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Very disappointed with EE roaming service in all countries

mackieap
Investigator
Investigator

I moved across to EE from Vodafone back in March 2023. One of Vodafone's strong points was unlimited roaming, including tethering, in 83 countries across the world with no speed cap or any kind of throttling. It genuinely works as if you are on your home network. I assumed - seeing as EE is the other. major network in the UK, and I was paying for a contract which promised equivalent service (use my UK plan as if I was at home in EU, US, Canada etc.) - the experience using EE would be similar. 

I was wrong. The service EE offers whilst roaming is far worse than that offered by Vodafone. Why? 

1. It's very clear EE employs speed/traffic management i.e. throttling on users who are roaming. In central Washington DC and Manhattan last week I was testing speeds using the Google service (searching "speed test" on the search engine and then following the built-in prompts) and getting 2-3mbps download despite having a full 5G signal. If I switched to the Ookla app, I got better speeds (up to 300mbps in some cases in the same location), but with 300ms+ latency and it took some time for full speed to be reached i.e. the 'speedometer' ramped up very slowly, rather than flicking to the speed available almost instantly like it does at home.

2. EE have also very poor network agreements. On arrival in the US you can use either T-Mobile or AT&T and IME it will switch to T-Mobile first. Unfortunately however the speeds available via T-Mobile are so slow as to be almost unusable. So you must manually switch to AT&T. It's a similar case in Germany, where inexplicably EE has done a roaming deal with Vodafone DE who only offer EDGE, so you need to manually change network again in order to be able to do anything. I do wonder whether those at EE responsible for doing these deals actually travel to the countries they're responsible for? 

All this in comparison to Vodafone which in my experience as 10+ years as a customer travelling all over the world, 'just works.' 

I will be moving back as soon as my EE contract is up in March.

16 REPLIES 16
Leanne_T
EE Community Support Team

Hi @ak370 

When you're travelling abroad, check your phone is set to automatic network selection (this is so your phone will pick the best network). You'd only be able to connect to networks that we have a roaming agreement with. You'd not be able to connect to other networks.

Thanks. 

Leanne. 

Yingping
Visitor

Hi, I completely agree what you said and I wish I had read your comment before I came to Paris. I had the same issue in the airport and have been struggling to access the link so had no choice but use daily usage plan until today it completely didn’t work and I had no data all day in Paris city centre and could only rely on the road signs. 
I am gonna call EE when I go back to the UK and request the refund of my roaming charge if they deduct my money. This is disgraceful and I took the gamble to believe what they told me on the phone the day before I came to Paris that I only need to follow their link to buy the pass when I arrive in France. 
EE shouldn’t ruin their customer’s trips and let them get lost when I am already abroad. I am pretty speechless at this point and the message system they use does not respond to me at all, it’s helpless situation and we can’t do anything…

Simo75
Visitor

I am so disappointed with roaming in the Netherlands as I found it IMPOSSIBLE to set up abroad, just went round in circles! I had increased my spend limit to cover roaming charges but could not select and confirm the package I needed to buy! Was hacked off with the increase in charges from my last visit when with BT! You need to wait till you arrive in your destination then try to set up roaming, this simply did not work, my partner spent over an hour with my phone while I was driving to our resort, just unable to sort anything (she is IT literate, it was the app that failed). I used my spend cap up by day 10 and was left with no phone for the last four days of the trip!! I will be leaving EE with phone and broadband accounts as soon as I can bring myself to speak civilly to a representative. As far as I am concerned they failed miserably!!

Peter_W
EE Community Support Team

Welcome to the Community @Simo75.

I'm disappointed to hear you had some trouble getting roaming set up during your time in the Netherlands, and hope the trip was a good one otherwise. 

We always recommend setting up your roaming prior to going away by sending us a text with ROAM to 150, this will ensure you're up and running once you arrive, and receive the landing text that will direct you to our roaming pass options. 

If you have trouble with the page itself, it's worth making sure that you're not connected to any form of WiFi whilst using this, and it's also worth swapping manually between local networks in case the one you're connected to initially isn't working as expected. 

The add-ons page is whitelisted so you should be able to access this free of charge right away. 

I would definitely recommend speaking with our team about your experience once you're ready, and they'll be able to look over the experience you've had here, and make sure everything is set up as it should be moving forwards.

Peter 

mackieap
Investigator
Investigator

I think things have improved a bit. 

USA in May - (DC and NYC) - all fine, good speeds. 

Germany and Czech Republic last week - excellent, Vodafone DE now lets you use 5G so that must’ve been fixed. Service in CZ was probably a bit better than Germany particularly in rural areas (I took the train from Dresden to Prague, as soon as we crossed the border service from the Czech network - I think o2 - was noticeably better). 

Long may it continue. 

I always buy an eSIM now as EE have definitely dialled down the speed. Useless and inefficient and won’t even load simple pages.


@Normskiii wrote:
I always buy an eSIM now as EE have definitely dialled down the speed. Useless and inefficient and won’t even load simple pages.

Webpages not loading are rarely going to be due to speed restrictions - those are set far higher than anything needed for basic web browsing, and are usually used to restrict video streaming for FUP purposes.