Can international DATA roaming be turned off by Xfinity?

I contacted XM yesterday, and the dreadful experience went pretty much exactly as I expected.  First I called, and between the cacophony of background noise on the agent's end and the language barrier between us, I learned absolutely nothing and made no progress.

I then contacted an agent via Xfinity Assistant live messaging.  The agent seemed to understand what I was asking, and he assured me he could disable DATA roaming on the line but keep calls/texts roaming active.   I asked him like 3 times to confirm this, and he did.  So I asked him to go ahead and make the change.

Later in the day, with the help of the family member who's line I made the change to, and is currently in Europe, I ran some tests.  I had them turn on their Xfinity SIM, and we were able to text/call each other, thus confirming international calls/texts roaming was still active on his line.  But unfortunately, my XM account activity then showed several "data roaming" charges of .01-.03/MB each.  So obviously the agent did not deactivate Data Roaming as he claimed.

I later contacted another agent via Xfinity Assistant live messaging, and this agent confirmed what I suspected.  They cannot just turn off DATA Roaming while keeping calls/texts roaming active. International roaming is either all on, or all off.

So now I will continue to research why this year I've started getting these small amounts of data roaming usage, and how to prevent it.

@user_vqziu5​ Just got back from a trip overseas, and had a very similar experience.

I had data turned off the entire time (no cell data allowed), only phone calls and texts (which I was pleased to learn are now free).

On my bill, a trickle of data usage happened over those 5 days, amounting to about 25MB. I was charged $7.28. I have a data tracker app I use and it recorded 0 bytes for cellular data. So whatever this is, it's deep down in the iphone.

I got a credit on my bill, but I also wanted to ask if they could block data from their end. I am nearly positive I had them set this on an older device years ago, but maybe they can no longer do it. They said I would not have this problem again because they made a note in my account. Somehow I doubt this will be the case when I go again.

They also don't really give you a phone number to call any more, you have to go through the chat.

Not a great experience.

I wish I could use a data sim overseas, but it is blocked on phones under contract. Kind of a dumb restriction.

I kind of expect that you probably can only avoid this by using airplane mode, but then you can't make calls.

Good morning @schveiguy, and thanks for reaching out to us on the forums, I hope this message finds you well. It is strange that you were charged for international data usage even with the data on the phone turned off. You mentioned the use of a data sim for overseas, and I wanted to know if you had heard about the Global travel pass that we offer for international travel?

Yes I know. I'd much rather pay $7.28, even if that was not my fault, than $50 for 5 days of travel pass. And if I didn't use any data but this "ghost" data, and it charged me for the travel pass, I would be even more mad about it.

I used a data sim in another unlocked device as a hotspot, and 4GB cost me $11. I didn't even go through it all as I was mostly on wifi. It's quite the rip off to pay $10/day (plus adding that data to my monthly usage).

I think next time I will just put it in airplane mode with wifi calling to see if it avoids using data. I will also reset my phone cell data usage to see if it will tell me what these trickles are.