What to do if the operator wrote money for roaming, but you did not leave Russia. Return is easy

I’m spending a week in Murmansk, German Peninsula. This is the Arctic zone, right on the shores of the Barents Sea. The connection almost never works; 99% of the time it doesn’t even receive a simple cellular signal. Russian operators do not cover this zone well and are not very interested in the opposite, since the occupancy of the lamp is minimal.

I go online and use communications very rarely; I use satellite satellite in hotels as much as possible, and only in the morning and late at night. The other day I visited the extreme point touching part of Russia. But all this will be discussed later.

When we approached Cape Nemetsky, at least the northern station of the branch of part of Russia, I received an interesting SMS from the operator: to top up your roaming balance, use the following methods…

I didn’t attach much importance, except that I was surprised that anyone here even got through to me. And then everything became clear.

On the territory of the peninsula, I came within the coverage area of ​​foreign telecom operators several times – accordingly, Norwegian. The iPhone quickly connected to it, tried to get online, even changed the time zone without my knowledge.

As a result, in a day and without using the local Internet – minus 1400 rubles from the account. Not a lot of money, but if I hadn’t noticed it in time, we could have spent 5, 10 or more thousand rubles.

Good that you can get your money back. Just like protecting yourself from any situations in the border areas of Russia. In the following example I give the main operator, but I am sure that for other “opsos” everything is the same, plus or minus.

How to get your money back for roaming if you haven’t traveled anywhere in the Russian Federation

Most of all, you should contact customer support. For example, in MTS this is implemented through chat in a proprietary application.

I wrote to them briefly about the situation (without “impinging”): I am in Murmansk, I am not leaving the territory of the Russian Federation, there are messages for roaming. After 15 minutes I already received both the answer and the solution.

1,400 rubles were returned and they were warned about cross-border reception of telecom operators. At the same time, they disabled the “Easy Roaming” service – in MTS it allows you to automatically switch to roaming tariffs when crossing borders.

Additionally recommended:

▪ disable data roaming on iPhone. She’s on the way Settings → Cellular → Options → Data roaming.

▪ activate the free option “Internet limitation in active roaming”by dialing *111*496# in Telephone on iOS.

After contacting support and the manipulations described above, writing was limited.

I think that other operators in such cases compromise with China and return the prescribed funds if you never cross the Russian border. If this is not the case, and you have encountered the opposite, write in the comments.

PS I’ve already seen the Northern Lights.