vodaphone across Europe

[Matrid]

hi. Im from Sydney, flying in to Budapest in July, spending 6 months in Europe. My brother in UK suggests i go with Vodaphone as he uses this successfully when travelling (though ill be adding Albania, Montenegro etc to my places to visit.

My question is..... Can i get a Sim card and pre-pay monthly plan in Budapest that will be competitive ($) and cover Bulgaria, Romania etc along with the main Euro countries?

Will i need to make sure my phone (hardware) is compatible, or are these things global now?

[jeffkinn]

The same caution would apply to places like The Canary Islands and, in extreme cases, to St. Martin in The Caribbean which is part of France and possibly other French islands as well.

[ToniCa]

Well, it looks as though it's only PAYG1 customers whose geographical knowledge will be tested; where am I, where the hell is the capital city, and what time is it there??

The charges for using a PAYG "other device" outside of the PAYG Europe zone may be eye-watering, but at least you are just faced with an ambiguity between lasting for 24 hours from activation or lasting until midnight UK time - either way, it's not pretty.

[Matrid]

Thanks once again ToniCa for your great input  - and clarification on the timezone bit  - here in Aus we have 3 or 4 so I am familiar with the concept but this idea wouldn't work here as Canberra (capital) is on the east coast and e.g Perth is 3 hours "behind" on the west

I was scratching my head to figure out where in Europe is there a country broad enough that the "capital city" clause would make sense..... I see now I should have been thinking "islands".....

Re my mention of a choice to order 2 sims -  I still see this here: http://freesim.vodafone.co.uk

- by clicking the select button in the "FREE" box which brings up the choice, just below the address boxes.

This option means that I then have to load the sim with credit once received.

This page is not very well designed  - and Vodafone need to correct this:

There are 2 "plans" on the same page - PAYG1 and BVB. The default plan is BVB and this is not immediately clear (having a slow internet connection may have made matters worse.... where am I, what button did I  just click...) The BVB plan defaults to the 10GBP bundle, and this is clearly the default as you can see that this is "selected" in the boxes below. For the PAYG1 the default is also 10GBP but there is no indication where this comes from.... there are 3  boxes on the right , that middle one should be green!      Initially I thought this area is where I would come to add more money... as in "top up". If these had said "starter"or something similar I would have known I was in the right place....  it didnt help that I had gone to the BVB area, chosen the 30GBP bundle, then switched back to PAYG1 and 30GBP is showing...... and this is NOT one of the choices in those 3 boxes.....   very confusing. These two pages should be completely seperated

Finally - I note that on May 10th Albania and Bosnia & Herzegovina are being pulled out of the European roaming area..... thats a shame!

Cheers

[ToniCa]

Yes, I've just played around with the freesim page, and managed to paper myself into a corner a couple of times - it definitely needs a sort-out.

In order to use that page, and top up SIM no 1 at the same time, you'd need a UK address and a UK credit card - at least, so I believe, but I can't experiment!

The "capital city" business is interesting - in the past, when roaming, data was charged in "packets" of say 25MB per day, rather than charged per MB as it generally is now, the day was based on capital city time for Pay Monthly, on UK time for PAYG. I was on the US west coast with a colleague once - he had a Pay Monthly account, so his "day" ended at midnight in Washington DC, which was 21:00 local time, while mine ended at midnight UK, which I think was 16:00 local time. Despite having a theoretical strategy to minimise data costs, we got ourselves into a fair muddle a couple of times.

[Matrid]

Your experience in the States had me laughing -  Monty Python could make something out of that!

So I'm almost there.... just one more question (he says!). I cannot find mention of a use-by date....

So once activated - and say I load 20GBP - will that amount last forever or until I use it all - whichever comes first?

Cheers

[ToniCa]

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@Matrid wrote:

So once activated - and say I load 20GBP - will that amount last forever or until I use it all - whichever comes first?

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Provided you are opted in to PAYG1 rather than a BVB, then basically YES! The only proviso is that you do have to make a chargeable usage from time to time to keep it active and stop the balance from disappearing. The front-line figure is 180 days, at which point a warning SMS is sent, but of course the phone has to be switched on at or shortly after that to receive the SMS. You then have a further 90 days during which you must make chargeable use or top up again, either of which resets the clock. If you do nothing within that additional 90 days, then the number is liable to be disconnected, and any remaining balance lost.

180 days is almost dangerously long - easy to lose track of it - so for my spare SIM I have an automated diary note to make a short call or send a text every 120 days. That way, even if I manage to ignore the first one, the second one will still be within the 180+90 days.

[Matrid]

Great, thank you very much for the detail.

Heh guess what- I.ve thought of a few more questions .

1. In previous posts I have seen suggested that once the sim is activated (in the UK) I should get my bro to check that there is no "roaming bar" on it  - by calling customer service. This may have been old news - before roaming was pan-european, so can anyone advise - is this still necessary?

2. This one is a bit vague (as I dont have the time right now to find the detail....) and more of a comment. I have read that some free vodafone numbers like 191 (?)  can be accessed from overseas by calling

+44?????191191. I've seen no mention that this works for all numbers like 2345 - the  buy an Extra 500MB one - but I can try that in a few months!

Cheers

[ToniCa]

Hi again!

Calling CS to check that there isn't a roaming bar is still suggested on the Before You Leave tab of https://www.vodafone.co.uk/explore/costs/travelling-abroad/

Others may know the current official situation, but I think I'd want to check - it would be a considerable pain, particularly after so much careful planning, to discover when you arrive in Europe that you can't use your phone. Though CS can usually unbar it while you're abroad, it all takes time.

Looking at that tab reminds me that, if you anticipate using voicemail, your brother should also set up a voicemail PIN for you. That 100% has to be done from within the UK.

I realised I had a couple of alternative numbers in my Contact List for credit line 2345; neither is mentioned under the Topping Up Abroad tab. I've investigated! +44 3333 048 048 works fine from the UK, but I think my calls were deducted from my allowance of calls, whereas 2345 is free. +44 7836 192 350 just produced a nasty noise. Of course, some numbers don't work across national boundaries - a while since I tried it, but my bank's "calling from abroad" number looks like a standard UK number, but you can't call it from within the UK; I think the idea is to ensure that callers from abroad don't spend too long listening to hold messages at international rates, so they avoid cluttering up that line with UK-based queue jumpers! You might want to discover what happens if you try calling either of those numbers from Aus!

We seem to have covered a lot of ground here, but you may think of something else?  

[ToniCa]

Aaaagh! Just thought of something else. Somewhere above I mentioned using the My Vodafone app. Although you can install it over wifi, you then need to activate it on first use with the SIM in place and mobile data switched on. I'm not absolutely sure, but I'd guess that you need to be connected to the Vodafone UK network for that to work OK.

Although you mentioned flying into Budapest, I fear that some of my answers assumed with that you'd be starting off in the UK. Has anyone mentioned the need to ensure that your phone isn't locked to your Aus network? If it is, you'll need to unlock it before you travel. You can check by putting a SIM from a different Aus network into your phone, and see what it makes of it; if that works OK, then SIMs from European networks should also be fine.

[ToniCa]

I realised  that it was some years since I last topped up by voucher while abroad. I'm in the US at the moment, so experimented. I've been able to use a voucher via my online account to top up my own phone, via the app to top up my owo phone or another. I can use the top up page, but to use a voucher I have to log in  although I can top up by card without logging in. Is the latter some obscure anti money laundering idea?