My wife and I just finished a 77 day motorcycle camping trip through Europe. Some observations about international use of Verizon's Unlimited Ultimate calling and data plan on our iphone 13 pro max phones.
Calling usually worked fine. Texting without pictures or videos usually worked fine. Data that you would use for Google Maps, booking.com, AirBnB, Google searching for phone numbers, booking ferry tickets, or just about every other smart phone use was another story.
Sitting in our tent, at a cafe, or simply in a town we had many calls to Verizon to figure out why data was not working. From Scotland to France we struggled with data on both phones. Often the data was so slow we couldn't even open the links in the texts that Verizon tech support was sending us. After two weeks of excuses about 3rd party providers and promises to call us back when the issue was resolved, a helpful tech suggested that we were both out of our 10GB of high speed data and acknowledged that 2G speeds were, very often, not sufficient for opening web sites or operating navigation software like Google Maps. She suggested that we purchase a European specific e-SIM for data.
To be fair, sometimes neither the Verizon inside our 10GB limit or the other e-SIM had good service.
Things Verizon could do to help:
1) Not advertise unlimited 2G data if 2G isn't capable or worth using as data. At least warn the consumer that it's not suitable for most modern uses.
2) Edit the "Welcome to France (Germany, Poland, etc.)" automatic text message. It doesn't even need to mention data or could be more clear that you're not getting 10GB as you enter the country.
3) Include a travel tutorial with information about manually searching for a good carrier when the auto function fails and how to put your phone on a "data diet" before you travel. I know it'd not Verizon's job to help the consumers that way but it would save a lot of stress and cursing. Especially with useful data runs out on a single track road in rural Scotland, your map no longer functions, your motorcycle is on the fuel reserves, and almost nobody sells paper maps anymore.
4) We need a tactful way to find customer service representative/tech who speaks a version of English that the English speaking customer can understand. Several times we were unsure if the CSR could understand what we were trying to accomplish or if we were interpreting what the CSR was saying correctly. After 45 minutes of waiting for service you want to be confident the wait was worth the time.
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