Roaming Charges (Rogers)

[Reegs]

Hey Everyone.

Does anyone know if you have to pay for roaming even if you do not use your phone. I understand if you have data on, and your phone is checking for emails etc. But I'm talking strictly phone. Lets say I take my phone to Buffalo, and keep it on (Data Roaming off) there's a few scenarios:

1) Incoming calls - I'm sure you'd have to pay roaming charges plus some sort of long distances minutes.
2) Outgoing calls - same thing, roaming charges, and long distances charges.
3) Not using it for calls, just keeping it on.

Anyone know what the details are w.r.t this?

Any advice would be appreciated folks! Thanks in advance.

[MAZDA Kitten]

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. No

[Pereira11]

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. No

i believe you do get charged roaming for just having it on regardless if using or not

[MAZDA Kitten]

Nope... I go to the USA all the time and you never get charged roaming for having your phone on.

[aris]

3 years ago i was at sarnia Bay fest and all the hotels were booked...so we stayed in the usa since the boader was right their.. i left my pohne on i got dinged roaming fees...After that i shut my phone off when i am in the usa

[SpeedBaby]

actually, from my experience it's more like this:

1) INCOMING - you pay roaming charges ONLY (since you are not dialing outside, you are not being charged with long-distance minutes)
2) OUTGOING - there are 2 different scenarios: a) you are dialing outside of the area code where your PHONE is located at that time (i.e. you are in Buffalo calling Toronto) - you get billed for both long distance AND roaming
b) you are dialing within the area where your phone is currently located (i.e. you are in Buffalo, calling Buffalo) - you get billed for the roaming charges but NOT for long distance, since you home provider has to pay the local provider for the use of their network, but within that network it's a local call.
3) If you don't use it - u don't pay.

However, this might also depend on your cellular provider and on the terms of roaming agreements they have with local providers.

[stevenma188]

For the people that got charged roaming without using the phone, are you sure you turned data off, and didn't receive any text messages or anything of that sort?

[SpeedBaby]

Just noticed that you are with rogers, when I was in buffalo this past summer, I had my phone on and didn't get charged for roaming (didn't make or receive calls tho). and while I was in Niagara Falls on the NY side, I even used data without being charged roaming (but if you chose to use data - use it at your own risk, i think i might have just gotten lucky with that).

[aris]

If i kept my phone off i didn't get charged..only when i kept it on i got charged

[m_bisson]

Rogers charges me long distance just to check my voicemail... Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to charge you just for connecting to someone else's network.

[vanpatrick81]

Rogers charges me long distance just to check my voicemail... Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to charge you just for connecting to someone else's network.

Because the voicemail number that you tried to connect to was a toronto number, you will get charged long distance + roaming. But if you use the number that is sent to you via text message to check your voicemail, you will only get charged for roaming.

As for being charged if you leave your phone on, I've never been charged for that. I've stayed in the US for 1 whole week and the only charge that I got was from making a call to toronto (roaming + long distance) and from receiving a call (roaming only).

[ZeroChalk]

I think you should also turn off the feature to push mail to your phone?

[PCLoadLetter]

When I went to Niagara Falls last year, I stayed on the Canadian side and still got a text message saying, "Welcome to the U.S.A!"

If you don't wander very far past the border, you can get away with saying you never left Canada :)