Mobile Roaming: Cheapest Calls When You're Abroad

Hi M74,

I can understand your confusion. It doesn’t seem right for it to be cheaper to make a call to South Africa whilst roaming in France, than it is to make the call from your mobile in the comfort of your own home.

Let me explain why this is; during the summer the EU ordered all mobile companies roaming charges to be slashed to 37p/min to make a call to any destination and 19p/min to receive a call. At Vodafone we changed our European roaming charges in accordance with this hence why it was so cheap for you to make the calls to South Africa when you were in Paris.

A standard international call from the UK to South Africa is £1.69/min as you rightly said. We do have a service that can help to reduce these calls; International Call Saver (ICS) helps to reduce international calls up to 81%.

This service costs an extra £2.50 a month but the savings can be massive, for example with your calls to South Africa the calls would be reduced from £1.69/min to £0.90/min, a massive saving of £0.79. International call saver is subject to price plan availability.

For more information you can visit the Vodafone International Call Saver section of our website here, or call Vodafone customer services on 191 from your handset free of charge.

All prices quoted are including VAT.

Hope this helps,
Gembo
Vodafone UK

Hi redux, I apologise if you've taken what we've written as spam; we're genuinely just trying to help. Whilst I completely accept that there may be cheaper options available with other service providers, all that we were trying to do was provide Vodafone customers with the cheapest options available on our network.

Mzungu74 might not have been aware of International Call Saver, along with any other Vodafone customers reading this.

With respect to the thread about Vodafone Passport (I think you mean this one,) if you check the first page we did post on there a few times just to try and clarify the situation, and to offer an avenue to resolution for anyone still having problems.

Any discussions that have gone on since in the thread haven't really needed any advice from us, but we're keeping an eye on it and are ready to help if anyone asks any more questions in the future, the same as with any other thread.

Hope this helps,

Hopefullyuseful1
Vodafone UK

Mzungu74 - don't you have access to a landline? 5p for the override operator connection and then 2p a minute.

SilverFox wrote: »

Like Jen_Jen, I too am off the the US (on Fri. 14th); unfortunately the $15, Motorola Pink C139-4GSM, won't work in the area we are visiting (Zip 23188)!!
I have a Motorola V220.
Can this be unlocked (I've read the step-by-step how to do it) and have the necessary IMEI.
Would my most economical way of using this 'phone in the US, be to unlock this here, and buy a local SIM in the states??
Thanks for any help.
Gerry

You will need a tri-band or quad band phone for it to work in the USA. It is much cheaper to get it unlocked in this Country as it can cost you up to $100 to get it unlocked in the USA (and that's if you can find someone to do it.)

When I was in the USA last year there was only one Mobile Company that sold SIM cards and that was Cingular, they have now been taken over by AT & T. They needed an address in the USA to sell me a card. You can use any address, even your hotel. They don't contact you at the address, it's just for their files. If you purchase a US SIM Card, the amount you put on it, only lasts for 30 days and then expires, so don't buy too much credit. If you don't use your phone within 90 days, your number expires also, so you can't keep your SIM card to use on next years vacation. If your number expires, then you have to start all over again. I did find that most of the Mobile Phone companies in the USA haven't even heard of SIM cards, they all appear to be on monthly contracts.

Good Luck, have a great vacation. Leave your phone at home and have a stress free holiday :rotfl:

With Vodafone, you usually can use other country vouchers. You'll probably be able to call the short code number free of charge (I can for a German one here); then it'll just be a question of navigating the menu to enter the numbers.

Lebara; don't know, but I suspect there will be an online option.