EU roaming not working

Today, a group of UK travellers (60 ppl) lands in Austria. Everyone's phone is working, but whoever is with Smarty is screwed. Data not available. Buying extra data packages, checking all the settings is of no use. Calling back to the UK is fine, but calling another country is not permitted. Do trust me. All the possible phone settings such as mobile data roaming, and so on have been checked 75 000 times. Manually changing the local GSM network is grayed out. Changing the provider upon the return to the UK. 

Had same experience in Greece. Tried everything and got useless connection 

Hi Lauren/Everyone trying to roam with an Apple iPhone

I am in Italy on my first overseas trip with Smarty and what a disaster !

I carried out all the instructions from Smarty on how to roam, changed settings, reset my phone, removed the SIM and still could only get intermittent 3G at best in both Bologna and Florence, both big cities with great coverage on all the networks.

After a lot of exchanges of emails when I had WiFi my complaint was escalated, and I was then told that this is a KNOWN ISSUE for Apple users on the Smarty network. When roaming you are not able to connect to 4G so at best you will only ever get 3G, and potentially 5G if you can connect to another network manually but this as I have found is intermittent at best.

According to SMARTY there will be no fix until end September.  Other people in my party are with other providers and had full connectivity (with iPhones) on various networks from stepping off the plane.

If you need data when roaming think about another network until this is fixed. From what I can see it is a Smarty only issue which they are conveniently not telling customers about until the complaint is escalated.

Thought I had got eu roaming although I found it very challenging.This is probably an age thing as I am in my eighties.As it did not work for me and I will have incurred out of plan charges I do not think Smarty is for me.

Disappointed

Total nightmare with Smarty in Berlin on an iPhone 13 - absolutely no signal despite checking all the settings- yet on my wife’s android phone no problems - what is the problem 

Ridiculous that Smarty cannot get its systems working for iPhones. I am having the same problems as you. 

I have been with Smarty since May and usually travel 2-3 times per month mainly to Germany, Portugal and Spain.  I can say that experience with Smarty on roaming has not been great, which is how I ended up on this discussion as I was searching options.  That said experience with EE previously over several years was exactly the same.  I didn't have to change ADN with EE but always had to switch to manual network selection and toggle between them trying to find one that works.  This is tedious as toggling between manual and automatic itself takes several minutes and then you need to try each network which takes a few more minutes.  Not sure if anyone has found way to do this faster. 

I would assume local subscribers will always get priority in countries which would also have an impact.  I would also assume contracts between providers vary thus why some say that their companions have better experience in different countries.  Side note but I assumed same thing when I couldn't get Smarty to connect to data in central London as would assume 3 (I think that is Smarty base network) subscribers would get priority in congested areas.  What it's hard to find is any research on which provider has the best actual connectivity when roaming, it's always just comparisons of cost and options.  

A potential solution I have seen mentioned elsewhere which is what I was researching when ended up here is getting a second sim from different provider and keeping both active.  Hypothetically the iphone will switch between whichever one has data connection, I remain skeptical this will happen automatically but at least would increase chances of one working for maintaining connection.  Getting one EU one to combine with Smarty could then be an option.  Obviously it's higher monthly cost maintaining two but might be worth it if it's less frustration.  

In summary it's frustrating and is a problem but it doesn't seem to be just a Smarty problem.  I have also always been able to get a data connection with Smarty roaming, it's just a matter of how long it takes fiddling with settings to get there and if I get the connection before I throw the phone out of frustration 🙂  

I’m getting nothing in Malaga had to buy an e sim roaming was the reason I went for Smarty it previously worked in Lanzarote 

Bottom line is….you cannot rely on Smarty roaming. 
sometimes it works great, other times virtually nothing. 

Just changed to Smarty, have 38 gb left of my monthly allowance but arrived in Amsterdam and no mobile data. All settings were done before travelling and I’ve been in chat with Smarty while on airport WiFi waiting in passport line. Was told that the reason I couldn’t automatically get roaming data was because I’d used up my 12gb data. But I used that in UK and assumed because my monthly plan is 50gb data, that any 12gb data of that is useable in EU roaming not just the first 12gb of each month. So I’ve had to pay £7 extra for an EU data add on for 3 days. Not what I was expecting when I signed up.