Going on holidays

Mimikyu

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theteal

Solitaryman666 wrote: »

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You can take a bill pay holiday which effectively suspends ur account for a set period of time (max 3 months). Dunno about moving ur number to payg tho, i'm sure it's possible but an awkward arrangement. best to take a new payg sim and use it as a temp holiday number

lafors

On "the right hook" on newstalk this evening (monday) they were talking about a sim you can get which gives way cheaper calls than you roaming charges. It was an excellent idea for people travelling.

You can listen to it on the podcast the have for the technology show on the right hook every monday. I have subscribed to it in itunes.
Look here, down the bottom of the page......
http://newstalk.ie/newstalk/programmes/6/the-right-hook.html

Do-more

lafors wrote: »

On "the right hook" on newstalk this evening (monday) they were talking about a sim you can get which gives way cheaper calls than you roaming charges. It was an excellent idea for people travelling.

You can listen to it on the podcast the have for the technology show on the right hook every monday. I have subscribed to it in itunes.
Look here, down the bottom of the page......
http://newstalk.ie/newstalk/programmes/6/the-right-hook.html

The company they were talking about was www.maxroam.com it's a prepay system. Check out the charges on their website to make a comparison with what meteor will charge you.

Do-more

Here are Maxroams charges when roaming in the USA

Incoming Call €0.38
Outgoing Call To Cellular In Ireland €0.60
Outgoing Call To Landline In Ireland €0.50
Call To a Local Landline In USA €0.46
Call To a Local Cellular Phone In USA €0.46
Sending an SMS From USA €0.21
Calling Your Voice Mail €0.47

All Call rates are per minute. Calls are billed on a per minute basis.

Doesn't look too cheap to me, they were claiming savings of upto 70% on roaming charges, on this example I don't think so!

Mimikyu

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Do-more

Solitaryman666 wrote: »

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You need to call them on 1905 to find out, they may vary according to the tariff your on.

Just checked Vodafones roaming costs for the US for bill pay customers!

What rates do I pay in the Americas?
Vodafone partner networks Other Networks
Calls received €1.09 €1.09
Calls to Ireland, within country and to the UK €1.39 €1.59
Calls made to zone 1 and within America €1.39 €1.59
Calls made to the rest of the world €2.99 €3.29
Text messages 29c 29c

:eek::eek::eek:

All of a sudden maxroams rates don't look so bad after all!

Mimikyu

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ardmacha

cheaper texts are what you want, get a calling card and call from a payphone/landline for any scheduled calls.

Do-more

From a quick education on google it looks like the following is your cheapest solution...

Assuming you have an unlocked phone to use it in, you could get a US sim card.

From a quick check Tuyo mobile (virtual network on T-mobile USA) seem to offer the best rates, but someone may be able to advise of better.

You can buy the sim before you go on ebay

You could then set up an Irish alias number for your US cell number using Rebtel, then divert your meteor number to the Irish alias number. That way anyone calling your meteor number will be forwarded to your US cellphone at low cost to you. And you can phone home for 12¢/min to Irish landlines and 30¢/min to Irish mobiles.

Anyone in Ireland using 13434 can call your US cellphone directly for 0.5cent/min although in the states it will cost you 10¢/min to receive all calls.

bobbi

One piece of advise DO NOT USE YOUR MOBILE! I went to the states in the summer. hardly ever used my phone i made two very short calls (about 3mins each) ended up paying a wooping bill of €120 for the month (usually its around €55) and the next month an extra €15 carried over for roaming.

Its not worth it. I really regret it. If you do use it login to your account and ENSURE you go to the bill history and select roaming to see how much you are getting charged.

Kaskade

I was in the states last week and I have a meteor bill phone. I also have an old o2 pay as you go lying around so I used that just to use up the credit.

These were o2s rates for the states:
Making and Receiving all calls
€1.09 per minute
Text message
€0.39 per minute
Picture message
€0.25 per message


In africa it depends on the country, egypt is the same and south africa is 1.99 a minute to make and receive calls.

I cant remember the exact meteor rates in the states, they make you call to find out but I do remember making calls was €2 or slightly more a minute. I'm sure africa would be the same.

What wrecks my head though is thing thing about being charged for messages left on our message minder while you are away. Somebody in meteor told me that I woudl be charged €2 a minute for all messages left on my machine, not listened to! I asked for clarification of this and I was told that even if my phone is off I will still get charged. Maybe I am missing something but how can my phone possibly know where in the world it is if it has not been switched on. Also, even if I do switch it on and it picks up a US network, I turn it back off and go home, does that mean I will be charged €2 a minute for messages until I get back home? The guy on the phone even went so far as to tell me that if the sim card was not in the phone it still knows it is on a US network. Now I have an IT degree and I know a bit about mobile phones and I cannot understand how a sim card with no power supply can possibly know where it is. Does anybody know what the story is with this voicemail buisness. Is it just a line they give you becasue they are actually not quite sure themselves how they will be charged?

blaz

The support guy was right. With the default setup you will pay for calls that are diverted to voice mail because they are diverted using conditional call diversion. What happens is this:

1. Your account is configured to divert calls to your voice mailbox when you are out of reach (or your phone is turned off).
2. You go to the US (or Egypt, or ....). Your phone logs on to the foreign provider and all incoming calls are now forwarded from your home provider to the foreign provider. That's why you pay for incoming calls when abroad. Essentially you are assigned a temporary phone number by the foreign provider and your home provider automatically diverts your calls to this temporary number.
3. Now you turn off your phone (you log off). Your home provider does not ever receive this information, you are still roaming. If now somebody calls you, the call is first forwarded from your home provider to the foreign provider. Because your phone is logged off, the foreign provider redirects the call back to voicemail on your home provider. That's why you have to pay for any call made to your voice mail.

There are two solutions to avoid this:

1. While abroad turn off all conditional call diversions (call diversion on busy, call diversion on no reply, call diversion on unreachable). You can do this by dialing #002# on your phone. When you return home, just dial *002# to reenable the diversions that you had previously enabled.
2. Instead of using conditional call diversion, enable a unconditional call divert to your voice mailbox while aboard. To do this, dial *21*003858x5xxxxxxx# and ##21# to disable. When you divert unconditionally, the calls are diverted at the origin (at your home provider) and you do not incur any additional charges.