With the arrival of summer, the stories of tourists surprised by unexpected costs during the holidays, and this time the warning comes from a popular European tourist destination. British holiday tourists on the Greek island of Corfu are returning home with unpleasant surprises on mobile phone invoices, after being automatically linked to neighboring Albania, with high roaming costs, according to the Daily Mail.
Despite being in Greek territory, many visitors receive a welcome message from an Albanian operator shortly after landing at Corfu airport. The phenomenon, reported by various British on social networks, is generating confusion and indignation. There are those who speak of accounts of over 300 euros for just a few days of use.
Location near Albania generates problem
Corfu is in the northwest of Greece, the scarce 48 kilometers from the Albanian village of Ksamil, located in the so -called Riviera Albanian. Due to geographical proximity, especially in the eastern zone of the island, the mobile phones of some tourists end up automatically connecting to the antennas of Albania, even being physically on Greek soil.
A tourist reported to the source mentioned above that, upon landing, he received a notification with the warning: “Welcome to Albania! Calls, messages and data in Albania are paid separately, outside the usual packages of the United Kingdom.”
“It looked like a theft”: users report cases
In the Facebook group We Love Sidari, dedicated to British tourists in Corfu, Briton Steve Moore said he was surprised two days after arriving at the island: “I received the welcome message to Albania. I called the operator and told me that the signal must have moved to another antenna.
Other users reported similar experiences. A tourist said he spent 128 pounds, about 150 euros, just for using the GPS while driving a fourteenth motorcycle by the coast. Another, more straightforward, commented: “We arrived home with 298 pounds for paying. A madness.”
How to avoid these unexpected charges
Faced with the wave of complaints, several tips have been shared among the British who visited this tourist destination. According to the same source, the most common is to turn off the roaming right on arrival or manually configure the network to a Greek operator, thus avoiding automatic connections to Albanian networks.
“Once you land, let the phone turn on automatically to the Greek network. Then go to the definitions and turn off the automatic network selection option,” advised one of the users. Another recommended keeping roaming off and using only Wi-Fi in bars and hotels.
Experts warn other traps
In addition to the issue of foreign networks, expert Georgia Bruido, from the local SIM card company, has warned of another common source of excessive data consumption: applications like Instagram or Tiktok can spend data silently whenever the user travels the feed, which can result in separate accounts in a few minutes of navigation, according to the newspaper.
Brivverti advises those who visit this tourist destination to disable AutoPlay before boarding and limiting the use of mobile data during the holidays, especially outside the European Union.
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