iPhone dialing issues in Europe? Dial assist?

[Cameron]

While I was in London, I tried to call a London phone number on my keypad. It was quite frustrating, as I tried with, and without, the country code since I was using my USA iPhone 10 Max.

Upon researching now that I'm back, I believe the issue may be with the "dial assist" feature, which I see I had turned on by default. It automatically determines the correct international or local prefix.

This takes me back to France last year, different iPhone (7plus). Any number in my contact list dialed correctly. Any number in France that I tried to dial on the keypad, didn't work.

I thought it was a Verizon issue, but now it seems it's an iPhone issue?

Has anyone else had this issue -- can't dial a number from the keypad for the country you're in, but if you have it in your Contacts List, it dials correctly?

Thanks!

 

[Andrew]

Just to start with basics: Did your dialing include the plus sign before the country code, obtained by holding down on zero?

 

[Cameron]

Yes, when dialing on the keypad, I tried the plus the first few times, and when that didn’t work, I tried without.

My workaround was to put the number in Contacts.

 

[Jan55612]

I have had the same problem in Spain. I did the same thing you did. I entered the number into my contacts and then had no problems.

 

[Cameron]

Then, there’s something with the formatting in Contacts that dial assist interprets correctly, but from on the keypad. When I’m in France next month, I’ll turn off dial assist to see if that’s the real issue. Thanks!

 

[GailS]

I just had a similar issue with my Android phone in Italy. My husband and I bought SIMs and I updated the contact I have for him when in Europe with the new number. Attempting to call from the contact resulted in a message saying there was no service for the number. Calling from the recent call list (after he called me) worked fine. Disabling the dial assist feature enabled dialing from the contact to work properly.

 

[Cameron]

I’ll report back on any issues and resolutions on my upcoming trip.