<p>No matter how many times one sounds the alarm bell, there is always someone who believes that ATT and Verizon won’t do that, and plenty of people living in denial! </p>
<p>There is no way around. Taking a US phone abroad is rarely a good idea, unless someone else pays the bill. </p>
<p>D leaves for Scotland in a week & a half. She is going through Butler’s study abroad program, and they encouraged students to just get a pay as you go phone there & use international calling cards. D’s friend just got back from study abroad in Scotland last May so gave her his pay as you go phone. That & Skype should keep us from going broke!</p>
<p>Isn’t it fairly basic knowledge especially on a college-aspiring worldly crowd message board that international roaming wireless minutes, especially without a plan, are extremely expensive? Isn’t this as basic as knowing you get charged $30 for bouncing a check?</p>
<p>^^ My D went to Scotland with her normal AT&T phone and everything was fine but we knew up front what the costs would be so we limited calls, didn’t do text msgs (although that’s cheaper than a phone call) and it was fine and reasonable. </p>
<p>The key is to know what one is getting into when they visit another country and if they’re a heavy phone or texting user, they need to change that habit and possibly do some temporary blocking or else not attempt to bring their phone and use one for that country, calling cards, or Skype, Microsoft Live Messenger, or similar free apps. But as long as one is careful just carrying the normal phone can be fine.</p>
<p>Well, I certainly was in for a surprise this last spring when we took a trip to Mexico, and was not told I needed to get a data package for international travel. This was the first international travel I’d done since getting my BlackJackII. When I bought it, I asked the salesperson if there was anything special I needed to do (call them, etc.) when I traveled internationally so that my phone would work properly. He said no, and technically was right, but he also omitted the option of purchasing a monthly data package which would have prevented the extra $800 on our bill that month. I had no idea. Of course, when the charges started ringing up, by day five (we were gone seven days), they texted me to tell me my charges were adding up and to call them. However, I then learned about not being able to place a toll-free phone call when roaming internationally, so I couldn’t contact them.</p>
<p>Thankfully when I returned home and went into the AT&T store and explained the situation, they retroactively charged me the monthly international roaming charge, and then recalculated my bill based on having the package. However, they kept the monthly package on despite my saying I only needed it for one month, so after a couple of months of the extra charge, I had to go back in, explain to them that I only needed it for one month, and they once again adjusted my bill.</p>
<p>And I have a master’s degree, so there goes the theory that college-geared students and their parents should know.</p>
<p>BTW - I got nailed on the data usage because we were gone during the NCAA BB finals and none of the TVs at our resort got any of the ESPN channels that were showing any of the games. So several times, H and I were sitting next to each other, each on our own data phone (at least his was through work), hitting refresh every 30 seconds. Had I known I needed to purchase a separate data package to get the results, I would have looked over H’s shoulder for my updates (although looking at that screen over someone’s shoulder is hard).</p>
<p>Unfortunately, even when being “careful” the phone companies can still nail an unsuspecting customer. For instance, one can decide to carry his or her phone but leave it unplugged most of the time. However, the moment the phone becomes “live” when connected to a roamng service, there are all kinds of data that could try to get access to your “dormant” phone. Also, many people are surprised that calls that are not answered and routed to a voicemail might incur huge charges because the consumer pays the freight TO the phone in the foreign country and BACK to the voicemail in the US … easily a 4 to 5 dollars RT charge. </p>
<p>In addition, the biggest culprits could come from data-intensive emails. People might be very surprised how much an email that contains an image cost overseas. </p>
<p>The reality is that, short of restricting the phone to Wi-Fi access only, there are few if any reasons to carry a US phone overseas (again if one pays his or her own bill.) Getting local phones with changeable SIM cards is extremely easy, local phone cards are dirt cheap to call the US, and Skype and similar VOIP solutions are much better than a solutions that requires to have mobile access via a US cell phone.</p>
<p>^^ Yeah - I had checked all that out before carrying my phone overseas. But I still did it and had no issues and the convenience came in handy (I only made a couple of very brief phone calls and a few text messages) but I tend to research things to death anyway.</p>
<p>I’ve travelled overseas many times taking my phone with me but being VERY aware of what charges would be incurred. I can’t see how anybody can blame the phone company if you go overseas and use your phone as if you were still in the U.S. How can they possibly be referred to as “gotcha” fees if you choose to not educate yourself on how it works? I really wish people would stop blaming everybody but themselves.</p>
<p>Before we left, I called our company 4x and discussed the options. Each time, I received different answers! I finally asked for supervisors, and it still wasn’t clear. Even with “due diligence” it can be complicated.</p>
<p>Xiggi is correct about some services. That was the exact case with ours, but fortunately (after the many calls) I knew ahead of time.</p>
<p>We have free anywhere (in the world) text messaging ( We pay a flat fee, but each text is free). We thought that would be great travelling abroad. However, if the phone is on, and a call comes in, we are charged for the international call, plus roaming fees, etc. EVEN IF WE DON’t answer it, and it goes to voice mail. After discussing it for awhile, we finally decided we could turn off our voice message while gone (Only our company could do that…we could not do it ourselves with our plan). Anyone calling us would simply get a busy signal. We decided to get an inexpenive PAYGO phone abroad, but use our own phones for texting. We also did not need incoming calls from home, so we shared with family, office, etc. that we could be reached by text only, and would return the call if an emergency. Very cheap way to communicate. For those “must” calls, we used the visiting phones. For everyday coordination or quick messages to friends or between our group, we texted via our home phones at no cost. </p>
<p>It might be a pain to carry two phones, but it worked well for us, and was a very economical compromise.</p>
<p>Buy a new unlocked quad phone online (ebay for example) for $25. Buy a SIM card for where you are going with minutes before you go, from place like mysimcard dot com. You can buy a sim card with minutes and call locally in that country or out of the country back home for 15-25 cents a minute. Internationally, incoming calls are often free. Forget about data, expensive. Use your computer for that and wireless networks. You or your student can call home or friends for A LOT LESS. The phone has a new international number, so calling the phone is expensive for the one calling you while you are away, so don’t give it out. It can be for emergencies. But you have a phone to call home, call the office. You can leave your cellphone from home OFF or leave it at home. If it is OFF, you can call it yourself and retrieve voice messages for the same 15-25 cents a minutes and then call back the number with the international phone. You can then add minutes once you get there, or buy a minutes card and load more minutes. We try to buy sim cards that you can call from your phone to reload. </p>
<p>If you have a student abroad with this type phone, call them from your phone, and when they pick up, have them call you right back. You only spent $1 calling them, and they call you back on the cheap minutes. For a student abroad, it gives the least responsible person the cheap minutes!!! Texting abroad it not cheap. So, like data, give it up and use the computer. </p>
<p>SKYPE is also great abroad, and iphones in a wireless environment (to be safe, remove the SIM card so no calls and no data) or itouches can now use SKYPE. However, free wireless hotspots are few and far between when you travel. But a student abroad will likely have wireless access.</p>
<p>Quote - Isn’t it fairly basic knowledge especially on a college-aspiring worldly crowd message board that international roaming wireless minutes, especially without a plan, are extremely expensive? Isn’t this as basic as knowing you get charged $30 for bouncing a check?</p>
<p>No, it’s not. Some of us rarely get out of the country! And since I have never bounced a check, I couldn’t tell you how much that is either.</p>
Another comment on this question: I think many of us assume that certain things will be more expensive than normal, but we don’t expect them to be several multiples more expensive. I can recall in the past, for example, being outraged that a local phone call from a hotel was several dollars–I expected it to be more expensive than a pay phone, but not an order of magnitude more expensive.</p>