International calling to and from the USA on a cell phone

[hk blues]

18 hours ago, Jollygoodfellow said:

Have you tried whatsapp? International calls, SMS if in conjunction with another app. I have it but rarely make calls and just use as a message system but believe all the features you need are there.

I haven't as skype does everything I need but I will keep that in mind if I need to find an alternative.

 

[JohnGalt84]

Do these services allow for porting in a number? 
 

My situation is that I’ve got a US vanity number for my business phone and don’t wish to lose access to it. 

Fi, Skype or Magic jack- these will give customers a seamless calling experience when reaching out to me from the US no matter what phone service they use themselves?

[mountainside]

2 hours ago, JohnGalt84 said:

Do these services allow for porting in a number? 

 

2 hours ago, JohnGalt84 said:

My situation is that I’ve got a US vanity number for my business phone and don’t wish to lose access to it.

Last time around I ported my US business number to GV.  Return calls were free, and my business number appeared on recipients' caller IDs.  Requires a wi-fi connection, of course.  2FA can be a mess with GV, but that doesn't appear to be your concern.

[longway]

It is surprising to me that with all the advances in communications in the past 20 years It is still very complicated to just call around the world with my cell phone when I can watch live TV from anywhere.

[GeoffH]

37 minutes ago, longway said:

It is surprising to me that with all the advances in communications in the past 20 years It is still very complicated to just call around the world with my cell phone when I can watch live TV from anywhere.

What is surprising to me is that more banks haven't adopted zoom calls (or other video calling methods) for international customers.

Even my lawyer uses Microsoft Teams video chat for signing documents electronically.

[JJReyes]

Just got hit with a $241.65 additional charge for international calls.  We were on a 19-day back-to-back cruise with Ensenada, Mexico being the first port and Vancouver, Canada being the last.  The rest were US ports like Santa Barbara, San Francisco and several in Alaska.  We avoided making calls while in Ensenada and Vancouver, but the phone company claims their network detected we were on a cruise ship.  The guy at the call center (Philippines) claims the way to avoid the extra charges would be to go on shore while in port!  I mentioned about writing a complaint to a government agency, my senator and congressman.  They will review and get back to me.

[GeoffH]

6 hours ago, JJReyes said:

We avoided making calls while in Ensenada and Vancouver, but the phone company claims their network detected we were on a cruise ship.  The guy at the call center (Philippines) claims the way to avoid the extra charges would be to go on shore while in port!  

Even when you don't make calls phones use data by default and cruise ship casual data rates are HUGE, it's better to not only turn off data (that's a bare minimum) but actually remove the SIM because you can still get 'essential carrier updates' when data is turned off and because some carriers charge by data blocks you end up paying for a block each time even if you've only used a small bit of the data block (which is normally 1Mb or 10Mb).

 

As to going ashore to avoid extra charges I really can't see that working...

[Kingpin]

On 6/12/2023 at 11:45 AM, JohnGalt84 said:

Skype or Magic jack- these will give customers a seamless calling experience when reaching out to me from the US no matter what phone service they use themselves?

Skype works for calls but I am no longer getting SMS delivered, very big problem for OTPs from banks etc