I cannot get a signal in Colombia?

[matty2]

Likewise, all. Been in Medellin for 3 weeks and nothing. Worked for a day when I arrived and since then nothing. Can't send or receive texts on my uk number at all. Very frustrating and noone else in my (international) group seems to be having this problem.

Not sure why ee can't seem to fix this.

Has anyone found a solution?

[tom00]

I'm having problems too, and when I spoke to customer service they told me flat out that they have no roaming agreement with any network provider in Colombia (not Columbia, which is in the USA).

[Richard_C]

Hi @matty2 and @tom00

Thanks for coming to the community from Colombia 🙂

Please try the trouble shooting tips in our Roaming with EE - What to do if you're having problems abroad 

 Some of the hints, tips and tricks may help to get things working for you.

If not and you are a pay monthly personal customer, please log in to your MYEE and await a live chat with an advisor.

Let us know how you get on.

Thanks

Richard

[tom00]

Can you confirm that orange PAYG has a roaming agreement with a network in Colombia (and it would be helpful to know which network)?

When I try to connect to Claro, Movistar or Tigo (the only three availble as far as I know), I get the error "Your SIM card does not allow a connection to this network".

When I spoke to customer services on a previous occasion, they told me that orange has no roaming agreement with any network in Colombia.

[Christopher_G]

Hi @tom00

Thanks for popping by the community.

We do have an agreement with Colombia, as you can see from our roaming cost checker. 

Does it just show 'No Service' on your device?

I recommend having a chat with our customer services team. You can get in contact by

logging into your My EE account on your phone's browser (not the app) or a computer. Once you're logged in, a chat window will pop up when an advisor is available.

If you can't get in contact with chat, please get in touch from an alternative phone.

Please let me know how you get on.

Chris 🙂

[matty2]

Just come off my third phonecall with ee customer support.

In line with every other experience i've had of ee customer support the quality of the advice has been poor, and incorrect. Tom it doesn't surprise me that you've been told one thing by ee, then another thing turned out to be true - this has happened to me on more than one occasion, even when i queried the response I was given.

My problem has not been solved. Brilliantly the representative told me he would call me back. I told him it wouldn't work, because MY PHONE IS NOT WORKING IN COLOMBIA. To solve the problem so that I could speak to him again "if" (when) he couldn't get through to me, he gave me his "direct" number. Which of course was just the main ee customer support number, so now I can't speak to the same guy and I have to start the conversation all over again for a fourth time.

So instead of exploring columbia, I'm sat in a hotel room on skype for hours at a time, wasting my life talking to people who can't fix a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.

I wonder if I can get a vodafone sim card sent to colombia...

The phone actually worked fine in bogota. There seems to be an issue with medellin, but it seems unlikely that ee will put 2 and 2 together and reach this conclusion any time soon. How dull.

Richard thanks for the standardised advice. I tried all that before I rang the first time. 

[Richard_C]

Hi @matty2

The advice I pointed you to is our support article which tries to cover each and every possible scenario.

I am genuinely sorry to hear that you are having this experience and I wish their was something I could do to fix this for you.

From advice previously given by @Christopher_G

I recommend having a chat with our customer services team.

You can get in contact by logging into your My EE account on your phone's browser (not the app) or a computer.

Once you're logged in, a chat window will pop up when an advisor is available.

If you can't get in contact with chat, please get in touch from an alternative phone.

You won't need to repeat yourself either, there should be notes on the account and a record of your previous contact.

Thanks

Richard

🙂

[matty2]

Me too, Richard. Me too.

[Richard_C]

Thanks for your continued patience @matty2

🙂

[tom00]

---

@Christopher_G wrote:

Hi @tom00

 We do have an agreement with Colombia, as you can see from our roaming cost checker.

---

Ok. Which network do you have an agreement with?

---

@Christopher_G wrote:

Does it just show 'No Service' on your device?

It says "no service". Or sometimes "Emergency calls only".

My pull down menu on android elaborates a little further with "selected network (Claro) not available. I have tried manually connecting to the three networks my phone can find (Claro, Tigo, and Movistar), and when I do, each one gives me the following error:

"Your SIM card does not allow a connection to this network"  (it's an orange PAYG sim).

I have tried the suggestions here - https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Roaming/Roaming-with-EE-What-to-do-if-you-re-having-problems-abroad/td... - they do not work.

[Christopher_G]

Hi @tom00

Thanks for getting back to me.

EE have a roaming agreement with all 3 network operators that you have tried.

As your phone isn't connecting, I can only recommend trying again to contact our customer services from an alternative device.

Again, I know that isn't ideal, but, if you can get through to them, I'm sure they'll do their best to get you up and running.

Chris

[matty2]

ok just spent another 25 minutes on the phone with customer services instead of enjoying my holiday, plus another £5 of skpe credit.

spoke to "level 2" tech support. they're going to look into it. 

fingers crossed, but my hopes are not high.

[Richard_C]

Thanks for keeping us updated @matty2

Let us know what Level 2 come back with.

Thank you

Richard

🙂

[Sallygrussell]

I have the same problem. Really irritating.  

[matty2]

Hi Sally. Yes unfortunately this seems to be a known problem that EE aren't interested in trying to resolve. Below is my unanswered exchange with EE level 2 support, which - to save you the effort of reading through the predictable teduim - basically translates as "it's not our fault" and/or "we have no interest is trying to resolve this issue". Of course I had given the information requested twice over the phone already. Key phrase to look out for:

"we are not responsible for the coverage/performance of foreign networks".

Yawn. If I wasn't still in Colombia, I'd already have switched to another UK provider.

---

Hi I didn’t receive a reply to the below.

