After three weeks in Switzerland (and an afternoon in France) I am back home again. I began my writing telling about the internet connectivity I had chosen for my trip. So now it is time to tell how well it worked for me. You may recall I selected a Vodaphone plan to take away. It was one of their Red plans - the $50 one.
The marketing suggests I would get
Infinite standard minutes in Aust
Infinite Text in Oz and OS
Infinite Voice mail
Infinite 13 and 1800 calls
and $65 of stuff I did not think I wanted or needed.
All of this would translate internationally to 47 other countries including Switzerland for $5 per day used overseas.
It seemed very good so we need to ask, Did it Deliver?
The marketing suggests I would get
Infinite standard minutes in Aust
Infinite Text in Oz and OS
Infinite Voice mail
Infinite 13 and 1800 calls
and $65 of stuff I did not think I wanted or needed.
All of this would translate internationally to 47 other countries including Switzerland for $5 per day used overseas.
It seemed very good so we need to ask, Did it Deliver?
I bought the sim pack on the day I was to leave. I was told it would take a short while to activate. I changed the message on my Telstra sim to say that I was unavailable on that number for 3 weeks and gave out the new Vodaphone number for people to call if they needed to speak with me - and swapped the sim. The Telstra sim went into a ziplock bag somewhere where I would not forget it. Those iPhone sims are so small.
The phone worked as soon as I restarted with it installed - I was connected again.
I tried to forget all about the pack as I travelled. I wanted to just use my device as I would normally at home and never think about it.
Selfies are so important for Grandchildren so my first OS experiment was to send a selfie to Oliver (almost 5) from Dubai.
It connected easily in Geneva and worked faultlessly all the time there. It let me down as I travelled by train to Interlaken and Lauterbrunnen. I changed carrier as I trained across Switzerland and the Vodaphone sim did not seem to like a carrier called Sunrise. After a day I remembered the chief solution in the technologists arsenal. I restarted the phone. It worked from then on.
Major Lesson - if it stops working - restart the phone - I should have known that!
Then it worked brilliantly forever. It never let me down!
I did have wifi in every place I stayed - Free wifi in the rooms. This may not be the case in all of the 47 countries but was my experience in Switzerland. A number of times my hotel wifi was a bit ordinary so I forgot the network and used my Vodaphone sim and got much better throughput.
Occasionally I wanted to use my iPad or my MacBook air 11” on the internet and just made a hot spot to the phone.
All in all I have no complaints and happily recommend the Vodaphone plan.
The real check would come however when I wanted to cancel the plan. This is a month to month plan. You have to give your credit card so they can debit you each month. It is not however a contract and you can cancel at any time.
I elected to phone them to cancel the plan. I was keen to talk to someone to see how it had worked from their perspective.
Getting through was difficult. They did not have an option for Cancel my Plan.
They explained that most people call with an account enquiry and cancellations come from there.
If you use this method, when you come to close the account, call and ask for account enquiries. Once you explain that the sim was for overseas travel only they will quickly put you through to a cancellation officer.
She just got it. She was delightful and delighted for me at how well it had all worked. I had a question as to why my bill ended in $2.35 if it was $50 + lots of $5. She could not explain it. We delved and discovered, after I explained to her where Dubai is, that the plan does not work in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), so Oliver’s Selfie from Dubai airport cost the random $2.35, but he was happy.
I was happy. I can happily recommend this method to anyone travelling.
If you are with Vodaphone just check that you have the Red Activated on your plan. If not ask for a Vodaphone Red on a month to month pack.
Check which countries you are visiting to be sure it covers your destination.
Change your message bank message before you swap the sim and direct people to your new number alerting them to it being overseas.
Everyday while you travel you send a blank text message to 1555. They respond with the current status of your account. This was fantastic and accurate.
The $50 plan has 3GB of data on it as I write this. I did everything I wanted on my plan and used less than 1GB in 3 weeks.
One more tip. Get an offline mapping tool and download all your city maps before you leave. That way you can navigate wherever you are with no costs.
I used Ulmon Pro - City Maps to Go. It was fantastic. Even when I got lost I never felt lost.
The phone worked as soon as I restarted with it installed - I was connected again.
I tried to forget all about the pack as I travelled. I wanted to just use my device as I would normally at home and never think about it.
Selfies are so important for Grandchildren so my first OS experiment was to send a selfie to Oliver (almost 5) from Dubai.
It connected easily in Geneva and worked faultlessly all the time there. It let me down as I travelled by train to Interlaken and Lauterbrunnen. I changed carrier as I trained across Switzerland and the Vodaphone sim did not seem to like a carrier called Sunrise. After a day I remembered the chief solution in the technologists arsenal. I restarted the phone. It worked from then on.
Major Lesson - if it stops working - restart the phone - I should have known that!
Then it worked brilliantly forever. It never let me down!
I did have wifi in every place I stayed - Free wifi in the rooms. This may not be the case in all of the 47 countries but was my experience in Switzerland. A number of times my hotel wifi was a bit ordinary so I forgot the network and used my Vodaphone sim and got much better throughput.
Occasionally I wanted to use my iPad or my MacBook air 11” on the internet and just made a hot spot to the phone.
All in all I have no complaints and happily recommend the Vodaphone plan.
The real check would come however when I wanted to cancel the plan. This is a month to month plan. You have to give your credit card so they can debit you each month. It is not however a contract and you can cancel at any time.
I elected to phone them to cancel the plan. I was keen to talk to someone to see how it had worked from their perspective.
Getting through was difficult. They did not have an option for Cancel my Plan.
They explained that most people call with an account enquiry and cancellations come from there.
If you use this method, when you come to close the account, call and ask for account enquiries. Once you explain that the sim was for overseas travel only they will quickly put you through to a cancellation officer.
She just got it. She was delightful and delighted for me at how well it had all worked. I had a question as to why my bill ended in $2.35 if it was $50 + lots of $5. She could not explain it. We delved and discovered, after I explained to her where Dubai is, that the plan does not work in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), so Oliver’s Selfie from Dubai airport cost the random $2.35, but he was happy.
I was happy. I can happily recommend this method to anyone travelling.
If you are with Vodaphone just check that you have the Red Activated on your plan. If not ask for a Vodaphone Red on a month to month pack.
Check which countries you are visiting to be sure it covers your destination.
Change your message bank message before you swap the sim and direct people to your new number alerting them to it being overseas.
Everyday while you travel you send a blank text message to 1555. They respond with the current status of your account. This was fantastic and accurate.
The $50 plan has 3GB of data on it as I write this. I did everything I wanted on my plan and used less than 1GB in 3 weeks.
One more tip. Get an offline mapping tool and download all your city maps before you leave. That way you can navigate wherever you are with no costs.
I used Ulmon Pro - City Maps to Go. It was fantastic. Even when I got lost I never felt lost.
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