We've all had the pain of coming home from an excellent holiday only to be thoroughly depressed by the giant phone bill that has dropped through the letterbox. Vodafone UK are planning to ease your holiday hassles by abolishing roaming charges for the summer, from the start of June to the end of August.
From June 1st pay as you go and pay monthly customers will be able to talk, text and send picture messages from over 35 countries across Europe this summer. So ringing home won't cost you the equivalent of the current British national debt. A customer on a plan with 600 minutes and unlimited texts, for example, would be able to use these minutes and texts with no extra charges, provided that they have opted in to Vodafone passport.
Opting in to Vodafone passport is pretty easy. From May 15th customers who don't currently use Vodafone passport can sign up for free by texting the word 'Passport' to 97888 if they are on pay monthly or 2345 if they are on pay as you go. Or they can visit Vodafone.co.uk/roaming.
In addition to this Vodafone pay as you go customers on the 'simply' tariff will be able to make cheaper calls to family and friends overseas. International calls from Vodafone 'simply' customers will only cost 5p per minute to both landlines and mobiles. Opting in to this international call plan has also been made trouble free, you just call 36888 or text the word 'international' to 2345 from your handset.
We welcome this move by Vodafone to ease the burden on travellers who want to keep in touch with friends back home over the summer. But is this really enough for consumers? They have been charged excessively by the networks for years now and it's about time that the networks addressed this problem on a more permanent basis.