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tMobile in Europe. Glitches?

Posted by on

Being not tech savvy, thought I'd share our newbie experience with traveling with tMobile (so far) and hopefully also hear of others' experience to learn from.

Previous trips, we had Verizon (terrible international plans) so we did Eurobuzz (a mistake!), bought local SIM cards (wasting 2-4 hours of our touring time in each country and worked about 2/3 of time). Earlier this year, we switched from Verizon to tMobile ONE Plus

Unlimited text & data, with 20 cents a minute voice call in 140 countries, sounds too good to be true, my husband said skeptically.

Well, 2 of our kids traveled ahead to Norway this week, and I got a Roaming Charge alert on one line when I logged on to mytMobile today. 1 kid couldn't get service on his phone at all. Husband's skepticism elevates to the roof. After two phone calls and a CHAT help that didn't reassure me, mainly because it seemed as if they couldn't deviate from the script at the call center or and I couldn't understand them, I drove to the local tMobile store in the mall to get help. I learned:

  1. Turn Data Roaming ON for international service if you have tMobile One.
  2. When you enter each country, Answer YES when it asks if you want to Update Carrier Service. (Kid with no Service didn't because he takes after his skeptical old man).
  3. Kid made a voice phone call to us ( 20 cents/min) and that's what the Roaming Alert Charge was about.
  4. Live person at the tMobile store was superb in understanding the issues. She resets the no-service kid's SIM card, had him turn off his phone and restarts, and voila! He had service on a bus going through some mountain pass.
  5. Both kids very happy that they had service the minute they landed and could keep in touch with us via text, send photos etc... constantly. Yeah.

Any other glitches you travelers with tMobile experienced?

Cat

PS: Don't know if promotions still going on, but the $150 switcheroo deal for each line switched was authentic, I was very surprised. Already spent the prepaid Mastercard they sent me 2 months after switched on new backpacks. ;)

PS2: Husband only slightly less skeptical now, but that's why I keep him around--to make sure we don't buy bridges or snake oil.

Posted by
1097 posts

Those glitchy issues getting the phone settings right aren't unique to TMobile. We had various challenges with Verizon that had to do with changing certain settings on the phone to allow international service. They do a better job now of walking through the settings changes with you in advance, when you activate one of the international plans. If your carrier doesn't proactively ask if you need help with settings, make sure you ask! I was more than halfway through our first trip with the phone before I was able to get it sorted out. No harm done, didn't really need it.

Posted by
9099 posts

I have always ignored those roaming charge alerts from T-Mobile. They occur from time to time for no apparent reason. They are simply small glitches in their system. In the end you never get charged. Their international coverage works as advertised. I have Traveled through about 10 countries with T-Mobile never had any surprise charges.

Posted by
9550 posts

Respectfully, those don't seem like glitches - they seem like steps of getting the coverage set up correctly. It's unfortunate T-Mobile didn't educate you a little better when they sold you the plan, but it seems that it works as it's supposed to.

Posted by
185 posts

I've traveled to a number of European countries and also China while using my T-Mobile service. Sometimes when arriving in a new country my phone will have trouble connecting to the network at first. This has always been fixed by restarting my phone. Other than that I have been extremely happy with the T-Mobile international service and have not encountered any issues.

Posted by
4385 posts

Coupla years ago I called Verizon and they assured me I was good to go and would send a special SIM card. Of course the phone never worked the whole time I was there. Wife's iPhone OTOH worked fine.

My Eurobuzz worked fine.

Posted by
1825 posts

I traveled for three weeks with T-mobile to Amsterdam, France, Switzerland and Italy. The only trouble I had was in Burgundy where my signal would constantly go out and I'd have to turn airplane mode on and off to get it to reset. Seems it was jumping between carriers and I haven't figured out if something was set wrong. The rest of the trip it worked well and having unlimited data makes traveling so much easier.

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