Vodafone - not a travelling network

I've travelled abroad many times and have never really had a problem using my iPhone for data, messaging and calls. You know it's going to cost you a bit more, but in the past, my network provider, Vodafone, has always sent me clear texts to let me know how much it is all going to cost.

However, on a recent trip to Turkey, both the squeeze (who is also with Vodafone) and I had an absolute nightmare, so I thought I would share our experience in the hope of preventing it from happening again.

Immediately upon arriving in Turkey, I started receiving very contradicting texts from Vodafone. Adam was getting completely different texts so we really weren't sure what the costs were of using our phones there. Some texts told us we were being charged £3 per megabyte, some said we had a 5MB allowance and some said we were being charged £5 for 25MB. It really wasn't clear. Below are a selection of the texts that I received to my phone.

Then, literally on our second day, we both received messages from Vodafone telling us that we had used our allowance of roaming for a trip outside of Europe and that our data roaming had been cut off. Apparently, we had both opted into  a roaming cap (although neither of us had opted into this and this hadn't happened in Australia earlier in the same year). Added insult to injury, the message said that we had reached our "euro" cap, which is utterly nonsensical since we both pay our bills in Sterling and the Turkish currency is Lira. The message said we could respond "stop" to lift the cap, but this didn't work.

Now, some people reading this might think, hey, you're on holiday, don't worry about your phone. However, that very same day, Adam proposed to me and it meant I couldn't share a photo of my ring with my friends and family and meant I couldn't let everyone know on Facebook. I was so upset.

Also, Adam uses his phone for work and urgently needed to access his emails to respond to a customer.

So we ended up having to ring Vodafone on the 191 customer services number. Unfortunately, every time we rang them, we were told that their phone lines were busy and we had to hold. We both tried to book in call backs with Vodafone, where your number is placed in a queue and they call you back when it is your turn. Unfortunately, each time they called us back, we were cut off after one minute.

In total, Adam rang Vodafone nine times and I rang them six times. One time I was put on hold for 16 and a half minutes before I gave up (below). It was so frustrating. When I eventually managed to speak to someone, I was told that I was on a package whereby I spent £5 per day for 25MB of data and they switched my data back on.

However, poor Adam didn't have so much lucky. He spoke to two separate people who informed him that Vodafone don't offer a roaming package for the rest of the world and he had to pay as you go. This is despite this package being advertised on their website and the Twitter support telling us both we should be on that package. Finally, he managed to speak to someone who told us that he could have the "Rest of the world" package which would cost him £5 per day and that to date he had only spent £10 on data.

So, it was all great news. We knew that we were each spending £40 for the whole holiday on data which was fine and Mum received the photo of my ring that she had been waiting for. We could get on with enjoying our holiday.

However, this weekend, we received a massive shock. Absolutely huge Vodafone bills!

We have both been charged for calling the 191 number. At no stage when we spoke to anyone were we told we would be charged for this service, nowhere on their website does it say this service isn't free from abroad and none of the times when we were put on hold or used the call back service were we informed that there was a charge from abroad. In total, Adam was changed £100.65 and I was charged £53.83. All of which was mainly incurred being on hold and all trying to resolve an issue which was due to Vodafone's appalling communication.

We were expecting to pay £40 for data roaming, however, we have both been charged far more than that! Adam was charged £163 and we also discovered that when we were told he had only spent £10, he had actually sent £70! I was charged £128 for my data roaming which is substantially more than the £40 I was expecting.

So my advice would be the following:

• before you go on holiday, make sure you are completely clear what package you are on and how much it will cost you in your chosen destination. Just because it has been fine before, doesn't mean it will be fine in the country you are visiting
• never ring 191 from your mobile. It would be cheaper to ring from a land line abroad than from your mobile
• check your bill when you get home. It probably will be inaccurate as both of ours were

So, thanks Vodafone for making what was supposed to be a wonderful holiday an frustrating experience and stinging us both with killer bills. I've been your customer for nine years. I suspect I won't be for much longer.

What no Wifi in Sydney?

When I travel, I find wifi a real life saver. My ongoing obsession with social media means that I sometimes wonder if there is any point in doing something unless I can tell people about it on Twitter, Facebook or Four Square.

This applies triple fold when I go on holiday. I'm convinced that my adoring followers will be utterly bereft and lost without my constant updates (yes I do know I live in a dream world). In addition to this, as the iPhone now offers free messaging and FaceTime over the internet, access to a wifi network can significantly reduce your costs when abroad.

This metropolitan city has few wifi spots!

Although the cost of using the Internet abroad has decreased recently, especially with products such as Vodafone Passport which gives you a limited amount of data when travelling in certain countries. However, if you can tap into a free wifi network, it costs you nothing, and you're not limited to a certain data use each day.

Most tourist destinations have cottoned onto this. I recently went on holiday to Santorini in Greece and nearly all of the bars and restaurants offered free wifi and advertised this on their boards and menus. It makes sense to me as, I would be more likely to go into a bar where I can access the Internet for free, and I would probably check into the bar on Four Square and maybe load up some photos of me at the venue, giving them free advertising.

However, on a recent trip to Sydney to visit my brother, I was surprised to find that this was not the case there. I received no free data on my Vodafone phone tariff for Australia and within the first day I had racked up over £10 worth of SMS and data charges. So I was keen to find some places where I could take advantage of their wifi. To my brother's great dismay, I then embarked on a desperate endeavour whereby every bar or restaurant I went into, I would ask if they had wifi, and the answer was repeatedly "no".

View from Top Deck Cafe, one of the places with free wifi

It seems so strange to me that such a busy tourist destination as Sydney does not offer this in more venues. While I was there, someone mentioned that wifi and broadband are expensive and slow in Australia. So maybe that is why more places don't offer it. This may be true as many of the places that I found offering access to wifi limited the length of time you could use it or the amount of data you could download. On top of this though, most insisted that you logged in with a certain amount of personal details before you could used the wifi, and many of the wider schemes in operation were currently in a test phase, which indicates to me some caution around the open use of wifi.

So I thought I would let you know about some of the places I found that did offer free wifi. I hope you find this useful:

• all Mcdonalds in Sydney offer free wifi. To access it, you simply have to ask for the wifi code when you purchase your food or drink
• you can just tap into at the top of the stairs outside the Sydney Opera House
• if you are travelling by train, then the station at Circular Quay in Sydney has wifi for all travellers, you just have to log on and provide some personal details (although I believe this is a trial)
• many of the Sydney ferries have free wifi. You have to travel in a certain section of the boat, log on with your personal details, you then have a certain amount of data to use. I took the ferry from Circular Quay to Manly which takes around half an hour and used all my allowance just checking into Four Square and uploading a photo
• Sydney Airport currently has free wifi that is sponsored by one of the travel companies. Again, you have to log in, but with a huge amount of personal details, including flight number and flight time. The log on also kept crashing so it was a bit frustrating but I got there in the end
• many libraries in Sydney offer the service. I regularly tapped into the one in Balmain, which again asked for some personal details
• if you can cope with all the people and the smell, the Sydney Fish Market has a pretty quick and easy free wifi service. I found a glass of Sauvignon Blanc helps
• if you are in Balmain, the Top Deck cafe does a good coffee, has a vew of the Harbour Bridge, and also free wifi
• in Rozelle, the Bean cafe has good grub, but a pretty slow wifi service

View from the ferry to Manly with free wifi

I went to Sydney in January 2012, so this list was up to date then. If you have any other places you would like to add to help other travellers, then please leave a comment below. Or if any of the places stop their wifi service, then again, just let me know below. I would love to hear from you.