[SpicytacoTO]

I started working for a company based overseas last May, and suddenly found myself travelling to Europe every 3 months or so. I finally decided at the end of last year that I needed a phone that would work while I am there. It has come to be critical that I can be reached while away for both business and personal reasons.

Mid-way through my Pearl contract, I bought the Storm for $350 and renewed for another 3 years. This past week was the first time I travelled with it. I was in Athens on an extremely important business trip and it was absolutely critical that the phone work. I downloaded the "Telus International Roaming Guide" on my phone before I left to see what would be available while in Greece and found that I would have phone service but no data. Fine. Better than nothing. I also read the help manual to ensure I knew what I had to do to get my phone going over there.

I landed at Heathrow and during my layover notice I had an "SOS" signal. I tried playing with the mobile network connections, switched to manual, turned the phone off and on, pulled the battery etc. No dice. I hopped on my computer and emailed my husband back home and asked him to contact Telus, tell them my problem, and ask what I have to do to get it going. When I arrived in Greece, I still only had "sos" signal. My husband contacted me and have me instructions from the Telus rep to take out the sim card, re-insert, set to GSM and manual etc. I did everything they suggested, not working. My husband called Telus back again, and the rep advised that he would call my hotel and troubleshoot with me over the phone. At this point it was 2 days into my trip (it's 7 hours ahead of TO in Greece), and I've already missed several important business calls. I never heard from Telus. My husband followed up, and again I never heard from anyone at Telus. It was now Wednesday, the key day for my trip, and I had no phone service. I missed several important calls, and moreover looked like an *** to my superiors since they had asked that I arrange to get a phone that will work and I told them I had.

I looked unprofessional and was embarassed. I'm furious to have spent money on the Storm (which, incidentally, has dust all under the screen, is started to have issues with the click, and had the green "send" key nearly come clean off as I was sliding the phone into the protective pouch it came with).

What should I do? It will cost several hundreds of dollars to cancel my contract, and i'd have to cancel my husbands too since we use our phones heavily between ourselves. I've been with Telus since it was Clearnet. Until this I was a *very* loyal customer...now i'm just pissed.

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[SpicytacoTO]

Oops, posted in the wrong forum. Mods, please move to Telus forum. Thanks.

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[dancing-bass]

Before purchasing anything over 100 I ALWAYS research the crap out of whatever I'm buying. I make sure that if I need it to do THIS that I know how to make it perform

In your case I'm guessing its a sim card issue. I think I've seen a few threads talk about having an international sim card.

In any case, the responsibilty is on your shoulders to make sure your storm is ready to run in Europe. If you just assumed... Well that's not the carriers fault is it?

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[jeffh]

I don't know the answer to your problem, but I moved your post to the Storm forum, where you are more likely to get an answer than in a carrier-specific forum.

[kinggeoff]

Sounds par for the course when dealing with Telus, I've noticed. They're quite terrible

[CXXXV]

Did you change the settings to GSM. I had the same issue as you until I figured it out.

[carlos31820]

Has your SIM card been enabled by your provider? I say that because I recently traveled to Honduras. Before I traveled, I called my carrier (Verizon) and asked if I needed to do anything for the phone to work and the person on the phone said they needed to "enable" the SIM card and had me read to her the SIM card number and walked me through some option changes to enable SIM card security.

I'm not sure if this is required for all carriers. Its possible that it works this way on Verizon because my local network is CDMA and not GSM by default.

Anyway, just a thought. I hope your issue gets resolved.

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[SpicytacoTO]

CXXXV - I did change it to GSM while I was there. No luck.

Dancing bass - I spent a fair amount of time looking into the Storm before purchasing but obviously checking out whether or not the Sim card is working was not possible prior to bring away. I don't see how this can be considered negligence on my part.

Carlos - I did call telus before leaving to see if I needed to do anything and was assured up and down that the phone would function overseas.

Jeff - thanks, I'll check the Storm forums

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[wxman2003]

Sounds like Telus is like Verzion, that they have to be notified about a day in advance to allow International roaming on the vodaphone sim card to actually activate it. It could be a bad SIM card, or even after you called Telus, they did not activate the card, even after telling you it was good to go. I would call Telus and ask someone to check to see if the card was actually activated. Don't tell them what happened as they just might say it was to cover themselves.

[brianr0131]

Sounds like user error to me. Maybe a bad sim though.

[SpicytacoTO]

User error? In what way? I checked the international roaming instructions, called Telus in advance of leaving to see if there was anything I needed to do, read through the phones instruction manual, followed the troubleshooting measures they gave me to the letter while I was away etc etc. User error? No.

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[brianr0131]

Maybe they really don't offer service overseas and it's all a hoax.

[Craterz]

I agree with others, most likely a SIM card/carrier issue and not the phone itself. I regularly travel in Asia and experience no issue with receiving or making calls, granted I am on Verizon. I only call VZW a day or two before departing in order to switch from normal BIS data plan to international data plan. My voice plan constantly has international roaming on it ($4.99/month on VZW).

Before my first trip overseas, I did call VZW international support and activated my SIM card. Since then, no action is required for voice, only data. When abroad, all I have to do is switch from CDMA to GSM most of the time, occasionally may have to manually select a network.

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[arcanexvi]

Dunno what to tell you. My storm works flawlessly all over Europe. I'm on vzw though.

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[risk235]

Isn't the Sim card really for places that doesn't have cdma coverage. My phone is unlock and I'm using a prepaid Sim here in Mexico for calls right now. Of couse I also added th global plan before I left. It does come in handy when using public transportation and getting on the internet to kill time = )

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[CXXXV]

SIM card must be activated, period. Without that the phone will not work overseas.

[Marieb]

Anybody have any suggestions or experience with this kind of billing issue?

I was in Asia April 4 - 16. I turned on the Verizon global plan before I departed. I told everyone only to call if an emergency and to email me instead - which they did. I made/received 2 or 3 calls during the entire 2 weeks.

Now I get my bill and it says I made/received over 200 minutes of global roaming calls. Some days it shows I called my voicemail 8 times in one day - sometimes staying in voicemail for more than 10 minutes at a crack!

I don't check my voicemail more than once or twice a day when I'm home! And never more than 2 minutes.

Verizon tells me if the calls are on my invoice then I must have made/received them! Of course there could never be a mistake on their invoice!!

The tech suggested maybe I **** dialed my phone. I have a phone password and a separate voicemail password so there's no way I could have accidentally called my voicemail - EIGHT TIMES PER DAY.

I also showed Verizon that when some of the calls were received I was on a flight originating in a different country.

They offered to 10% off the voicemail time as long as I would agree not to pursue fraud allegations. I said thanks but no thanks. Something is wrong.

Has anyone had this kind of issue?

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

[jeffmeden]

Wow what a nightmare. I would take them up on their offer to pursue fraud allegations. Do any of the calls show up in your call history? The storm is good about recording each call and duration, I would pull this off (take a picture of it, whatever) and shove it in their faces that either there phones are broken or their billing is broken (or both.) I have used my phone internationally several times and never had a problem with the billing (it was ridiculously high, but I did make all the calls on it). It's a problem for them since they didn't actually carry any of the calls, they just receive invoice data from the foreign networks. I would think that a few legal threats will get them to reconsider sticking you with the bogus charges. And for what it's worth, Skype is a brilliant service, and you can check your Verizon voicemail with it too just dial your own number, wait for the verizon message then hit the pound sign.