Roaming charges

[Chrissy]

Hi,

I went recently to continental Europe for just over two weeks. Before leaving the UK i turned roaming data off on my iPhone however, during my stay abroad I got charged for using data 5 times. Any ideas what could've triggered the data charges? I have an eSIM installed on my iPhone as it's simply cheaper than Three's daily charge, yet still got charged for using data despite turning it off completely. Any ideas welcome

[sc1999]

The esim is with a different network? If yes and you were using it for roaming how do you turn the 3 sim off?

[Clever-Trevor]

Hi -

Its quite possible you had roaming ‘on’ for your Three SIM but also ‘data switching’ ( this is a setting that if no network on one sim it switches to the other - and might be just a small amount of data until your esim kicked in - but would then trigger a cost )

To be absolutely sure - you can ‘switch off’ your Three sim ( in settings ) but then no calls will come through….

[Chrissy]

Hi,

sc1999 - the esim is with a different network.
Clever-Trevor - data switching was turned off. The problem is I can't turn off Three's sim as need the texts and calls coming through

Just checked the bill - the amount of data used on every occasion was only 0.0009 MB

[atommyk]

I have the same problem over here. Weirdly I've been to Portugal about a month ago without any of these issues (also with eSIM from a different provider for the data usage). There I don't think I had a problem. Now travelled to Austria, I'm getting almost daily texts at 02:40-02:50 (I'm definitely asleep then) stating my new roaming charge has been applied. Why on earth? I have data roaming off, no data switching. 

three support was not really useful. They have so far only suggested to switch off international roaming entirely but according to them that would cut me off completely when abroad. Not useful.

[Gurj]

Seeing same issues. I have just added a comment in this other thread:
https://community.three.co.uk/t5/Network/Roaming-charges-whilst-data-roaming-turned-off/m-p/17979

I've had the charges with and without using an ESIM while roaming with Data Roaming definitely off all the time and using an iPhone 14 Pro Max on latest iOS releases.

[Gurj]

Yes, support were useless for me to. Raised case which was then closed saying no problem the next day.

[Gurj]

Chrissy,

So far it seems at least 3 of us were using an iPhone. Were you on an iPhone 14 Pro too? Were you using iOS 17 (or beta version)?
My daughter's phone didn't get the USA charges and she was still on iOS16 until halfway through our recent holiday, then she started getting the SIM messages about roaming charges.

[apadley1337]

I'm in the USA now and have just been charged a daily £5 charge right after I arrived, with roaming off. This is on two iPhones with ios 17 and 16.7.1. I did notice, that once I'd connected, a message popped up on my screen saying 'SIM is sending SMS message'. I presume this is some sort of carrier message that is triggering the charge, so nothing the user is doing and nothing to do with roaming. Very shady practice from 3

[JonathanB]

Hi @apadley1337,

I'm not familiar with any process where we'd be triggering an SMS, have you been able to see the charge on your billing? The other users that have mentioned this recently have said that the charge was assigned to data usage rather than a text on their itemised section of the bill.

Any sign of an outgoing message in your messages, or which App is actually sending the message?

Thanks,
Jonathan