Agree with temporarily upgrading to ultimate unlimited. It’s about $10 more per month (depending on current plan) plus a change fee of around the same amount each time you change. Worked seamlessly for my D22 during her semester abroad and for me when I visited. You can easily do the switch online if you sign into your Verizon account. If it doesn’t cover other international calls (non US) which I don’t remember just use What’s App for those. I had always used the daily plan before which besides being more expensive if you go for more than a few days always involved deciding each day if I wanted to spend the $12 or if I could just get by on wi-fi. I loved just using my phone as I always did. Just remember to switch it back when you get home!
If you’re on a legacy plan, then yes, you’ll lose it and any perks associated with it if you switch. I had a legacy plan for many years and hesitated to change for this exact reason, but I eventually found that the new plan was actually better for me, and my monthly cost only increased by about $5. If you’re on one of Verizon’s current unlimited plans, Plus or Welcome, you can upgrade to Ultimate and later downgrade without losing phone credits or other perks.
My recommendation is that if you’re exploring this for the first time, you call and discuss it with a Verizon representative so the pros and cons are clear. Once you know it works for you, future trips are easy. You can upgrade or downgrade your plan through the app or website in under two minutes.
They may have charged a fee in the past, but they no longer do. You can change your plan for free, and you do not have to pay for the full month either. Verizon applies a prorated credit, so for example, if you upgrade for 15 days, you’ll be charged $5 instead of $10.
This is what I used to do in the past, but a major downside is that you end up with a new phone number. You then have to share it with anyone who might need to call you, or you risk missing important calls, which happened to me once. Now I don’t have that problem, because I keep my US phone number no matter which country I’m in.
If you are going to use the phone as a work phone, then yes, it may not be convenient to use whatsapp. For us tourists, eSIMs are very convenient to use and 95% of my contacts all over the world have whatsapp.
If you have Verizon, I think all US calls to your US number will go through as free calls and vice versa if you have enabled your phone to use WIFI calling. And eSIM provides WIFI. If you expect a foreign phone number to call you, then whats app can help only if the foreign number has whatsapp.
My eSIM only provides wifi, no calls but you can get those who do calls also. And you might have to be given a new number. As I said, all my travels are non work related so I never encountered that problem.
Thank you for sharing this info! We will be going to London soon and we were already complaining about the $12 per day for 3 of us. I have a Verizon store just around the corner from my house and am going to pop over this morning to discuss this. I need to find out if we’re on a legacy plan first and if we decide to go the route you suggested, have him explain how I can switch off when I get home. This would save us hundreds of dollars! Can’t use a SIM card, we need our actual number as we may be getting calls from home. Just to verify, we can get calls from the U.S. for no other charge, correct?
I hope it works out for you!
If you’ve registered your account for online access, you can upgrade or downgrade your plan yourself via the app or the website. It usually takes me less than two minutes.
That’s right — calls and texts are free to and from the US, and within the country you’re in. You can also receive international calls from anywhere for free.
However, be careful when calling a US number over Wi-Fi. You’ll hear a warning that international calling rates apply. If that happens, hang up, turn off Wi-Fi, and call again using cellular. I ignored the warning once thinking it didn’t apply to me because of the unlimited plan, and ended up with a $25+ charge for a 10-minute call back home to my wife. Expensive lesson learned: don’t use Wi-Fi for phones calls! (WhatsApp and other VoIP calls are fine)
As for esims, the upside is you have a local number. Depending on what you are doing, you may need one.
I haven’t read all of the responses, so sorry if mine is a repeat. We have Verizon, and we pay an extra hundred or so for each month we go away, per phone. You can do it online or call them.
If you buy an eSIM from Airalo to use in London for 15 days (10gbs, which is a LOT) it only costs $20. You can call home and people from home can call you for free if you enable your phone for WIF calling. 10gbs for 15 days for wifi will be more than adequate. Compare this to $12/day from Verizon.
That’s very good information to know about WiFi! So, I went to the store. I don’t know if the charge per phone with the ultimate unlimited is different for each state, but ours is $25 per phone for 30 days. However, you can turn it off when you get back and it’s prorated, so it would be approximately 1/3 of that.
You would also have to make sure Travel Pass is turned off, so you don’t get charged for that. We do not have legacy billing, so it will work.
I think this is the way to go! Why would I ever use Travel Pass again? Thank you!
You need to read about the Ultimate Unlimited discussion above by NJDad.
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