Voicemail outside of EU

[Anonymous]

Watch out for Voicemail charges while traveling abroad. You will have to pay to receive calls, at international rates, plus the country your staying in adds a charge, and then you pay to retrieve a call... And of course the VAT man has his share. While in Turkey(non EU) I have been paying £3.30 per unanswered incoming call lasting 00:00:05 seconds!
It also cost a further £1.80 to dial 901 and retrieve any message. True cost of each unanswered and retrieved call is £5.10 inc VAT. My advise is TURN OFF VOICEMAIL UNLESS ESSENTIAL. O2 doesn't go out of its way to publish this information. I had racked up a bill 5x bigger than normal before I discover the true cost.
Online chat couldn't explain either on 3 attempts... Disappointed with O2 lack of help before I discover my error and switched off my VOICEMAIL. BE WARNED!

[perksie · Accepted solution]

We have been advising people to turn off their voicemail before leaving the UK for quite a while here.

We have been here for some considerable time.

[Anonymous]

How are you advising them? Would that be only when they complain?
Wouldn't it be better to add a warning to your Data roaming text alert which are sent to all O2 customer as soon as they reach a foreign destination? Or is this just a great way to make extra profit!

[MI5]

It has to be turned off before you leave the UK, so adding it to the text would be useless. When people bother to come on here to ask for advice first, we tell them to turn off voicemail. Although there are some people who we can't help

[perksie]

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@Anonymous wrote:
How are you advising them? Would that be only when they complain?

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No, it's when they come here and ask how to save costs before they go abroad.

[Anonymous]

Are you saying you can't turn off voicemail when you arrived abroad? I did when once discovered the horrendous charges I had raked up in 10 days. I called customer service after 3 online chats where the advisor could explain the call charges or for a nano second each time.
A text solution is entirely possible and not connected to data roaming or voicemail.

[Anonymous]

Although the absolute honest answer would be to use another network that doesn't make these charges in the first place. And yes, I know O2 staff constantly lie that other networks do charge but the truth is they do not.

[perksie]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Although the absolute honest answer would be to use another network that doesn't make these charges in the first place. And yes, I know O2 staff constantly lie that other networks do charge but the truth is they do not.

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If that's right it would help if you posted links to prove it or it's just gossip.