TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Verizon Wireless charges

Although I did not make or receive any phone calls in St. Martin, and kept my cellphone in my suitcase, except perhaps to recharge the battery, I received three separate 12 dollar charges from Verizon, identified as Anguilla, which they declined to reverse. Anyone else have this problem? I have in the past tried to call the US without success.

It happened to me in St. Maarten last year. The call showed up as I think St. Kitts. I had to pay the $15 bill.
You have to take your phone off the Roaming setting, otherwise, nearby Islands can access your phone.

If you keep it in airplane mode you shouldn't have that problem.

Sounds like you didn’t keep it on airplane mode. So it roamed. You need to keep in airplane mode or it will trigger the daily plan.

Always best to periodically check to make sure it's still on airplane mode as some phones have been known to bump off airplane mode to data.

I use an old flip phone that does not have an airplane mode. I switch it off, hoping it would have the same effect.

As soon as you turn it on it's going to start roaming.

That’s weird then. An old flip phone with no data shouldn’t trigger anything. I would call back or go into a store to discuss. Something doesn’t seem right. The way it was explained to me was data is what triggers the fees.

We encountered the same issue, where we were charged for incoming spam, robocalls, and texts. We contacted Verizon to dispute the charges, and they reduced our bill by half. We were informed that we should have put our phone on airplane mode to avoid these charges. I politely pointed out that this information was never communicated to us. It seems this is a recent change, as my husband has been with Verizon for years, and this is the first year we’ve received daily notifications warning us that we’d be charged $12 per day, but only if we used texts and phone calls.

Verizon has always told us to keep ours on airplane mode when we inquired with customer service. Been like that for years. Pretty common with most providers. Ours go on airplane mode once we board our last flight to sxm and and take it off once we land in US on our return.

Rather than turning on airplane mode, it you have a smartphone, just turn off cellular data and also turn off roaming.That way if you have a wi-fi connection you can still do a search, read email, send and receive texts, etc. Of course you have to be in proximity to a wi-fi signal. If you have WhatsApp then you can speak to anyone who also has it. Turn on wi-fil calling and you can speak to anyone else. Or receive voice calls.

We bought an inexpensive, unlocked Motorola phone several years ago and added a Chippie sim card to use on the island. But we also follow the above instructions to use the Apple FaceTime app to speak with family back in the States. As long as you are connected exclusively to wi-fi there will be no extra fees from Verizon or any other carrier. (When not in use our iPhones remain locked away in the room safe.)

When we had Verizon we would, as mentioned, put the phones in airplane mode and turn wifi back on.That would kill the cell signal. We could then use the phone on wifi when in a wifi area. It worked ok but became a pain in the butt and when we needed new phones we switched to T-Moblie and now we take them off airplane mode right after landing. Perfect connectin to local cell service for texts and emails at zero cost. Calls away from wifi are 25 cents/minute. Two weeks use for two phones in France was a tad over $6.

Great perk from T-Mobile....no worries about not receiving important calls while on the road...and no daily or weekly add on fees ]. No special phones or chips needed...just use it like at home

I have a dumb question. When I am calling SXM or any foreign country on WhatsApp from home here in the states do I need to put my phone on airplane mode so I don’t use data? You can tell technologically challenged.

@MotownTim - WhatsApp uses data and won't work without it. When you turn on "airplane mode" it won't use data from your cellular plan. WhatsApp will then only work if you are connected to the internet via either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

So I should turn on airplane mode when I’m making calls on WhatsApp to SXM using my house WIFI here in the states?

NO.

For Verizon customers, there's an option to pay an extra $10/month for three travel pass days. The travel pass days don't expire until one year after they're issued. Since David's mother is bedridden and has 24/7 care at home, it's important for us to stay connected. When at the resort, we stay in airplane mode and use Wi-Fi calling. You can also start and stop that $10 perk whenever you choose.

But you could if you wanted to, just not required. At times at my house the cell service is weak, and so wifi calling works better.

Noting we are here for multiple weeks this time of year, I just pay for the one month subscription at $100 (discounted since a business customer). It automatically stops at the end of one month and it is less hassle than other options to us. I also carry a T Mobile phone that I use to hot spot at times when I need a private network, works well for us. T-Mobile does work better here than Verizon in my opinion, but Verizon is much better in most of the US.

Confused why you have a T-Mobile phone and don't take advantage of its no charge texts and emails when out of country...and the 25 cents/minute for calls not on wifi

I'm with you Todd I also use the monthly Verizon international plan when staying over 10 days cheaper than the travel pass. The 1 good think about my Verizon plan is free use in Mexico and Canada. Curious though I got my international plan for $87 for some reason got a $13 discount

What number codes do you use to call a USA number from St. Maarten by Verizon Wireless ?

1+ AREA CODE
So if i called my mother it would be 1 803 776-xxxx

We keep our phones on airplane mode but connected to wifi. this way we can use WhatsApp or Skype for that matter. And we can browse TTOL. lol. Free of charge. No roaming.

Same here.

I have Verizon and the last two years I have incurred charges, and I am in Airplane mode and WIFI on but be careful as it will switch over on you without your knowledge. This was using WhatsApp so my droid phone has a mind of its own apparently. I also have a 4-year IT degree from a university. I think I am going to use FB messenger this year on my laptop and resolve this problem.

Same thing happened with my wifes iPhone this last year. Switched of airplane mode on its own while in SXM. Luckily she caught it on time before incurring any charges.

If you really want to be safe, take out the sim card. Problem solved.

what are the extra charges for, actual phone calls or data usage?...or is this some kind of international travel "plan" daily fee that is automatically kicking in?...if it's an optional extra travel plan, can't you choose to not have it activate automatically when travelling?

for emergencies/safety, we always allow our phones to cellular roam for calls/text, but mostly only use our provider's (Xfinity/Verizon) wifi calling for non-emergency calls/texts to the US...don't use airplane mode, but we also NEVER allow data roaming...and we don't ever sign up for any kind of special travel plan...never get any unexpected mobile charges...yearly travel to caribbean and europe

After what I’ve paid to get there, stay there, and dine there, my cellphone bill is nothing more than noise.

To those few who have my St Martin cellphone number, please switch over to my US number. As inexpensive as it has been for me to maintain a French-side number, it’s just not worth the aggravation to keep it alive.

I made no phone calls, nothing. No calls received. Billed for three days although I was there eight days. I did go to the manual online for my flip phone and did find that I can do the airplane mode. Hooray ! Generally I just turn the phone off the entire time I am on island.

I would think that the days you were charged for were the days you had your phone on.

Maybe a dumb question but do you even have data on a flip phone? What is Verizon saying the charges were for???

They were travel pass charges, according to the bill. I may have turned it on briefly just to check the time of day, but nothing else !

That's all it takes for it to kick in. Even in airplane mode with a Wi-Fi connection you'll get the current time.