Is it possible to have all my texts (I’ve already turned off voicemail due to extortionate ee charges to receive voicemail abroad) re-routed at source to my Colombian number, shown below?

As it stands I haven’t been able to receive any UK texts or calls for 5 weeks.

If this can’t be resolved I will switch to Vodafone before I go to China in October as I don’t want to this to happen again.

Thanks

M

---

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to make an awful lot of sense as I had full signal bars with Movistar in Medellin, and obviously there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of local people using Movistar in Medellin. I don’t think this is a signal issue.

Since the latest set of changes you have carried out in accordance with your email, now I can STILL register on the Movistar network on WCDMA/GSM, but I now get the warning message “selected network unavailable”. As far as I can tell, this is a backward step, no?

1 star.

M

---

Hi Mr X,

I’m emailing regarding the issue you have reported using your service in Medellin, Columbia. Our core network team have confirmed that nothing has changed from their side since you moved from Bogota to Medellin. We only have an agreement with Moviles Columbia (Movistar) for our customers roaming in Columbia. This agreement includes voice, 2G and 3G connections, but we do not have a 4G agreement.

What this means is that regardless of which provider has the strongest signal on the ground, the only provider that will allow a connection from your EE SIM is Movistar. Our logs show attempts to update your location on Movistar from the evening of 15/08. What this means is that the network is recognising that you are allowed to use that network, but the available coverage is not sufficient to complete the location update and for you to be able to use the services.

In an attempt to resolve the problem, our network engineer has purged you from the location register on Movistar. They have asked that you disable 4G (switch your network mode/preferred network type to 3G/2G), reboot your handset, then perform a manual network search and attempt to log on to Movistar. Disabling 4G will enable your phone to concentrate on any resource available to it (i.e. 3G on Movistar).

They have advised that, if this fails to work, we are not responsible for the coverage/performance of foreign networks.

If you would like to discuss this further, please get in touch.

---

David see below

In regards to your ticket EEIM984817, is it possible to provide a bit more information?

Can you find mobile networks if you perform a manual search? If so What networks are displayed?

If I search only for wcdma (preferred)/gsm Tigo, claro, Movistar and “732002” are available. However the phone will only register with Movistar. The others all return the error message “could not connect to network now. Please try again later”.

With wcdma only, I get tigo, claro and Movistar. Again only Movistar will register. Same error message.

What happens when you try to connect to a network? Do you receive any error messages?
see above

Can you please provide a more specific location?

Envigado, Colombia. It’s basically part of medellin, which is the second biggest city in Colombia. To be clear, I am not in the middle of nowhere.

Can other people connect to Movistar in the same location? We are only allowing connections to Movistar so if coverage is not available you will be without service.

No idea, but based on a quick read of the forum it appears so. To be clear, I can register, and I get signal, but no texts/calls can be sent/received.

Oddly, since making the complaint, my network types and options have slightly changed on my phone – I guess this is something you’ve adjusted? If I search for 4G networks, I now also have Avantel as well as Movistar, claro, tigo, 732002. Still, none apart from Movistar will register. Same error message.

I am 95% sure that my phone was working fine in Bogota, but as soon as I moved to Medellin it stopped working. I think this is likely to be the root of the issue.

---

Hi Mr X,

In regards to your ticket EEIM984817, is it possible to provide a bit more information?

Can you find mobile networks if you perform a manual search? If so What networks are displayed?

What happens when you try to connect to a network? Do you receive any error messages?

Can you please provide a more specific location?

Can other people connect to Movistar in the same location? We are only allowing connections to Movistar so if coverage is not available you will be without service

Many Thanks
Level 2 Technical Support

[Sallygrussell]

Yes, I read all your communication and it's saving me a lot of time. I can see that they want no responsibility as usual.

I could go on forever with the emails and texts but actually that's taking up my holiday which I paid a lot of money for.

I definitely won't use them again. I'll just get local phone because I used to live here so I know what to do.

It would be much cheaper anyway I think ee is a complete rip-off.

My contract is up in a month and I won't be renewing it. I find their customer service so robotic, they don't engage humanly with the customer.

They should check the networks and agreements before they sell huge add on packages which I think is unethical.

Yep....

 that's another one for 'which' and the ombudsman.

I bought 250 texts and a 100 minutes!

I haven't used any of the minutes and only 2 texts. 

What an outrage!

I might as well stick to WhatsApp and email.

[matty2]

sorry to hear this sally. I agree, it's not really good enough and reflects all the other international and domestic experience I've had with ee.

I can also confirm that I was outside of Medellin this weekend in Jardin, and I was able to receive text messages when in Jardin, so this is definitely a Medellin problem.

Shame ee don't seem to have enough interest to pick up the phone to their counterparts in colombia to see what's going on...

[Sallygrussell]

Yes. Agree.
I changed at Bogota and my phone picked up the signal.
Now in Medellin and same problem! So there we go.

I m glad I didn't bother chasing further. They pretend they can solve it.
Clearly it is their service that doesn't work, not my phone.
Cheers Gaye

[matty2]

Hi Sally

I'm sure they could fix it if they wanted to - we're been pretty specific about the issue, they just need to speak to the movistar network in colombia to sort it out.

Unfortunately, because of the low numbers of ee users in colombia, it will be pretty low on their to-do list ie. they'll have bigger problems to deal with at home.

M

[Sallygrussell]

Indeed. It's unethical to sell a plan that doesn't work.
I'm leaving from 8 a.m. I am moving from ee in November I won't be using
them again.

I will just get a sim when I arrive and use my Skype subscription of £3 for
a month.

I don't need it anyway.

I've done everything by email.

And Wifi.

Just goes to show what we can do, so we don't need the big corporates