Overseas Phone Card Problem

Crafty_Butcher

Hi,
my daughter recently went to the states on holiday.

Before going, she called vodafone to see if they had any cheap overseas tariffs. She was advised she hadn't been with them long enough and that she would have to "try something else".

She purchased a phone card in the US and used it with her mobile phone to call the UK. It appeared to work perfectly, counting down the minutes she had left etc.
On returning to the UK, she has received a mobile bill for nearly £1000 :mad:

She called vodafone and was advised that they don't accept overseas phone cards !!!!!

Any suggestions ?

diamonds

she made a roaming call in US to a US number, US is not Vodafone passport country, so her Voda minutes were not going down, her calling card mins were though - bad mistake on her part to not read her roaming charges on Voda website

Crafty_Butcher

Thanks for the reply.....the calls were to a UK number (but presumably that doesn't make much difference ?)

redux

There aren't any cheap roaming deals at all for the USA; the best thing to have done would be to get a US SIM card.

A phone card has an access number then the destination is reached by that company, but the cost of the first part is still due to the mobile company.

Given that she called Vodafone in advance to ask about it, I think it will be difficult to complain that she was misinformed, but I'd try to contend that it wasn't made clear enough to her that calls within the roamed country would not be any cheaper than back to the UK.

The other point to discuss with them is that they have a credit limit per account. For example, a friend of mine had his temporarily barred when it reached £200 while abroad and had to borrow mine to contact them. If this had happened for your daughter, at least it would have limited the amount and brought it to her attention sooner. They'll probably reply that it takes time for some roaming calls to come through to the account, but this happened to my friend in Europe after 10 days.