Roaming

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Roaming

Geektastic

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#202083 16-Sep-2016 08:52

Are there any known plans/rumours that Spark will be doing anything to improve roaming on their account plans?

One of the best things about VF is the $5/day roaming and Spark seem curiously uncompetitive around that.

morrisk

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#1631792 16-Sep-2016 14:27

I agree that the Spark roaming experience needs considerable improvement beyond just the pricing. The new data packages from Sept. 1 are not any real improvement when you consider the problem of actually getting reliable access to data when roaming.

My recent experience in France was that it was often not possible to use the data even though there was either a 3G or 4G connection with the phone. So of the 1 GB pack I think I only managed to use 12 MB in a week. I think it would have been cheaper just to pay for the data by MB.

There is also the issue of when the week begins - it is not explained anywhere on the website and I spent a lot of time looking. Gave up and called their 0800 number, waited for around 40 minutes and then arranged (I thought) to have the week start when I actually arrive in France. It didn't and so had several days charged at $10. Tried to buy a pack and got the message that there was already an order being processed and thus couldn't buy anything - called help line from France and it was told that there was a hold up as a credit clearance hadn't happened - I am a monthly account holder with Spark - have been for 40years and never not paid an account - eventually sorted but not on the spot as NZ was asleep at the time - however the call centre person was very helpful about it and followed up by sending a txt and email when the problem was solved.

So seems to me that there are a few improvements that would be worthwhile - better help information on the website particularly around when the data pack week starts once you buy it.

Have the pricing based upon the actual data you manage to use or the package size which ever is the greater.

Finally can't understand why for some zones there are pack that bundle data, texts and calls together but in others there are only data packs.

ghettomaster

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#1631825 16-Sep-2016 15:24

Spark used to have their $10 a day roaming, the same as VF just twice the price. Interesting to see they have done away with it...

Linux

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#1631842 16-Sep-2016 16:28

ghettomaster:
Spark used to have their $10 a day roaming, the same as VF just twice the price. Interesting to see they have done away with it...

$10 roaming on Spark was noting like VodafoneNZ $5 daily roaming was not even close when compared side by side

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sbiddle

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#1631930 16-Sep-2016 20:27

ghettomaster:

Spark used to have their $10 a day roaming, the same as VF just twice the price. Interesting to see they have done away with it...

Spark's $10 roaming was a very different offering than Vodafone. It gave you data (only 100MB in the end from memory), nothing else. Vodafone lets you use your NZ plan so you're not paying for any data, sms and inbound or outbound calls.

Spark have always struggled at roaming, and those who were around in the early days of XT will remember their dual IMSI SIM cards that relied on o2 for a lot of roaming destinations.