Travel pass question - recently visited USA

[farrellcsun]

Hi All, I recently visited California and as expected, once I landed and the iPhone found the local T-Mobile network I received the message "Welcome to the USA.  To access your UK plan allowances you can choose either £5 24-hour or £25 7-day Zone 1 pass...visit http://add-on.ee.co.uk to choose..."  OK so far so good...I clicked on the link at the airport but browser could NOT connect to server because obviously I have no data yet.  The browser kept saying "could not connect, you have no internet connection".  Luckily, I was able to connect to free airport WiFi and purchased the travel pass.  Question: since we are not able to purchase the travel pass until we land...how are we suppose to purchase it if per chance we had no access to free public WiFi?? 

I looked at my account and by default had zero spend cap...is that the cause?  I updated it to £20 spend cap for next trip but obviously it should not cost me extra to buy a data pass in America?  Anyone have similar experience??  thanks

[bristolian]

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@farrellcsun wrote:

visit http://add-on.ee.co.uk to choose..."  OK so far so good...I clicked on the link at the airport but browser could NOT connect to server because obviously I have no data yet. 

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The purchasing link is whitelisted for exactly this reason.

There have been instances of spend caps causing issues with calls within the EU. Spend caps do restrict roaming charges - https://ee.co.uk/help/mobile/manage-use/pay-monthly/set-up-and-manage-spend-cap 

[farrellcsun]

So are you saying I SHOULD have been able to visit that link since it is "whitelisted" or are you saying that the spend cap is what was causing it not to connect to the purchasing link?  If so, that should be explained a little more clearly! thanks

[Matt_124]

Were Mobile Data and the Data Roaming settings enabled when you attempted to access the link?

I do wonder if the in-built Data Roaming setting on the device would prevent access, even if the link was Whitelisted, due to disabling mobile data when not connected to the home network.

[bristolian]

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@Matt_124 wrote:

I do wonder if the in-built Data Roaming setting on the device would prevent access, even if the link was Whitelisted

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I would fully expect them to. Effectively the whitelisting is in-place to reinforce EE's policy preventing use of data roaming without an add-on covering it.

[farrellcsun]

Hi both, yes the mobile data and data roaming options were on at the time.  Once the travel pass was successfully added I was able to carry on as expected the entirety of the trip.  Looking at other threads, it might be that the page itself is buggy as another person had similar issue in Spain:  https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Roaming/Why-is-the-link-to-buy-a-data-roaming-pack-broken/td-p/1499228

In fact, now that I think of it - once I connected to airport WiFi, I ended up purchasing the 7 day pass via the EE app and NOT that link.  So yeah.  Still wondering how to do it without WiFi in another country if I needed to, for future reference.  Thanks anyway

[farrellcsun]

Got an email from EE stating if a definitive answer has not yet been found to leave a comment - so here is that comment 🙂

I'm hoping that adding £20 spend cap will allow me to get enough data in America to successfully buy a travel pass - but again - this seems like it should not be necessary to buy a travel pass...

[Katie_B]

Hello @farrellcsun. 

Thanks for coming back here. 

You do not require a data connection to purchase the pass when you land. 

Are you aware of anyone else experiencing this?

Katie

[farrellcsun]

Hi Katie, I found a thread to someone who experienced something similar: https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Roaming/Why-is-the-link-to-buy-a-data-roaming-pack-broken/td-p/1499228

Attached is a GIF of what I experienced: click on the add-on link in the text message and the page it leads you to cannot load.  Originally I thought it was because I did not purchase my travel pass yet, but after reading previous thread above, it could be a bug with the page?  

Again, i was able to purchase the travel pass when I connected to airport WiFi and go into the EE App whilst in the US airport (Phoenix, Arizona).  But I don't undertand how that could work anyway without Wifi if you don't have data yet.  Chicken or the egg situation: you need to buy the travel pass, but can only buy it once you're in USA, but you can't connect to website to purchase travel pass without data??  chicken...egg...?

[farrellcsun]

PS: I can also confirm I was NOT on Wifi at the airport when i tried to do the above and had the same "could not load" browser error message when clicking on https://add-on.ee.co.uk in the message...

Also, found this thread of someone experiencing same thing: https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Roaming/USA-data/td-p/1520314