought in India and it wasn't, and a Chinese brand phone from a Spanish boy either. So we decided to buy the SIM with Vodafone. The SIM cost us $ 25 and the $ 19 pack of the first month was already included. Once the month is consumed you can recharge it by dialing a code, but for this you have to have enough balance. How to top up balance? In a Vodafone store or in any Convenient Shop that are spread throughout the cities and the minimum recharge is $ 20.
Eye! When checking the SIM they only did it through the IMEI number, it is best to ask them to mount a Spark SIM on your phone and see if it works. A few days later we went to another store where we did it this way and if it went! So we bought it too.
So they can call you from Spain or from anywhere on the planet to your New Zealand number, just dial +64 which is the prefix of New Zealand and your number, removing the first 0. It will cost you nothing. A month later we decided to visit another Spark store, this time in Whangarei, and there was no problem with the phone. We hire the $ 19 pack and since then we are using the hotspots every time we have a chance!
Other telephone companies in New Zealand are: 2degrees or Skinny mobile
