Anyone else looking for a new provider that hasn't started charging again for roaming?

[Mahoojie]

I'm ready for proper travel again post-covid, but I'm not prepared to pay £2 a day in the EU or a whopping £5 a day for the rest of the world, my old contract got torn up the other week, losing my Feel at home free roaming in the process.

Ironically PAYG users get to roam with their existing allowances with no extra cost! Not much incentive to have a contract really.

[coglioncello]

I have the same problem, and like us anyone else on contract. They must be able to offer a better package especially for those who frequently travel abroad.

[TERMINATOR]

Me too. I am constantly bombarded by THREE saying my existing contract is obsolete and I must move to a new one. Obviously more expensive. Very disappointed with THREE. I use to rate them as a top brand but my faith in them treating a very long standing customer in the right manner has diminished. Very much more aggressive in their pursuit of revenue. Poor show.

[Goblin59 · Accepted solution]

We have already started travelling and the ability to use a cellphone abroad adds extra safety and is a must now for booking events. My phone is dual sim, so I buy a burner sim card, this for most parts of the world is about 7 to 12 GBP for 30 days with 30 gig of data or my wife, she has an iPhone, she contracts for an E-sim download and again 30 gig of data over 1 month for under 10GBP. Our travel is mainly outside of EU to the North America and Far East. We use Whatsapp for taking calls from home and ringing home and we can make local calls within country in the USA free.

[Roderick]

That solution is great if you have a dual sim phone, if not the problems really start when you try to do something where your bank insists on sending a text to your usual phone number with a "one time authorisation code" which must be entered during a transaction while for example booking a flight or hotel. You then have to find somewhere with wifi, switch off mobile data, swap back to your uk sim and be prepared to pay three the ransom for receiving the text. God help you if you need to phone the bank at £2.00 a minute while they tell you to use the web site (which invariably doesn't help)  and how waits to speak to somebody are currently running at 40 minutes!

[JonathanB]

Hi Roderick,

That does sound really frustrating. Go Roam daily charges are only triggered by using your UK allowances though. If you leave your data roaming setting off, you should be able to receive texts for free, as you would in the UK.

It's also worth checking if your bank or other organisations have a special number to use when calling from abroad. For example you can contact us on +447782 333 333 when abroad so that you only need to pay the Go Roam daily charge (where applicable) rather than per minute. 

JonathanB

[Issthu]

Which Network did you switch to in the end? Making the move soon, and looking for a provider with roaming included.

[Danton1886]

I am going to Turkey on holiday and there is no cap at all, just won't use my phone all week!

[MLP01]

I switched all 3 of my Three contracts to Plusnet, got cheaper package AND free roaming, and even had a gift card for all of them!   Result. The, 3 managed to eff up my requests to PAC on my own number, I've not been able to port, meanwhile both companies have been charging me, as I am with plusnet now, but 3 are still billing me even though they're the ones who messed up. This went on for weeks, eventully, I hve had to resign myself to the fact that I'm never got to get my number sorted, and have switched to th number plusnet had given me. Very annoying.  To add insult to injury, I have now received a letter from debt collectors, saying three had passed my "debt" to them for collection!  To say I am hacked off is an understatement.

Anyway, yeah: Plusnet, cheaper, free roaming, no problem so far. 👍

[JonathanB]

Hey @MLP01,

I'm sorry to hear about this situation with you leaving Three. I'd definitely like to help if we can.

Was the original issue with received the PAC, or had you given this to the new provider and then there was an issue with porting your number?

If an account has went into debt inadvertently due to a fault then this can definitely be sorted out too as long as it's clear that this was down to an error. Just to check, was the Three account cancelled by speaking to us, or was it only the Direct Debit that was stopped?

Let me know and I'll look into the best next steps to resolve this.

JonathanB