How To: Avoid Large Phone Bills When Traveling [Infographic]

We all know that sometimes traveling can become a costly endeavor. If we forget to turn off roaming on our cell phone, we’re pretty much screwed. Bills upwards of thousands of dollars will most likely start pouring down our mail chute, and we’ll be banging our heads against the wall wishing we had been a little more careful about the settings on our phone.

Luckily I haven’t had that annoying experience, but not too long ago, I heard of someone who was in New York for three months and when he got back to Sweden, there was a bill waiting for him in the amount of $31,200. He took it to court and managed to convince the judge that he did indeed turn off roaming, yet still that didn’t finalize anything. In the end, the phone company agreed to relieve him of $15,000 of the total amount. It’s still quite a hefty bill to pay if you know you turned it off.

There are some things you can do in order to make sure you won’t have these surprises awaiting when you finally return from your travels. The guys at Essential Travel put together a little guide infographic that will have you safe and sound on every trip without having to worry about any nasty surprises. Follow these tips and tricks, and I am sure that you will find that traveling doesn’t have to be such an stressful endeavor.

With Skype being the number one free calling service, there is little you have to worry about if you turn off the roaming on your phone. According to this infographic, Skype had 663 million users at the end of 2010. That is an insane number of people who are making calls with Skype on a daily basis. Now with Microsoft ruling over this awesome service, we’ll see what happens, but hopefully it will all be the same or an even better experience to use it. We here at Bit Rebels keep in touch with Skype on a weekly basis, and it is largely how we manage to run this badboy.