Roaming EU and International

mattgod69

Hi

I hope everybody is safe and well.  I currently pay for four Three phone contracts in my family!  We are all on pay monthly contracts and we have been with them for many years.  Generally, this has been great and in particular the signal in the UK appears to be far superior to any other network I had previously been with.

Anyway, my partner works for an airline and is flying often, mainly outside of Europe.  I used to go with her until Covid hit, although I am hoping to get back into it when things get back to a new normal.  She recently had a trip and three have now written to her (like I think they have many others) saying that she is going to be moved off the current contract which she is currently on and on to a rolling monthly contract.  I was deliberately avoiding renewing to retain the Go Roam features (all the contracts ran out earlier this year).  I have not received any such notification from my two phones nor has my son to my knowledge.  I am thinking that the trigger was her using the roaming on the phone.

I am now wondering what to do and what is the best way to try and minimise any future charges.  I just tried to call O2 and it was frankly shocking how poor the knowledge of the customer service representative was.  I was trying to explain that I do not want international calling, i only want to know about international roaming and costs from the USA and Australia back to the UK in particular.  While speaking to him I managed to find out myself but he was saying that I could not use the phone in many countries unless I had a tariff plus option in my tariff.  This did seem a bit far-fetched and I managed to find out on the website that you are able to do this but you will be charged the standing roaming charges.  To make matters worse and very unhelpfully, on the website, when you click on the link to the standard roaming charges it gives you costs for calling abroad from the UK which is of course not what I want to do.  This did not inspire me with confidence of O2!

I am wondering what everybody else is doing now, particularly those that were with Three and using Go Roam.

Many thanks. 

Matt

eDicky

Three's 'Go Roam' has been uniquely useful for free roaming outside Europe, but as you've noticed is now being consigned to history. O2 is the only main network not to begin roaming charges (yet), but that's only within Europe.

You may just have to shop around for the the most suitable roaming package offered by networks, or use only WhatsApp, Telegram etc for calls and messaging on WiFi or with a local SIM, which is what I do. But it will be hard to avoid roaming charges for incoming calls to your main UK number, if such calls have importance, unless you subscribe to a package.

Unless your current contracts are SIM-only you are probably paying too much to continue them past their minimum term just for the Go Roam, unless that has considerable amount of use. Your partner should look around for alternative network services and ask Three for a PAC, they might then offer a better deal to continue with them.

Neil49

Given that the Three network is working well for you I would take a look at ID mobile. 

They piggyback off the Three network and include EU roaming as part of their deals. They do monthly rolling contracts as well as annual. Check out deals via Uswitch as they often have better offers available. 

BUFF

afaik Three PAYG is still not yet liable for the daily surcharge for roaming in USA etc. but they are of course hiking their PAYG rates. However, combined with a Data Pack https://www.three.co.uk/payg-data-packs they may still make sense - it just depends where/for how long & what sort of usage you think that you need.

Fwiw for the last ~10 years or so I have used O2 as my contract phone in the UK with a Three PAYG sim for roaming in the USA. I generally find O2's cs to be fine - it may just be a case of you being used to what you are & once you are similarly familiar with O2 as Three you may be as happy with them.

P1Fanatic

As above Three PAYG is not "yet" charging for US/EU roaming but I don't see that lasting much longer. I was interested in that but their website forces you to buy the data packs from amazon and if you read the reviews on there many people had problems getting them activated etc. Not an issue if you have time to sort it out before travelling. Anyway it put me off and I just moved to their sister company SMARTY and they have free EU roaming albeit with a 12gb data limit (although I presume that's the same with Three anyhow).