If you leave India, as I did, for a few months, which were meant to be a mixture of work and downtime with friends, and if in that period you spend chunks of time in different countries, then you must be super-careful and lucky to avoid your pocket being hollowed out by these faceless tricksters.
First, all the Indian sub-liars’ roaming charges are geared towards the wealthy – the kind of Indian who won’t notice when his phone bill fattens about four times for the pleasure of using calling and data that shouldn’t cost that much. If you’re not loaded, your best bet is to get a local number.
So, say you reach Britain and get a pay-as-you-go SIM. Now, every phone company wants you to pay them in perpetuity, so no one makes it easy for you to have a reasonably priced service for just the time you are there; you inevitably end up paying extra towards the end of your trip for phone and data that you can’t use. Then, in the past, when you travelled to the European mainland from Britain, your slightly expensive phone service used to work exactly as it did in England, at least in EU countries. After Brexit, from June 1, many British providers have stopped this arrangement. As you emerge in Paris or Berlin, your SMS informs you that you will pay extortionate poundage for the pleasure of using your British number. This is a scam because other British providers can continue the same same-to-same service.
Very quickly, then, you find yourself taking out the British SIM and putting it carefully next to your dormant India SIM. Instead, you go to a shop and procure a local SIM that talks to you in a language you don’t speak, disconnecting every time you choose the English language option. Your grit your teeth, tighten your belt and load a monthly subscription in euros. The data and calls are reasonable. Until it’s time for you to re-load at the end of the month. Actually, you think it’s a month, as in Britain, but here you’re supposed to re-load the amount after 28 days. What happens? Two days late, you load a slightly smaller amount by mistake, and within minutes the phone eats up almost a month’s worth of phone money. That nice 25 deal has cost you 50.
In the meantime, your original malik, the Indian phone company, let’s call them Lair-Hell, is lying in wait. You’ve been paying your normal monthly phone hafta to maintain your desi number, but you haven’t used it. But, trying to pay another home ka bill, you’re obliged to insert the Lair-Hell chip to get an SMS with OTP. You activate the SIM and wait for the (supposedly free) incoming SMS. Instead, an unknown number calls you. You ignore the phone call, get OTP, take out the Lair-Hell SIM, and think you’re fine. Except, you soon get a WhatsApp from Lair-Hell, informing you that you have used the phone without activating roaming. So, while they could charge you several thousand rupees out of the goodness of their little hearts, they only charge you ₹800 extra for one day’s international roaming. Every complaint email is met with a standard response: ‘Warm Greetings from Lair-Hell!…’ followed by information on activating your roaming. Finally, you pay the thieving extra charge. You put in your number, which you’ve used for nearly 12 years, and an error message emerges: We could not recognise your number. When this is sorted, you notice they’ve added another ₹100 as late fees. In the meantime, another 27 days have passed, and you’ve almost missed your deadline to recharge your European digital ball and chain.