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Cell phone service
Hey all, I did check the boards first and could not find any current info.
So, can we talk about how you maintained cell phone service while in Scotland, and even Europe (we are doing two days in Amsterdam on the way home)?
Yes, I should be, and will be, paying attention to our wonderful adventure. But with a new grand baby (4 days old today), and ailing, aging parents, I do need to be able to be reached, by phone and text. I have also heard having accessible phone great in an emergency, like if I get lost in store. :P
Our cell phone provider in the US is Verizon.
Waiting for your wise words!!
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Congrats on the new grand baby. We have Verizon and have had no issues in Amsterdam, Germany, France, Italy and other countries. Have not done England or Scotland but I assume it will be the same there. If not already signed up for international service, do so before you go. Verizon charges $10 per day for service.
Aren’t grandchildren wonderful!
You can use Whatsapp for free, you don’t really need an international plan for calls. Just make sure the key people you want to chat with are on there too. Because of the five and six hour time differences, it’s often difficult to call someone at a convenient time for both of you, especially as Tauck discourages phone calls while on the bus. Email and text and WhatsApp are the best as long as you have wifi signals. Whatsapp is so easy for exchanging photos and videos, I use it to speak to friends In different countries all the time.
British - does WhatsApp use WiFi or cellular. If WiFi, then the reason for an international plan would be to be able to communicate when cellular is available but WiFi isn’t.
It uses either Sam.. we find it inconveniences to call to The US from Europe. I often get messages from WhatsApp when I wake up that have come during the night from England.
British - If it uses cellular, it seems like you’d have to be paying someone for the cellular service.
Smiling Sam, I am speculating that British is being careful and accessing those apps only when she has wifi. If I knew I 100% could get away with that, I would do it.
I have used Verizon's $10/day international plan in Scotland (and many other places!).
Oh, and thanks for the grand baby wishes. Excited he is here and mom and baby are healthy. We are very fortunate!!
Verizon has an international plan that is basically $10/Day if activated. If you keep your phone on AIRPLANE MODE - you won't be charged at all. What'sApp is also a great way to keep in touch. If you go to the Rick Steves webpage, under TRAVEL TIPS, he has a whole section on phone plans and how to use your phone in Europe. He also has LOTS of other great info under TRAVEL TIPS, like money, debit cards, credit cards, etc . . .
We've had Tmobile since 2018 which uses the same tech as European cell service so we don't need to do anything. Free text and wifi/data. Calls 25 cents a minute. Which we've never needed to use. Sometimes the speed is slower than back home. Otherwise worked fine in Ireland, Scotland, and about 8 other western European countries we've visited.
We’ve used Verizon’s international plan many times at $10/day. You can sign up on line and it only activates when you are overseas. We are in the same boat with aging ailing parents. The last thing you need is trying to get them, all the caretakers, doctors, etc to understand that you are now on WhatsApp. No, no, simply won’t work. As for putting your phone on airplane mode to save that days ten bucks? That’s when the call you can’t miss will come in. Forget it. Sign up, pay the fare, it’s budget dust compared to the total cost of your trip.
We use VZ. They send you a txt acknowledging the country you are in and you are ready to go. They don't charge until you actually use your phone- and only for the days you actually used the phone. No charge for the days you don't use it. In Petra, we used my wife's iPhone and my iPad so I could check in with location and status via txt during my extended solo trek- to the Monastery then to the High Point of Sacrifice via the Wadi al-Farasa trial. It worked great except when I was deep in the wadi and shielded from the nearest cell tower.
I had VZ for many years and the $10/day service worked fine I recently switched to Xfinity Mobile (significantly cheaper and uses VZ's network), was in Scotland earlier in the week, and it worked fine.
I typically only use data on days when I do self-guided wandering to use google maps. Even if you pre-plan and do offline downloads of maps, it doesn't function in walking mode. Otherwise, I use it in the hotel, connected to wifi.
Re texting, I used to use WhatsApp, but uninstalled it when facebook bought it. I don't like predatory, intrusive companies harvesting my data. Yes, I'm aware google does the same thing, but IMO, they provide useful services, as opposed to the opiate of the masses, social media (sorry, Karl Marx, for paraphrasing you).
Yes, we have had Xfinity Mobile since they first offered it. We also don’t have to do anything when we go abroad, we get the text to tell us how much it is if we use our phone when we enter a new country. I don’t think we have ever had cause to use it, we just text or email or use WhatsApp. The family know in an emergency that they can get in contact with Tauck who hopefully can get a message to us. If we had to return home, it’s not probably going to be able to speed up things or change any disaster than what might have happened. We have been though that trauma of my dad dying suddenly while he was on vacation years ago, thank goodness for repatriation insurance. Back in the day before cell phones, we went away knowing we would be out of touch when we went away for a couple of weeks. It’s better these days to email friends and family about what we are up to.
