Voicemail while out of country

[Treewoman]

I am out of the country and want to know am I being charged for them ?

[VirginPlusAntgio]

Hey there @Treewoman, 

Welcome to the Community and thanks for your post. 

The reception of a voicemail will not cause any charges while you're outside of Canada, the only time it will create a roaming instance is if you access your voicemail to listen to them. 

Let the Community know if you have more questions.

[Treewoman]

Hi, I've gotten 2 voicemail messages since away. I did not listen to either, and on my last bill, I got charged $15 each. I put my phone on airplane mode every night so that I'm not bothered by incoming calls or texts or notifications.

[VirginPlusAntgio]

Thanks for the clarification @Treewoman, however when traveling outside of Canada, the reception of a voicemail recording and/or the reception of text messages will not trigger a roaming instance on your invoice (as confirmed above you will need to make the call to your voicemail inbox and/or reply to the text message in order to be charged a roaming instance). 

As per your most recent reply, you've described only placing your phone in airplane mode during night time. This means that during the day, your phone has access to the local network (where coverage is available) and normal usage of your phone for calls, outgoing texts, mobile data and apps can trigger the roaming charges. 

You can review your usage directly in My Account under the Usage tab/section to see which of your usages caused the charges.

Let the Community know if you have more questions.

[Swordoftruth333]

To change your voice mail so that no one is able to leave a message,  go into your voice mail and change it to "extended absence greeting" .  This way you call let the caller know you are not able to receive messages, and they cannot leave a message even if they tried. You can personalize it to say "text me instead" or whatever works for you. I have mine on permanently because leaving messages is so old school, younger generation texts only. 

[Jonah]

Yes, but how do you turn on the "extended absence greeting" without calling and thus incurring roaming charges?