Traveller Knowhow: Expensive Roaming Bill cause by VoiceMail

Traveller Knowhow: Expensive Roaming Bill cause by VoiceMail

International roaming is a must when travel to oversea. Is the roaming cost expensive? Cost you to pay more than expected?

Why mobile bill spike high in roaming cost? Any abnormal charges in your bill?

Some traveller do not apply international roaming as limited budget. But they are shock to see the international roaming charges in the bill when they returned to their country. Why this can be happened to the bill?

When accepting a call abroad, it automatically activate the roaming service. I bet this is understand by everyone. Which means, if you do not accept any calls abroad, and you won’t be charged, right? Seemingly, it is true.

However, you being charged roaming cost where international roaming is not activate. Why?

When you avoid a international call abroad, the call will divert into voicemail, where voicemail will activate the daily roaming instantly. For instant, a call goes to voicemail, and it activated the day roaming and it cost you about RM38 plus roaming call charges per minute (for most of the telco). And if you getting the same situation after 24 hours, it will activate another day roaming and cost your another RM38 plus roaming call charges per minute.

Another situation, you activated the international roaming, and the missed call goes to voicemail, it will charge roaming call charges per minute. Let’s say the roaming call charge per minute is RM1.50 and the voicemail length is 3minutes, the total charges for that voicemail is RM1.50 x 3 = RM4.50.

How to avoid this from happening?

Telco would not tell you or teach you that you should disable the Voicemail service when you travel to oversea. By disabling the voicemail service, you can avoid from auto roaming activation or roaming call charges for voicemail. Many people complaint about this, but they still have to settle the unreasonable bill at the end.

Please disable the voicemail service before you travel oversea, even with or without roaming activation.


How to disable voicemail on Celcom, Digi, Maxis and U Mobile?

Besides not turning on Data Roaming, you should always ensure that voicemail is turned off before travelling if you don’t want any extra surprise charges. Here’s how you can disable voicemail on the big four telcos:

Maxis

Using the Maxis app, you can disable it by tapping on your postpaid account > Value Added Services > Untick “Dynamic Voice Mail & Missed Call Notification”. Then, tap on “apply” to save your settings.

Celcom

For Celcom, their FAQ states that voicemail service deactivation can be done by calling their contact centre at 019 6011111.

Digi

On Digi, you can deactivate voicemail with the following steps:

Postpaid Subscribers:

Step 1: Dial *128#

Step 2: Click on “Digi Rewards & Services”.

Step 3: Click on “Voicemail”.

Step 4: Click on “Deactivate Voicemail”.

Step 5: Click on “Confirm”.

Prepaid Subscribers:

Step 1: Dial *128#

Step 2: Click on “My Account”.

Step 3: Click on “Account Setting”.

Step 4: Click on “Voicemail”.

Step 5: Click on “Deactivate Voicemail”.

Step 6: Click on “Confirm”.

Since it takes a while to reflect the changes, it is best to deactivate voicemail before you leave Malaysia. If you need assistance, you can call up your customer service to disable voicemail.

U Mobile

For U Mobile, their FAQ states that you can deactivate the voicemail service by contacting their customer service line at 018 338 1318.


Read more about road trip:

HOW TO CROSS THE BORDER TRAVEL TO THAILAND BY CAR.

Video about road trip at HERE.

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