Verizon Cell Phone Use Onboard

I have been searching and reading various old threads regarding this topic. I am going to call Verizon later on this morning, but I want to be sure I know exactly what I am asking for when calling.

 

I will be boarding Independence of the Seas on Saturday doing the 8 day Caribbean itinerary. My questions are as follows:

 

1) If I have International calling turned on I should be able to make and receive phone calls for $2.49/minute?

 

2) Texts should be 0.05/received and 0.50/sent?

 

3) $20/100MB of data plan will cover basic email and iMessages?

 

If anyone has experience using all of these plans together I would love to hear about it. Has anyone actually been able to receive a phone call? I have cruised many times before and just locked the phone in the safe, but this time my circumstances are slightly different and I would like the option of having family members keep in touch with us.

 

Thanks in advance :)

I have been searching and reading various old threads regarding this topic. I am going to call Verizon later on this morning, but I want to be sure I know exactly what I am asking for when calling.

 

I will be boarding Independence of the Seas on Saturday doing the 8 day Caribbean itinerary. My questions are as follows:

 

1) If I have International calling turned on I should be able to make and receive phone calls for $2.49/minute?

 

2) Texts should be 0.05/received and 0.50/sent?

 

3) $20/100MB of data plan will cover basic email and iMessages?

 

If anyone has experience using all of these plans together I would love to hear about it. Has anyone actually been able to receive a phone call? I have cruised many times before and just locked the phone in the safe, but this time my circumstances are slightly different and I would like the option of having family members keep in touch with us.

 

Thanks in advance :)

While at sea, your calls and SMS texts whould be as you described in 1 and 2 above, without any additional plan purchase.

 

However, you would have to have some sort of additional plan that covers ships at sea to get data coverage.

If you go to Verizon's website you will find the phone and messaging rates. They vary by country, so you cannot assume that the $.05 rcvd/$.50 sent will apply to your port.

 

On our last cruise, I purchased a $25 package of international data which I used to access the internet while in port. It was also helpful while in port because I had access to Google Maps to help navigate the cities that we were visiting.

This might help everyone.

 

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/tripplanner/tripplannercontroller

I realize this is only helpful to the OP for one day out of the eight but while they are in San Juan, they will be on Verizon's extended network so they will have all the features they have at home available at no additional cost (or at least nothing more than they would pay at home).

I do the 100mb for 20$ on all my trips. cheaper than on board wifi . I have yet to go over the 100mb because its still fairly slow. But I can not vouch for the phone or text as I have yet to do those on the ship.

This might help everyone.

 

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/tripplanner/tripplannercontroller

 

 

Thanks!!!

 

***

I was just researching this myself on Verizon's website. I will just add that when in St. Thomas texting and data is whatever you have covered on your phone plan so no extra charge unless you go over. But voice calls are $1.99 per minute. So if you have a text package you would be covered up to the limit of your package. If you have 2 GB of data on your plan that would apply in St Thomas. You would only pay if you go over. It is weird because the voice calls are treated differently.

I hope this isn't too far off topic. It's time to upgrade to a new iPad Air. Can a 4 G iPad with a pay as you go plan do anything to make keeping in touch with home a little easier while cruising? I don't have a smart phone so this is all new to me. My eyes are starting to cross looking at different plans.

This might help everyone.

 

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/tripplanner/tripplannercontroller

 

Definitely helped me! Thanks so much!:)

We always send an email as a "text" to a cell phone and it is free.

 

When using WiFi you write an email like normal and then in the "TO" line, you type in the cell phone number plus vtext(dotcom) behind it and it sends it to that cell phone.

 

This way, we aren't being charged the 50 cents for each real text.

Edited April 26, 2014 by Roadtripster

1) If I have International calling turned on I should be able to make and receive phone calls for $2.49/minute?

 

2) Texts should be 0.05/received and 0.50/sent?

That appears to be the correct rate when on the ships service. When you get into ports the charges will vary since you'll then be on whatever countries service. With Verizon this means texts are probably free since they cover international texting (but not cruise ships) now on most plans.

 

As an example of my next cruise, these are my rates:

 

Holland America Veendam - Voice: $2.49 Data: $25/100MB $0.020/KB ($20.48/MB) Text: $0.50 send

$0.05 receive

 

Canada Standard - Voice: $0.89 Data: $25/100MB $0.002/KB ($2.05/MB) Text: Domestic send (covered by my normal plan) Domestic receive (covered by my normal plan)

Edited April 26, 2014 by sherilyn70

What cruise line?

 

We found Carnival's in cabin phone rate to be a 'reasonable' $1.99/minute.

Just be VERY careful using your cell phone on the ship and out of the country in any mode. It could result in HUGE charges. This below ripped from the current thread-cruise horror stories in this forum. And someone else posted about watching one of the college bowl games through their smart phone and the bill was over $4200. Those data charges are HUGE.

 

 

"We've seen a few horror stories play out in front of us - but our horror story happened not that long ago after going to Bermuda on a 7 day cruise. The cruise, the cabin, the service were all great. What wasn't great was the text message we received once we got back to Boston after the cruise. The text said that we had gone over our data limit and that our data for both International and US would be turned off until we called AT&T. Now we used several apps and didn't really monitor how long we were on over the 3 days we were in Bermuda. So after being notified that our WORK phone data bill was close to $3,800 we now just turn on airplane mode before going out of the country. Lesson definitely learned. At least we were able to enjoy the rest of our cruise before we got the bad news."

What cruise line? . . .

 

The OP said Independence of the Seas, an RCI ship.

How/can you turn of data and still send and receive texts and calls like a "non" smart phone used to do?:confused: Thanks!

How/can you turn off data and still send and receive texts and calls like a "non" smart phone used to do?:confused: Thanks!

I stopped by Verizon on the way home today and apparently, all I have to do is turn of mobile data to turn off data and I'll still be able to text for .50 cent and .05 to receive, and 1.99/min if I use/answer the phone! Please let me know if anyone disagrees; thanks!:)

Repost

 

I stopped by Verizon on the way home today and apparently, all I have to do is turn off mobile data, to turn off data and I'll still be able to text for .50 to send and .05 to receive; and 1.99/min if I use/answer the phone! Please let me know if anyone disagrees; thanks!:)

 

 

 

 

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