Using my phone in the USA

Brendan Burgess

Founder
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54,801
I am a 3 Bill pay customer

I was in America last week, and didn't think of checking prices until just before I went.

I got this information on their website.



In other words, using data was really expensive.

I rang 3 and they said that there was nothing I could do about it. I didn't believe them but I didn't have the time to check it out.

I am checking it out now and got this message via their online chat which is pretty useless.



That doesn't tell me anything. Is that for a day? For a week? For ever?

I googled it on the 3 website and couldn't find it mentioned.

I asked about calls and texts and was told


Any ideas.
 
Wow. that is some charges.
I have a Vodafone red connect bill pay contract. it is €2.99 per day in US, or €4.99 rest-of-world (outside Europe of course)
Includes 200MB of data IIRC. You get charged if you use it, otherwise you won't.
And unlimited calls and texts back to Ireland, as well as to numbers within the country you are visiting
 
Thanks

€3 per day for a month would be €90.

Of course if you go for a week it's much cheaper than the €60 3 would charge. And you get free calls and texts. I think they cost me €20 for the week I was away.

I don't travel outside the EU very often, so it wouldn't be a factor in choosing a package.

Brendan
 
If you stay for extended period it is indeed cheaper. Usually, in that case I would get a local sim card though.
 
That's where dual SIM Android phones come in useful. 2 cards in 1 phone, and you select which SIM to use for data.
 
Lads, I'm heading to the USA for almost a month and was just about to check the Vodafone website (I'm a Billpay customer) to find out about the most cost effective way of using my android phone. Then I saw this thread so I thought I'd be lazy and get advice from you first.
newirishman said:
I have a Vodafone red connect bill pay contract. it is €2.99 per day in US
Click to expand...
I'm heading off at the end of Feb and so was going to sign up for Red Roaming which as you say is €2.99/day but only for the days that you use the phone. I assume it's ok to sign up now rather than wait until just before I fly out. In other words, I'm not going to be charged the €2.99/day for using my phone here for the next 3 weeks?
newirishman said:
If you stay for extended period it is indeed cheaper. Usually, in that case I would get a local sim card though.
Click to expand...
What's the benefit of the local SIM card? I'll still need to access the web for Uber, booking hotels, researching places to go etc. There's only one person in the US who will be phoning me, and me them, while I'm there and I won't need to make or receive calls home (unless there's an emergency). My phone is a HTC One M8s so I'll check if it can take a second SIM card.
Brendan Burgess said:
Or do you just buy a cheap phone and sim card and have both?
Click to expand...
Would it only make sense to have both if you needed to make a good few local calls in USA and also to have your own smartphone for accessing the web?
 
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