Roaming in Isle of Man not working

[PRG2]

Dear Virgin Mobile,

I've just arrived in the Isle of Man and have no phone service at all. When I found these help pages I find that this is a problem that has been going on for years with numerous posts.

I find it amazing that you've not managed to fix this problem after all of this time and that customers keep having the same issue!

[philguk]

Probably your SIM, though getting Virgin to admit it will be a challenge

We recently travelled with TWO phones - both Virgin. My wife’s roams fine, mine doesn’t. (But it did work with manual roaming enabled)

However, when I switched SIMs, my phone started working just fine and my wife’s STOPPED working

If that doesn’t demonstrate a SIM issue, I don’t know what does!!

They’ve FINALLY sent me a new SIM, but I won’t be back to the island for a few months, so no easy way to test it

[wilber_force]

For the time being, I'll grab a Manx telecom SIM.

The phone I have is a Moto G5. Along with the mobile provider, it needs replacing as well 😉

[Kain_W]

Hi wilber_force,

Thanks for posting and welcome back to the community.

Bit of a simple question so apologies however do you have a spend cap set against your mobile?

Thanks,

[wilber_force]

In short, nope, or rather, I'm not aware of one, and as my renewal is on the 9th, I won't have hit any limits.

[Kain_W]

Thanks for the response,

You should be fine in that aspect then, may I have you travelled with anyone? If so do they have a working VM Mobile SIM?

Ta,

[wilber_force]

The folk I'm over here with are on different networks and have no issues, including the guy on O2.

[Kain_W]

Ahh, okay.

We may need to investigate this further, if we do need to replace the SIM is there a way that it could be delivered to yourself?

Let us know,

[wilber_force]

Yes, but not until I'm home which will be late Sunday 15th.  I'm only on the Isle of Man for a few days.  I'll not know if there is an issue until Sunday when we get the ferry back to the mainland.

[philguk]

btw, I also have a GiffGaff SIM which works perfectly. I have only ever had this roaming issue with Virgin - and it’s been ongoing for over A YEAR now. So Virgin/Vodafone obviously don’t take it seriously enough to fix

[enlli]

---

@philguk wrote:

btw, I also have a GiffGaff SIM which works perfectly. I have only ever had this roaming issue with Virgin - and it’s been ongoing for over A YEAR now. So Virgin/Vodafone obviously don’t take it seriously enough to fix

---

Far more than a year! I'm afraid.

The problem lies in the fact that Virgin do not control their own roaming. They have no Roaming agreements of their own and do it through a proxy European network. They will not admit this publicly of course and with the level of internal communication I bet many of the team don't know.

All Virgin SIM cards have a SIM Toolkit. Often changing the roaming settings in this from Automatic to International in many cases restores roaming. You just have to remember to reset it on return to the UK.