Guest claiming neighbour guest is smoking but he is not!

:joy: okay! Honestly though Iā€™ve never topped up in my life Iā€™ve used my phone as it is all over the world including the US

You just arenā€™t aware that there are different kinds of phone plans. You probably have a contract with your provider and automatically pay a monthly fee, so you never have anything to top up.

In my case, I havenā€™t signed up for any monthly plan, itā€™s a pay-as-you-go thing- I can go to a local convenience store and top it up when it is running out, or pay for more time online. I donā€™t get any monthly bill.

Either have I - I am on a contract - it doesnā€™t stop me knowing that you can top up your phone - in most countries

Honestly @muddy itā€™s almost inconceivable that he wonā€™t know - there are ads plastered all over TV, radio, newspapers, at festivals, at airports and train stations and outdoors advertising phone top ups :smile:

Yes, but we often donā€™t pay attention to things that donā€™t have any bearing on our lives. Although as a host who gets international guests, it would be a good thing to inform oneself of, just like being able to direct guests where the nearest laundromat is if you donā€™t offer washing facilities.

True. Hard to know what will come up without the benefit of hindsight though.

You know the local shop is less than five mins away so it is strange indeed that she asked to put on my card. But she obviously is unusual. When she originally asked too I wasnā€™t even home so would have been quicker to pop out to do it. Then she had to wait two more days as she slept for most of the next day and it was only the following day that she was up when I was around

True but in the UK itā€™s like saying you donā€™t know you can get pizzaā€™s delivered because you donā€™t eat pizza :slight_smile:

1 Like

Okay well thatā€™s just saying Iā€™m ignorant but I guess! Zero interest in other peopleā€™s phone situations and I am good at zoning stuff that doesnā€™t interest me (I have adhd ) so maybe I have failed to pick something up there. I did know that people used to top up SIM cards, just thought things had moved on and that was a thing of the past

1 Like

I donā€™t understand this. You still sound like you think you owe it to your guests to do things like this for them. Why should you ā€œpop out to do itā€?
You just tell them where the nearest phone shop is where they can get a SIM top-up and how she manages to pay for it is her problem.

Thereā€™s nothing wrong with offering to assist a nice guest who is having an issue and doesnā€™t seem to expect you to go out of your way to help them, but going out of your way to do things for a guest who makes no effort to deal with their own issues and stays in their room like a slug, is not your job as a host.

1 Like

I meant it would have been quicker for her, not me, to pop out to do it. So strange to be texting me asking me when Iā€™ll be home when she could have popped to the shop in five mins (walking). I would never dream of popping to shop for a guest unless they were sick or something.

Yes agreed, I need to think through when to say yes and when to say no a bit more. As I said I was caught off guard as I was trying to do several other things at once (walking home with hands full, greeting my dog, talking to the handyman, making a callā€¦) there was just a lot going on and I didnā€™t process the request properly in my mind

Ah, thx for explaining. Sounded like you were saying you would have gone to purchase it had you gotten home earlier.

my apps all need faceID to work. and my bank app, for a big transaction, requires a second app and code.

isnā€™t it highly plausible that a young American tourist has no clue how stuff works outside their own country?
Years ago when we went to Sth Africa we found our phones were locked out of the ZA networks, and we ended up having to buy mobile phones + sims over there (luckily they were very cheap, quite awful little phones). When we were last in the usa it was a nightmare getting our intā€™l roaming to work properly. The USA doesnā€™t use sim cards the same way the rest of the world does (neither does Japan), although iā€™ve heard theyā€™ve since adopted gsm + sim card use.

Travelling abroad is filled with challenges, for all of us, but this girl sounds extra clueless, possibly with some personal issues, even if itā€™s what we genX might call ā€œgenerally fkg hopelessā€. :laughing:

1 Like

Sure it is. Thereā€™s all kinds of challenges and learning curves. Except the OP said in the beginning that the girl couldnā€™t top up her phone with her US card, so had to ask the host to pay her credit card, which didnā€™t really make sense- Visa works everywhere, as far as Iā€™m aware.
This girl doesnā€™t really seem like a tourist, somehow. How many days in a row can you ā€œtourā€ your bedroom, which it seems she never leaves? :smile:

I actually just had an issue with topping up my Mexican phone when I was in Canada. I had no problem last year, it all worked fine, but this year I kept getting a message that my visa card wasnā€™t valid, which it is. I had to call my friend in Mexico and ask him to go down to the local convenience store and buy me more time.

I would have bought enough time to last my whole trip to Canada before I left, but you canā€™t buy more than one monthā€™s worth at a time.

When did you last go to the US? I never heard of them not using SIMs. My Mex phone has always worked fine when travelling through the US, for about 20 years.

All new phones here in the US do not have SIMs, only electronic internal.

What do you mean by electronic internal? My friend just bought a new Samsung in the US a couple of months ago. I know it takes a SIM, because he removed the US SIM and replaced it with his Mexican SIM when he got back.

And Gillian wasnā€™t buying a new phone in the US- her Aussie phone wouldnā€™t work.

The phones still accept SIM cards (they have that slot) but US carriers like AT&T etc use virtual SIMs. My phone has not had a card for 3 years. If you walk into a phone store here they will not sell you a card.

Last year. Like many, I have an iPhone. I no longer give it a second thought If I travel and I used it just fine in the US. I was telling a couple of people the story today and they also said that they didnā€™t know some people still need to change SIM cards when travelling

Mostly it isnā€™t that people need to change the SIM for the phone to work, itā€™s just that the roaming charges are outrageously expensive. Itā€™s usually much cheaper to buy and use a local SIM card.

3 Likes

no it worked fine in the USA, we opted to do ā€œinternational roamingā€ as offered by our own Telco, which was not ideal as they failed almost every day to connect properly and we had to fight them over the bill when we got home. Next time I will just buy a local sim card. The problem we had in Sth Africa is that some providers lock your phone to their network while you are still paying the phone off, not sure if they still do this, so we couldnā€™t just put in a new sim over there.

when they first launched the USA didnā€™t use the gsm system, which required a sim card, now they have switched over but still some donā€™t have sim cards.

I guess every country has its own phone challenges. Iā€™ve never had a cell phone contract with my provider, I just buy time as I need it, and I didnā€™t buy my phone through the provider, just bought it at a store that sells phones. Was it cheaper to buy the phone from the phone provider along with a monthly plan?