🚀 go-pugleaf

Nom-de-plume wrote
> Rod Speed wrote
>> Nom-de-plume wrote

>>> Anyone see any problems with this strategy for avoiding
>>> international roaming gotchas (including lebara SPAM)?

>>> 1  unconditional diversion of all voice calls to voicemail;

>>> 2  voicemail message to ask callers to send urgent messages only by SMS, or use email.

>> You wont get the SMSs without getting slugged for them.

>>> The intention is to avoid the fees and charges gotchas.

>> Doesnt work.

> I'm happy to accept the cost of urgent messages.

Trouble is that what you consider an urgent message may not
be what the individual who sends it considers to be urgent etc.

> If there is a cheaper way of getting them, that would be good.  Is there a cheaper way?

One approach is to get a SIM in the country you are visiting and have the voicemail
message give that number they can SMS to. But even that costs something to
receive in some countrys like the US and that SIM is hardly ever free either.

What can work is to have a separate australian SIM with roaming enabled on it
that only those you tell about that number can SMS to because only those know
about that number, and its not on the voicemail message, but even thats not that
cheap because there are few free SIMs around now and even less with roaming.

And that wont work if people normally contact your mobile and you cant predict who
might need to send you an urgent message while you are out of the country. I guess
the SMS route to the normal number is the best approach for them, hopefully there
wont be too many who are silly enough to decide that something is urgent when its
not for you so you wont get slugged very often for what you dont consider urgent.

The short story is that there is no perfect way to avoid fees and charges gotchas with roaming.