But again, to make calls at convenient times with time differences, Europe being worse than say the countries where the time difference is twelve hours. It’s difficult. The odd time someone has gotten a call on their cell phone while we were on the bus, it’s very annoying and of course highly discouraged by Tauck. Of course people have emergencies but I don’t want to hear every bit of people’s idle chit chat on a vacation, which I have had to endure a couple of times. it’s bad enough when people talk when the TD is talking.
Alan, on our Budapest to Amsterdam cruise it cracked us up that we could always tell when the ship had
moved into a new country because we'd get a text from Tmobile welcoming us to that country. It was normally the only way we knew we'd switched.
Hubby is out of state fishing at the moment, so we are chatting on the phone last night about options. There are two options on verizon that we see, the $100 for 30 days international plan (20 GB data then unlimited 3G, 250 calling minutes, unlimited texts), or that $10/day for only the days one uses the phone (2 GB data then unlimited 3g/day, unlimited calls and minutes). We talked about intended purpose for the phone. We both agree, no long chit chat phone calls. Emergencies only unless away from group like at hotel (then will use internet anyhow), texting happily is unlimited as that is my likely "social" contact with family, and no watching cat videos on the tour (so far my data use for this month is 365 GB). Hubby is going for the $100 plan. I am debating the $10/day and assuming that I will likely trigger it at least once on a given day (even one text message or google search), so that would come to $130. The only benefit to it, is that I would get 2 gb/day doled out each day instead of 20 gb for 13 days. Something I need to thing about. $30 difference is nothing in the grand scheme.
I just looked at my "data" breakdown. So far mail services is at 15.3 GB for the month, but I can turn that off for cellular and do wifi at the hotel. Texting is at 10.3 GB, so averaging .4 GB/day in the US. Overall, my "System services" are at 64.0 BG which is an averaging of almost 2.5 GB/day. Going to need to deactivate cellular for vast majority of features on my phone.
Thanks for letting me spit ball here. I appreciate all the thoughtful advice! thanks!
The app “Signal” is very similar to WhatsApp and not owned by Google.
Check with your phone company, ATT has an international day pass $10 per day per device as you activate it gives you a 24h. access. it works in Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, Central and South America. just make sure to turn OFF! your Data Roaming. of course, this is a service if your hotel or location doesn't have Wifi. I do a lot of live posting, like my air Ballon in Kenya etc.. so, it works great.
other cell companies may have the same service.
Rather than paying $10 a day, it's far cheaper to get a prepaid SIM card. You can get these for the EU on Amazon or Ebay for as little as $20 before you go. While they are limited in time and data GB, they usually provide much more than you need for a two-week trip. The most common I've used is from the French company Orange, although there are others out there. While you will have a French phone number, you can use the data service to support free messaging like WhatsApp or VOIP services like Skype and FaceTime. These SIMs won't work in the UK, but it's easy there to drop into any phone shop there and buy a prepaid SIM card after you arrive.
AT&T is $10/day for the first phone and $5/day for the second (if both phones are on the same account) with a max of $100 and $50 respectively. We were just gone for 13 days and got charged $150 total. Minor expense in the grand scheme of everything we spent.
Wow, that’s a huge amount of money, how much did you actually use your phones?
Let me count on my fingers and toes . . . we’ll it could have been 10 days if both phones were used, or 15 days if only the primary phone was used, . . . or the secondary phone was used every day for 12 days ($60) and primary used for 9 days- you get the idea. 😁. “Used” means just one call (or cell data services) or 20, 25, 30 . . . etc calls in a given day, since the rate is based on days used not the number of calls during a day. You are not charged for days when you don’t use the phone or use Wifi only. Verizon’s plan is the same.
One phone on our trip is used for many things besides phone calls: walking directions to places we want to see on our own, TripAdvisor restaurant reviews (for picking lunch stops on the fly), site descriptions, etc. Worth it to us.
$150 knowing my family can reach us 24/7 is well worth it to me.
We just use pay as you go as we are rarely anywhere without free wifi so we find it cheaper for a call of a few minutes
The $10 a day deal we can switch on anytime if in an emergency. At home, our family can reach Tauck for emergencies
Vanilla vs chocolate
Updating all, hubby made the phone call, and both our phones will be activated for the Verizon International calling plan which covers 30 days at $100/phone. Will be cheaper than the $10/day/phone. On the overall cost of the trip $200 to be assured we can be reached for any emergency is worth it.
Good choice. Be sure and shut it off when you get home or it will be a recurring charge unless they have changed it.
@folsondoc - thanks for the warning! will check.