Easy Roaming warning - be very careful

[nwoilfan]

We flew into California, and turned data roaming off within seconds of turning on my phone. Boom - not fast enough - $12 charge for the few seconds my apps tried to sync. 

The next day someone tried to call me. I didn't answer for fear of roaming charges. They left a voicemail. Boom - another $12 charge. 

I complained via the chat feature but was told this was not a mistake. Any data usage, incoming calls, voice mails - they all trigger the $12 charge, even if you have data roaming turned off on your device. After much complaining, I was offered a 25% discount on the 2 days of charges. What an insult! I have 4 months left to pay off my phone then...Boom - goodbye Telus. This is absolutely egregious, verging on theft IMO.  Be wary of these horrible business practices!  

[Fabylous]

Hi @nwoilfan, 

Sorry to hear you feel that way.  We have a very helpful FAQ you can consult on how the feature works and what to do if you do not want to be charged the fees.  Please follow the link to avoid this situation from happening in the future even when traveling to other countries.  https://bit.ly/3tBuL2o

[nwoilfan]

I appreciate the reply, but the information in the FAQ contradicts what happened to me in reality. Specifically in reference to the following: 

If you’re looking to avoid roaming charges altogether, simply turn data roaming

OFF

in your mobile device’s settings and refrain from making calls, answering calls and sending any outgoing texts. Receiving incoming texts will never result in any roaming charges, as long as data roaming is turned OFF to avoid using mobile data for any pictures or videos that they may contain.

As I mentioned previously, I turned data roaming off as soon as I could when my plane landed. I was still charged however for the couple of minutes of data roaming being on when I switched my phone off of airplane mode. I was then charged again the next day when someone called and left a voicemail > 1 minute in length. 

I hope you understand my frustration, as the information in the FAQ appears to be inaccurate. 

[xray]

---

@nwoilfan wrote:

We flew into California, and turned data roaming off within seconds of turning on my phone.

---

Well you clearly state that Roaming was not OFF. When a phone powers up it makes a connection to the network long before you get to see the screen and have access to do anything. You need to turn it off before you leave your home network or leave airplane mode on all the time as I suggested above.

[nwoilfan]

Guilty as charged @xray I'm not sure this is a realistic request however for the average mobility user. Shouldn't there be a grace period - 15 minute maybe - to turn it off before you're charged? 

[xray]

I like your idea of a threshold but it will not work if it's time based, it needs to be data based and it needs to be small so people don't abuse it. You can use a lot of data in 15 minutes! Post it it the Ideas section.

[xray]

The FAQ is accurate but perhaps incomplete. The problem is that not all phones strictly adhere to the Roaming OFF setting. This is brand/OS dependent.

On a recent trip to SFO my wife's phone, which always has Roaming OFF briefly connected to the network before figuring out Roaming was OFF. She was charged $11 for 0.1 Mb data. My phone which also had Roaming OFF did not do that.

To be 100% sure you need to leave airplane mode ON and only turn on WiFi and Bluetooth (if needed) if you don't want roaming triggered.

[Yaqiong]

I just had a similar situation as @nwoilfan. 

I went back to China for a month and left my phone on for several days to receive verification text messages.

The Roaming was off all the time, yet I still got charged for five days of Roaming fee of a total of $75. There was no outgoing text message or calls; the bill also proved this point.

I have talked to several customer services about this case and they all responded the same thing that data usage was triggered on these days, which results in the count of Easy Roam usage. The usage of the data was all less than 1MB. I think the phone was the problem here; I was using IPhone 14 Pro.

A better way might be to turn off the data and Roam to avoid any data leaking.

Also, Telus could set up a threshold of data usage, like at least 1MB, to trigger Easy Roam counting to prevent data leaking cases instead of just mentioning to turn off Roaming. Yet they could just put $12/15 per day on your bill, why would they?

[NFtoBC]

If you are using the iPhone iMessages app (blue text bubbles), that is on the data stream, not the SMS stream, and you WILL be billed for data for receiving text messages.

[Yaqiong]

Thank you for pointing out that. iMessages, One more thing that needs to be careful about.

And no, I wasn't receiving iMessage, just normal text verification messages (grey bubbles) from banks.

Confusing as if the Roam is off, how could iMessage take the data stream? Should it not receive anything until connected to WIFI? I'm not sure 

[xray]

This is the problem with relying on the Roaming setting. The setting can be bypassed/ignored sometimes by certain OS functions and/or app functions. It's leaky. The only sure way is to turn on airplane mode and then turn on WiFi.

[nwoilfan]

I really appreciate the dialogue and input on this issue. I've certainly learned my lesson the hard way, and will ensure on future trips I turn roaming off AND leave the phone in Airplane mode as long as I'm outside of Canada. I will however also investigate Telus competitors' policies on this issue and fully plan to switch providers if a better option exists. 

I hope someone from Telus is listening in on this conversation as I believe this is a critical issue negatively impacting the customer experience of many of their users. "Easy Room" couldn't be a less descriptive term for the actual experience many of us are having. "Easy Cash Grab" would be better branding IMO. Some sort of a threshold - time or data based, upon the first connection outside of Canada, seems like a very reasonable solution to this issue.  

Thanks again to everyone who weighed in on this thread!  

I hope someone from Telus is monitoring this conversation. 

[NFtoBC]

You can of course set your phone carrier settings from Automatic to Telus, this will prevent connection to any carrier except Telus, which may be a problem when travelling, but is another option.