During our recent cruise to Alaska we were vigilant about not using the ship’s expensive WiFi and mobile cellular. But not vigilant enough! I learned a lesson, luckily not too expensive.

Our TMobile plan includes international roaming at no extra charge. Outside the US you simply enable roaming on your phone. The phone warns you about charges but you can ignore that, TMobile covers it.

However, this doesn’t include cruise ships. While on the ship we didn’t make any calls or use the ship Wi-Fi. But it turns out that some incoming calls arrived to our phones while we were on the ship. We didn’t pick up; the calls went straight to VM. We didn’t even know our phones “rang”. Yet just being called, even if you don’t pick up, was enough to trigger the ship to bill us for each call. The ship bills $6 per minute and the minimum is 2 minutes just to connect. So that’s $12 every time someone calls you, even if you don’t pick it up.

Fortunately we only got 3 calls so our lesson only cost $36.

The lesson: while on a cruise ship, put your phone into airplane mode all the time. If you have international roaming, as we do with TMobile, don’t take your phone out of airplane mode until you’re off the ship.