Mobile phones in USA

[Grumpyoldblonde]

Hello,
IO wonder if anyone could advise about mobile phone use in the States? We are off on holiday soon and our party will need to be able to call/text each other as we will probably want to go off and do our own thing occasionally, also worried the youngest may get separated/lost in the big parks. Do you think it best to buy cheapy payg phones over there or take ours? we are all on fixed monthly contracts and cant go over our billing amount unless we top up. I don't envisage calling the UK more than once or twice to say we arrived safely. any tips?
Thanks in advance

Hi,
Thanks, yes that sounds ok, I am such a luddite when it comes to phones, I would stick to pay phones if they still existed! At the same time I am not comfortable not having any contact with my kids when we are there, just in case, you know? And I know I will want a couple of hours to myself while they go off with their dad but we will need to meet up for dinner and so on

Why don't you phone customer care on your own phone now and ask their advice? Top up before you leave if necessary. I have a cheap ancient Nokia and have used it in the US without any problem. Mine is a monthly Tesco contract and it's 18p/min for calls and 5p for texts when I'm abroad.

I would call up your phone provider and see whay offers they can provide you, it cost us £1.10 to call the Uk, 90p to recieve calls, text's cost us 40p buy free to recieve and data was £6. We didn't do a deal because we knew we wouldn't use our phones out there, data was turned off on the plane.

Thanks for the further tips, to be honest the phone providers sound like they talk gobbledegook to me - perhaps I will get my 10 year old to sort it all out - she is far more up to date than me with phones and tech

I am not sure if it is different now, but in the past the sims were different to our sims, my aunt had the exact phone as me and when I took the back off I couldn't access the sim, it was very odd!

Assuming you can buy a sim to match your phone then you may have to buy a throw away phone instead!

Can you not arrange a package for calling and texting before you go for your regular phone and make sure you switch off your data roaming? We stayed in loads hotels in California last year that had free wifi to.

I'm rubbish at techy stuff but google viber it gives free calls in any country, or something like that!