This post is for Verizon wireless customers who plan to travel abroad. If you have another wireless service, you may not be interested, except to ridicule Verizon customers.
Verizon wireless service when traveling abroad can be expensive. Currently, Verizon charges $12/day for data, talk, and text for international travel if you have their lower tier plans (Unlimited Welcome and Unlimited Plus). Verizon calls this extra charge TravelPass. However, under their Unlimited Ultimate plan data, talk, and text are included in the monthly plan charge. The Unlimited Ultimate has the highest monthly fixed charge. Note, there is no roaming charge for Canada and Mexico for the lower tier plans.
TravelPass [verizon.com]
Verizon plans [verizon.com]
But, Verizon allows you to temporarily switch plans even within a billing cycle, and by switching plans you can beat the $12/day TravelPass charge.
We recently made 1-week trip to Europe and my daughter also made another 2-week trip to Europe in past few months. The day before we left, I switched the phones from Unlimited Welcome to Unlimited Ultimate. The day after the trip I switched the phone back to Unlimited Welcome. For the 1-week trip to Europe we were under the Unlimited Ultimate plan for just over a week. I did the same for my daughter's 2-week trip to Europe. Also, I could have switched plans on the days we left and returned because when I called Verizon, they switched us during the call.
The additional cost for Unlimited Ultimate is $25/line for the entire month, but Verizon prorates the cost for just the time spent under the Unlimited Ultimate. Consequently, for the 7-day trip to Europe the total increase in cost per phone was $10. If we kept the less expensive plan, Unlimited Welcome, the increase would have been $70 (7 times $10/day). For my daughter the total additional cost was $25 for 3-weeks in Europe, If she stayed under the cheaper plan the increased cost would have been $210 (21 days time $10/day).
Note, Verizon has now increased the TravelPass cost from $10/day to $12/day.
84 Comments
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
Edit: I see this is what comes with the Unlimited Ultimate plan
They must hate the 🗑️🏝️. Personally this should be included as part of your USA Plan just like TMobile and AT&T includes it. Imagine going on a cruise and most leave San Juan and your phone is not able to get a signal.
Best option for international travel is to get an international sim. Went to Portugal this year. Spent 15€ for unlimited data for two weeks.
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
They must hate the 🗑️🏝️. Personally this should be included as part of your USA Plan just like TMobile and AT&T includes it. Imagine going on a cruise and most leave San Juan and your phone is not able to get a signal.
That's not true. We go to San Juan to visit family at least once a year and have always used our Verizon service. It's considered regular domestic call/data usage.
I switched back to Verizon last month because my wife doesn't get Google Fi inside her workplace. With 2FA, the international text has become necessary.
Did you like Google Fi? What is 2FA?
But my experience is that all cell phone companies will let you switch, but they will pro rate you anytime you change your plan and again would be prorated switching back. If you are only doing a line or 2 maybe its ok. But I recently did 6 lines and the charges were insane.
Best option for international travel is to get an international sim. Went to Portugal this year. Spent 15€ for unlimited data for two weeks.
Where did you get your sim? I'm traveling to Europe in a week
$10/month discount for autopay
$10/month discount if you're an existing Fios customer
$15/month bring your own device (BYOD) discount
Plus you get Global Choice, where you select a country (can be changed once per billing cycle) and you get X minutes of free calling to that country.
When you're traveling internationally, it's unlimited calls/text to the country you're in + US.
After all these discounts, for a family plan of 5 lines, I pay $27/month (plus tax) per line, under the unlimited ultimate plan. It's a fantastic plan IF you travel outside the country often.
You can also try Roamless.com international eSIM. It's more expensive than other international sim plans, but your data never expires. So you might pay less overall since your unused credits you can use later. They have some coupon codes to get free data. When you sign up they give you $1.25 off the bat. Some codes to try for more data are
TRAVELEASY
NEW25
I got $5 worth of credit for free and that's about 2 gigs worth of data in Europe.
There's also a referral code you can enter where you get free minutes after you add money for the first time. PM me if you want my referral code.
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
Finally, I never looked into the price of a physical sim card. How do the pricing of a physical sim and esim compare these days?