Am I paying for this?

March 11, 2009 10:14 AM

Am I being charged to use my Euro mobile in the US?

So, I live in Amsterdam and have a Dutch service provider (Vodafone), I just arrived in Hawaii today and noticed that I get service with AT&T.

Now, I wasn't planning on making any calls, but I wonder if I could be charged to receive calls... I'd call Vodafone directly, but the time difference and my schedule makes this pretty difficult. Also, may forward Skype calls to the mobile.

I'm totally ignorant about how these things work.
Is this a bad idea somehow?

posted by mateuslee to Technology (6 answers total)

Best answer: You will get charged if you connect to the network to do anything, incoming or outgoing, voice, data or sms. Unless you have some sort of international roaming plan that says otherwise. it will probably be expensive, on the order of $1 per minute, incoming or outgoing.
posted by GuyZero at 10:17 AM on March 11, 2009

Best answer: Holy crap YES. You will be charges to receive calls, at an insane rate.

Turn it off.
posted by DarlingBri at 10:19 AM on March 11, 2009

Best answer: If you go to vodafone.nl, you can download a pdf which explains the rates for your contract travel in detail, including international roaming.
posted by helios at 10:33 AM on March 11, 2009

You could indeed be charged to receive calls, and probably will be. Beware! On my network it's free to receive SMSs, though YMMV.
posted by altolinguistic at 10:48 AM on March 11, 2009

Best answer: Oh dear god yes! The networks have agreements so you can be charged for roaming via their services, I'm with Orange in the UK and usually it clicks onto AT & T over there.

It costs one pounds fifty a minute to make calls, and seventy five pence a minute to receive them on my network. My work phone bill after a two week trip (all necessary and brief calls) two hundred pounds! It is however free to receive text messages but as Altolinguistic said, YMMV.
posted by Augenblick at 11:25 AM on March 11, 2009

It can be worse than these examples. Taking a UK T-Mobile phone to Ireland means your outbound calls cost about 30p per minute. But if you're unfortunate enough to get called by someone, you're charged over three times as much.
posted by genghis at 7:03 PM on March 11, 2009