sbjnyc

Hi... I've never used travel pass before. I'll be in Greece and in the middle of my trip my billing cycle ends. My plan is above unlimited which I learned has 5 free travel passes per month which I understand to refer to billing cycle rather than calendar month. Is that correct? If so that should mean I will get 10 free travel passes for the 12 days I'll need it. I may still get a sim card for the extra data but I want to make sure I understand how the plan works. Thanks.

747FC

What is the name of the plan that offers the free passes? Thanks.

TWA884

As @sbjnyc wrote above, it is Above Unlimited, however, it is no longer available to be added to existing accounts.

gengar

Discontinued in August, unfortunately. The new plans are essentially $5/mo cheaper though, which helps eat into the cost of those TravelPasses especially if the data of the top tier plan wasn't needed (although note there are now two different plans at the 'new' middle tier price, with one plan offering 720p streaming + 25GB 4G LTE and the other 480p streaming + 50GB 4G LTE).

sbjnyc

To answer my own question, through sheer dumb luck I will only have to pay for 1 travel pass during my 11 full days in Greece using the beyond above unlimited plan. Unless you have data hunger apps 500 mb/day is fine even if texting a few photos. I did have some connection issues in the middle of the Aegean on the ferries, though. You can buy Wi-Fi packages but I decided not to. I also decided not to buy a SIM card.

phant0m

In Dubai right now and the travel pass is trash. Barely works anywhere in the city.

747FC

Travel Pass is a payment plan. Are you saying that you are not being charged?

TWA884

Could be phone compatibility, it's possible that your phone does not support the frequency bands used in the UAE. Try switching networks or resetting the network settings. Verizon Global Support (toll free 800-922-0204 in the US or 0-800-111 in the UAE, collect +1-908-559-4899) has been quite helpful when I had issues when traveling abroad.

phant0m

I'm paying the $10 per day pass. Shows full vars LTE but actual data service is dreadfully slow pretty much everywhere but on the freeway. Using an iPhone XS Max. Ill try the reset but luckily wifi has been readily available here in Dubai.

BobbySteel

I’ve given up ok travel pass. In plsces like ukraine it refuses to use 4g and the 3g network is unusable. This has happened too many times. Given up and porting my Verizon # to voip.ms and using google fi internationally

gooselee

TravelPass worked fine for me for several years. But what I'd been doing more recently is just getting dual-SIM phones and then using a local prepay SIM from wherever and leveraging data-based stuff like WhatsApp (after your device is tied to your VZW number, it'll just use whatever data source is available to it). If I needed to use my Verizon number for some reason I'd pop into an office or cafe and use wifi calling. Most of my pre-COVID work travel was to Europe, so I still keep a Vodafone UK SIM that only costs 1 GBP per day, only on the days you use it, and works all over the continent as well.

In some ways actually worked better when I carried two separate phones, as I could hotspot from the local SIM and have full functionality on my VZW phone over that wifi.

phant0m

I was thinking of doing this but didn't set up my esim in time. I'll make sure to do this on my next trip as in Dubai it's been a huge disappointment.

draver

A Dual sim iPhone will do this with two lines. If your main line is assigned a carrier it has no service on in Network Selection and your second line does get cellular service, then the main line will link to the second line as if it were a WiFi network. All calls on your mail line will function as a WiFi call. I have tested this many times with my T-Mobile esim assigned to AT&T for instance. After a few seconds it reports NO SERVICE, then defaults to "T-Mobile using Cellular Data". Any calls made in this situation are charged as a WiFi call. For T-Mobile. Those calls are free to and from the US while roaming internationally in 210 countries.

Dubai Stu

I am grandfathered on ATT's Global International and it always takes me a long time to get a usable signal in Dubai. After deplaning I have sometimes cleared customs, retrieved my luggage and am some near Mall of the Emirates before my email starts downloading.

TWA884

My wife's line incurred ~$70 in roaming charges while using Verizon's TravelPass in Israel. It took about an hour on the phone with an offshore customer service representative to have the charges removed.

To add insult to injury, after working perfectly on the first day that we were in Israel and being charged the TravelPass daily fee, on the second day, I started receiving a recording to the effect that I my line did not have an international plan. That was when I tried to make local calls; data worked and I was able to call US numbers. Then it took ten hours to get hold of a Verizon Global Assist customer service representative because the customer service centers were closed. It was Sunday morning in Israel, which is a normal workday there. One would think that Global Assist should be available 24/7. Once I got through, it took 45 minutes on two phone lines and escalation to level 2 customer support to resolve the issue. Somehow, my international service was turned off despite the app showing that all the lines on our account were enrolled in TravelPass.

That's after having issues in Peru in November. There, we got a Spanish language recording by the local cellular operator when we tried to make local calls.

Time to consider porting to AT&T, which does not charge roaming fees for using the phone in most of Latin America, caps the fees for using the International Day Pass elsewhere at ten days per billing cycle and additional lines pay only half the rate.