Your experience with Verizon Global Services Plan?

[FunCruiser56]

My Father in Law is in the hospital and will probably be there or in a nursing home for a while. My DH needs to be able to receive calls from Dr/hospital regarding his care.

Now my question is We will get the Global Services Plan through Verizon, I know what the rates they will charge are, will the ship charge us on top of that for calls/txt messages? If our phone is on all the time are we charged just for the calls/txt we make or we will have a huge roaming charge? we don't need to be using the apps and everything else. Usually as soon as we leave Florida the phones are shut off for the cruise.

 

Help me out here if you have had experience with this. Ship is Oasis of the Seas by the way.

 

Thanks so much

Bev

[Clarea]

The ship will not charge you for any phone calls or texts on your cell phone. The only thing on your phone that the ship might charge you for is WiFi, and you would have to set up a WiFi plan and enter a username/password to connect, so it would be difficult to be unknowingly charged for WiFi.

[setsail]

You will have to talk to Verizon about your billing as the only thing you pay for on rci is their internet time. Texting is the cheapest form of communication as long as you have a signal

 

We have international calling on our phone, no charge from Verizon, mostly text and a call sometimes.

We also use a dumb phone, no data, on cruises so we never have to worry about data charges

Edited May 8, 2014 by setsail

[stevea36]

My Father in Law is in the hospital and will probably be there or in a nursing home for a while. My DH needs to be able to receive calls from Dr/hospital regarding his care.

Now my question is We will get the Global Services Plan through Verizon, I know what the rates they will charge are, will the ship charge us on top of that for calls/txt messages? If our phone is on all the time are we charged just for the calls/txt we make or we will have a huge roaming charge? we don't need to be using the apps and everything else. Usually as soon as we leave Florida the phones are shut off for the cruise.

 

Help me out here if you have had experience with this. Ship is Oasis of the Seas by the way.

 

Thanks so much

Bev

 

I would check with V to find out about data usage. If you have an iPhone you will find that it uses more data just "keeping in touch" than other phones. One way around the data charges would be to shut off data roaming. you would still be able to receive/make phone calls and I believe texts as well, but no data which could be a money waster..

 

Steve

[ahecht]

Note that the Verizon Global Voice plans don't include cruise ships, only the Global Data plans do. Verizon will charge you $2.50/minute, $0.50/text sent, and $0.05/text received regardless of what plan you have.

[ummgood]

Make sure you have data roaming turned off. That will prevent large data charges.

 

 

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[OHCruisinDad]

Whenever we are onboard or out of the country we have the Verizon global service turned on. I think I pay $25 a month for global service. My phone is in our small business group share plan which has 20 plus phones in it.

 

I agree with others about checking directly with Verizon because there are so many different plans out there and there are lots of differences.

[gordiej]

Note that the Verizon Global Voice plans don't include cruise ships, only the Global Data plans do. Verizon will charge you $2.50/minute, $0.50/text sent, and $0.05/text received regardless of what plan you have.

+1

The "global plans" people are talking about is where you pay for a fixed amount of data (I think it starts at 100Mb now?) For a fixed monthly fee that can be used overseas (most, but not all countries). This is substantially cheaper than going a la carte (like $20/Mb). They also have plans that reduce the per minute rate for phone calls (say, from $1.29/min to $0.99/min) for a fixed monthly fee ($5 I think). Verizon has no discounted plan for texts. :td:

 

However, as ahecht mentions, those plans don't work *on* the ship (while it's at sea.) I'll defer and assume the prices quoted are correct, but you can always verify with Verizon.

 

For when you're in port, if you think you're going to be making/receiving a lot of calls, it may make sense to sign up for the discounted roaming rates. Like I mentioned, for texts, it doesn't matter. And I would just turn off data roaming on the phone (should be off by default) and not worry about data, unless you need constant email access.

 

Regardless, make sure to contact Verizon to enable the international features before you leave. If you don't, the phone may not work at all overseas.

 

 

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