International Calling for Savvy Travellers

Travel Tips

August 7, 2017

Got to the airport and found out that your tickets are not valid anymore? The lady at the information desk cannot help you? Don’t have millions on your carrier balance to get through the whole hour-long talk with the airline’s office? Don’t worry: you’re not alone. Things happen, and there is a lifesaver for cases like this. Check out a story on how our loyal user made this all work and spend almost nothing on international calling.

We also have a story on roaming to be cut off – both happened with Yolla users when they were on a trip. Take a look at them to always be prepared for anything!

Tickets to Be Cancelled

My colleague and I went to London for a conference last year. Our flight back home went via Amsterdam: Heathrow – Schiphol – Malpensa. It was February, the weather was dreadful and the flight to Schiphol went horrible – I don’t remember last time I had such a hard landing. Plus, it had been delayed for a couple of hours – despite the fact it was a transit flight and we had only 50 minutes to change planes. Anyway, being at the airport, we found out our flight to Milan had been canceled just as all the other flights from Amsterdam – due to the bad weather conditions. KLM representatives could give us neither any tickets in return nor any useful information. We were said to call KLM office, which we did. Thank God I had Yolla for international calling back then and there were a couple of bucks on my balance! I was waiting on line for anyone to answer me AN HOUR! Finally, we got through and were told to book a room in any hotel in the city and come back tomorrow, as they still couldn’t promise us any seats. By the way: Yolla has that feature they call Caller ID, which keeps your original number. That helped us so much as KLM insists on calling international from your registered mobile number. My friend suggested Viber Out or Skype, but in that case, KLM wouldn’t have gotten me through – apps change your number for another one! But let’s go back to what I was talking about. The next day we came back to the airport as heroes through all the snow and hurricane. The queues to the KLM info desks seemed to be 10 km long. We couldn’t wait for that much and didn’t believe we could actually get any help there, so decided to call KLM again – once again, we had Yolla to the rescue! Waiting on the line for 40 minutes, I heard someone in the crowd saying it’s better to call the local office – they would answer much faster. Which I did by calling international to Moscow headquarters. After a while, thanks to that someone from the crowd, we managed to grab tickets on the evening flight! And guess what, I spent up to $4 on these lifelong calls using Schiphol Wi-Fi connection only. Yolla is the only saver for such emergencies!