Important Information for Foreign Mobile Use

bobmij

I have just received my mobile bill and had a nasty shock. After investigation some important points have come to light. I would like to disseminate this information to everybody in the hope they don't get screwed by T mobile like me.
I was recently overseas outside the EU. I left my phone on to receive text messages but with no intention of answering calls due to cost. When returning to my hotel room I noted several missed calls and voicemail waiting. I picked up those messages on my return. I had not used my phone to make or receive calls at all overseas.
My bill for the month incorporating this period was double.
The reason?
T mobile deems that if your answering machine picks up the call abroad then you are making an overseas call. The answering machine is a digital device based in the UK with t mobile. How this warrants an international call charge defies my power of logic.
More importantly, your answering system is now in a default state of "overseas". This means if you returned to the UK and left your phone off indefinately, you would be charged continually the overseas rate for people leaving voice mail until it logged onto the UK network.
It could turn out to be extremely expensive for those not aware of these nuances of the billing system. I feel that it is morally questionable at best and down right thievery if nothing else.
Please be careful.

redux

You are receiving a call while roaming.

Disable the voicemail then, or answer the phone. Or perhaps switch all calls to vm before leaving the UK and call in for them from a cheaper phone (having set up a vm password in advance).

Or get a different SIM card

PBA

By having your phone on in another country, you tell the network that you are there. Your calls then start getting forwarded to your handset, incurring you roaming charges. If you don't answer and send the call to voicemail, another call gets set up as the voicemail system is physically located in the UK, so the call gets transferred back. To avoid this, you can either set up for all calls to be forwarded to voicemail before you leave the UK, or turn voicemail off. You can't blame T-Mobile, as the calls have been made and they are therefore entitled to charge for them.

bobmij

PBA
Technically, no calls have been transacted. While a call to my handset is attempted the phone itself is not answered. A time period with no reply is exceeded and the processor (in the UK) diverts the call to voicemail (also in the UK). I don't blame T mobile for it. If I were trying to make a lot of money I'd do the same thing. However,this issue is less than transparent and I would expect plenty of people to get a large bill unwittingly.
The only course of action is to disable voicemail function or divert to voicemail before travel or get a sim card as per the previous post.

melipona

Not just T Mobile, O2 as well, not sure about others. Seems fair enough to me, they have incurred some system load as a result of the call being made and routed to your phone.

If you do not want a charge then apparently if you switch off the phone then calls will not be charged if left on voice mail, you can then check out voice mail once a day, not very convenient but at least its controlled.

zenmaster

It's quite well documented on the Tmobile FAQs along with instructions with how to set up diverts before you leave the UK.

However, I can't personally recommend doing this as I had all sorts of problems making and receiving calls from other memebers of my party (on other networks) during an emergency situation whilst on holiday in Germany.