okay! Honestly though Iāve never topped up in my life Iāve used my phone as it is all over the world including the US
You just arenāt 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 havenāt signed up for any monthly plan, itās 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 donāt get any monthly bill.
Either have I - I am on a contract - it doesnāt stop me knowing that you can top up your phone - in most countries
Honestly @muddy itās almost inconceivable that he wonāt know - there are ads plastered all over TV, radio, newspapers, at festivals, at airports and train stations and outdoors advertising phone top ups
Yes, but we often donāt pay attention to things that donāt 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 donāt 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 wasnāt 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 itās like saying you donāt know you can get pizzaās delivered because you donāt eat pizza
Okay well thatās just saying Iām ignorant but I guess! Zero interest in other peopleās phone situations and I am good at zoning stuff that doesnāt 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
I donāt understand this. You still sound like you think you owe it to your guests to do things like this for them. Why should you āpop 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.
Thereās nothing wrong with offering to assist a nice guest who is having an issue and doesnāt 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.
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 Iāll 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 didnāt 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.
isnāt 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 intāl roaming to work properly. The USA doesnāt use sim cards the same way the rest of the world does (neither does Japan), although iāve heard theyāve 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 itās what we genX might call āgenerally fkg hopelessā.
Sure it is. Thereās all kinds of challenges and learning curves. Except the OP said in the beginning that the girl couldnāt top up her phone with her US card, so had to ask the host to pay her credit card, which didnāt really make sense- Visa works everywhere, as far as Iām aware.
This girl doesnāt really seem like a tourist, somehow. How many days in a row can you ātourā your bedroom, which it seems she never leaves?
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 wasnāt 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 canāt buy more than one monthās 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 wasnāt buying a new phone in the US- her Aussie phone wouldnāt 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 didnāt know some people still need to change SIM cards when travelling
Mostly it isnāt that people need to change the SIM for the phone to work, itās just that the roaming charges are outrageously expensive. Itās usually much cheaper to buy and use a local SIM card.
no it worked fine in the USA, we opted to do āinternational 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 couldnāt just put in a new sim over there.
when they first launched the USA didnāt use the gsm system, which required a sim card, now they have switched over but still some donāt have sim cards.
I guess every country has its own phone challenges. Iāve never had a cell phone contract with my provider, I just buy time as I need it, and I didnāt 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?