I've just returned from a trip to France for a festival, my first 24 hours roaming was relatively okay. Though my phone didn't automatically connect to a network after I landed (iPhone 13 Pro which is totally up to date and set to automatic for network selection), I got the usual message about roaming and had to faff a bit for 30 minutes to get connected.
The problems really started after my roaming passport plus renewed the next day, many apps weren't working (important ones like banking) and I only had very basic services like SMS.
I had to hotspot to friends (who had no issues at all connected to the same networks in France that I was using) to try troubleshoot and found many older threads from this forum all reporting very similar issues to me. Though none seemed to suggest the users had fixed their problem. I also met someone else at the airport on the way home with Sky who had the same experience as I did. They had been staying in a hotel so used the wifi and even spoke to Sky yet didn't get any resolutions.
I did try all the troubleshooting, removed spend caps and all sorts to no avail. Also frustrating as when you have roaming issues, you generally can't connect to anything to troubleshoot! I was lucky I had friends there to hotspot to. For me, I was essentially paying £2 a day for the most basic functions that didn't always work and struggling to use any data.
There was an emergency back home when I was away which became very scary when I was struggling to communicate and then came to have multiple other issues like my phone becoming full as it wasn't backing up and clearing space. Had to delete loads of things just to access my boarding pass!
I'm out of contract, I was going to get a newer phone and go back into contract with Sky. Now hesitant after such an awful (and at times scary) experience whilst travelling, especially as this is not the first time. Has anyone actually managed to fix their roaming issues or is it time to look for another network? The whole household is on Sky so it worries me a family holiday could see us all abroad with no way to communicate or access essential things needed for the trip with so many things being app based. Just didn't feel very safe for a solo traveller who isn't staying in hotels and such so didn't have wifi.
Being with Sky mobile is great and works well for us as a household, would be a shame to have to interrupt that to put one person on a different network just for a better experience and feeling safer once or twice a year when travelling. And as its access to apps and things on my main phone that's the issue, getting a secondary PAYG phone or something isn't really an option.
