topic Re: How to block international calling on a sub-account in Roaming

How to block international calling on a sub-account

cpharvey — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 15:48:34 GMT

I have multiple sub-accounts for my family, three of them are children and I need to stop them being able to call abroad unless they are abroad.

So while in England I need to stop them calling International numbers, but if we go abroad then I want them to be able to call back to the UK.

I can't find any way to do this except the spend cap, which makes no sense because I don't want a cap, I want it blocked.

Any ideas?

Re: How to block international calling on a sub-account

XRaySpeX — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 16:25:38 GMT

I seem to remember there was a text something like ROAMEU UK to 150 that would do this but I now can't find it anywhere. Perhaps 1 of the EE Community staff knows about it.

Re: How to block international calling on a sub-account

bristolian — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 16:23:47 GMT

You could use a handset-level international call bar which uses a PIN (which you could reserve to yourself) to enable/disable at your will.

Otherwise the 150 text option that is alluded to, is to text ROAMING to 150 and follow the prompts. One of the options is to set EU-only roaming permissions which I think also bar international calls within the UK. I didn't test the specific option when I recently experimented with these menus.

Re: How to block international calling on a sub-account

cpharvey — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 07:38:52 GMT

I did try ROAMING to 150 and there was no option for EU only. I also think "ROAMING" per se is about data and call options while abroad, not so much blocking calls to numbers outside the UK.
I looked through the iphone and I don't see a way to block outbound calls to non UK either.

This seems like a huge oversight on both the handset and the EE plan. My children could inadvertantly cause some significant expense for which the "spend cap" is a blunt instrument.

Re: How to block international calling on a sub-account

cpharvey — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 07:39:43 GMT

I also can't find that feature. Looks like i'll have to call 150, but my guess is they'll say "use the spend cap" which is a bit idiotic.

Re: How to block international calling on a sub-account

bristolian — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 07:52:35 GMT

@cpharvey wrote:

I did try ROAMING to 150 and there was no option for EU only. I also think "ROAMING" per se is about data and call options while abroad, not so much blocking calls to numbers outside the UK.

In response to the initial response, choose "Going" and then "roaming options"....

Re: How to block international calling on a sub-account

cpharvey — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 14:01:00 GMT

That's really interesting, good find. Unfortunately though EE is lieing. 😞

Attached is an image from my sons phone, where as you can see he's setup already for ROAMEU and we tried calling two US numbers (one mine and another a friend) and they both rang. So despite it saying "(and you can't make international calls from the uk)", you actually can.

But it was still a good find, it's just a shame EE isn't honouring their own text.

Re: How to block international calling on a sub-account

Ali_A — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 14:49:21 GMT

Hi @cpharvey

This would need to be raised with our technical support guides to investigate why you're able to continue making international calls after the service is blocked. Please call us on 150 from an EE phone or see our Contact Us | Help & Support | EE to call from any other phone, and the team will be happy to help.

Ali

Re: How to block international calling on a sub-account

cpharvey — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 15:16:18 GMT

Thanks Ali, I'd love to, but I just spent 40 minutes on the phone with a very nice lady from EE who didn't know about this ROAMEU feature. So if I have to call back, that's more time on my side and i'll likely end up educating the person i'm speaking to on something they don't know. Their response will be "hmm, let me push this to tier 2", and from there i'll never see an answer or any response.

You may say "oh but no, tier 2 would respond"... aha, but alas mon ami, they won't, as demonstrated on my last ticket to them involving one of my sub-plans that kept ignoring the data gift. Indeed, a push to engineers inside the bowels of EE results in zero feedback or followup.

I'm not too surprised, I worked for Comcast for years as someone you might consider a level 5 engineer, i.e. you couldn't reach me unless you knew of me, and having worked with their care group to launch multiple consumer products I know exactly how this system works and how the talking point scripts are developed.

So, if you would like to escalate this internally, i'll happily support a dialogue with the engineering team, i'm always happy to help solve a problem. I just don't see the point of chiseling away at an iceberg with toothpick. I'm sure you have a way to message me directly and I can then provide a contact method for a more in depth conversation on this.

Re: How to block international calling on a sub-account

XRaySpeX — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 17:18:54 GMT

You need to reply ROAM EU not ROAMEU as you have done (see @bristolian 's listings).

However it's already been done before you got there. After replying "Roaming Options" you got the response:

which is exactly what you want.

Re: How to block international calling on a sub-account

cpharvey — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 07:30:23 GMT

An interesting update overnight that may help others.

As you suggest the phone was already setup the correct way, and we could still call US numbers. So, I decided to change the settings and set them back, on the theory that perhaps the ROAM settings have evolved since they were applied and although the system believes they are correct they are not.

So we went through the menu and set the policy to ROAM EU INT, which it duely responded saying it's now able to roam in the EU and make international calls. So, we went into the menu again and followed ROAMING, GOING, ROAMING OPTIONS, ROAM EU after which we got the same image as above indicating roaming in EU was allowed but international calls were blocked.

We tested it and could still call internationally. On a whim about three hours later we tried calling again and found it was now blocked.

So I repeated this with my two other children, and again, immediately after setting it we could still call, but this morning, 10 hours later, the International calls are now blocked.

Two takeways from this.

1. The phones were in a roaming mode set some time ago that allowed International calls, but the response within ROAMING was not accurate. Setting it to something else and back again, set it correctly.

2. It takes quite a bit of time to take effect, it's certainly not immediate.

I'm glad it's solved, and hopefully will help others.

Re: How to block international calling on a sub-account

XRaySpeX — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 13:09:21 GMT

Like much else rebooting the thing corrects it.
Yes, looks like there is an unexpected delay between setting the setting & EE activating it.