BEWARE! Virgin charge for roaming voicemail even if not retrieved

Chris11

Returned from South Africa to find a bill of £50 for 10 roaming voicemails made from the UK and charged at £4pm even though I did not call to retrieve them. Virgin tell me that the charge was made by the local mobile phone network. How is that possible if the voicemails are stored in the UK??? This does not make any sense to me.

Does anyone have an explanation!

I checked with Three mobile and they could not explain why Virgin would charge. Clearly Three do not charge for voicemails not retrieved while abroad, I don't know about other networks.

Anyone had a similar experience? I am wondering whether its worth fighting to get a refund.

Hope this is helpful to other Virgin users, as you can see, if you are not aware of this charge you can end up with a nasty surprise, courtesy of Richard Branson who would no doubt like to have some of your hard earned money for what looks like a dubious service for which other networks don't charge.

Silk

When you leave voicemail on and don't answer the call it is routed back to the uk to your voicemail ....hence you are paying each time to call the uk.

grumbler

Chris11 wrote: »

Does anyone have an explanation!

It's a (well?) known fact.

MSE article: Mobile Roaming

Beware voicemail - outside the EU you can be charged £1/min to receive them and another £1/min to listen

EU regulations mean your provider can't charge you when someone leaves you a voicemail if you're travelling within Europe. However you can be charged if you listen to a voicemail message - within Europe, it'll be capped at the usual call rate but speak to your provider before you go to see how much it'd be.

Outside Europe it can be much more expensive. Outrageously some networks - notably EE and Virgin Mobile - will actually charge you if someone leaves you a voicemail, whether you actually listen to it or not. Furthermore the amount you'll be charged is not capped so you could find yourself in a spot of bother if anyone decides to leave you a message.
If your network charges for this it's safest to disable voicemail for the duration of your trip. You should be able to do this by calling customer services. See our new Beat the Voicemail Roaming Trap guide for more information.

Would it not be reasonable to check your provider's website before going abroad, especially outside EU?
Going abroad FAQs >> Simple ways to save

If you Pay Monthly, it’s actually better to remove any voicemail diverts you’ve set up. That’s because if someone calls you, and you’re outside the EU, first you’ll pay to receive the call, then you’ll pay the cost of diverting the call from the country you’re in to your voicemail box in the UK and finally you’ll pay a third time if you call your voicemail to listen to the message.

They don't say that it's even better to switch the voicemail off altogether, but this is obvious.

Silk wrote: »

...hence you are paying each time to call the uk.

Apparently only if you are with EE or Virgin.

Silk

grumbler wrote: »

Apparently only if you are with EE or Virgin.

I thought the thread was about Virgin and South Africa wasn't it (which is outside the EU) ?


Besides which that's wrong and misleading.
AFAIK O2 do but Vodafone don't, T-Mobile do but Orange don't, Tesco do but GiffGaff don't, Three don't but Family Mobile does etc etc.
Which is why it's best to check with the provider before going

boatman

At least most networks have the ability to turn off the voicemail. IDmobile currently has no way to turn off the voicemail, so they say!!!

NFH

Why would you activate your voicemail (or leave it activated) while outside the EEA? This is madness in view of the widely known high prices of routing an incoming call from the UK to the visited country and back to your voice mailbox in the UK.

Why didn't you use a South African SIM card? They're so cheap.

grumbler

NFH wrote: »

Why would you activate your voicemail (or leave it activated) while outside the EEA? This is madness in view of the widely known high prices of routing an incoming call from the UK to the visited country and back to your voice mailbox in the UK.

Because this this widely known issue isn't know to everyone. And this way of routing isn't something obvious and intuitive.

Why didn't you use a South African SIM card? They're so cheap.

May be the OP did and used the UK sim only for receiving texts and checking who tried to contact him?

mchale

boatman wrote: »

At least most networks have the ability to turn off the voicemail. IDmobile currently has no way to turn off the voicemail, so they say!!!

Try ##002# send

Chris11

Thats write. I used it to receive texts and make whatapp calls from wifi. I also had an SA sim in my Duo Samsung. Previously I used my Three sim and was never charged so I automatically assumed that it was safe with Virgin. Big mistake!!! A very expensive mistake.

Chris11

I did use SA SIM but used Virgin for text and whatsapp wifi calls.

boatman

mchale wrote: »

Try ##002# send

I think I had already tried it, just tried it again and just says 'invalid code'.
Any other ideas welcome?
Normally for '3' you have to phone up customer service to turn it off, seems strange that with iDmobile you cannot do the same, surely '3' must have given them the ability to turn it off, they are just avoiding it. Perhaps someone who has worked at '3' knows the process they use?