Switching to a Dutch phone number
In the Netherlands, your phone is your lifeline. It allows you to translate products in the grocery store (thanks, Google Translate!), find your way around town (9292 is my fave), and verify or confirm all your online-shopping transactions. So how do you ensure a seamless transition from your U.S. plan to your Dutch one?
First of all, get WhatsApp. Just do it. Everyone uses it for free calling and texting.
WhatsApp will be your most-used app, guaranteed.
But when it comes to phone service … I’ll start by saying that what was most important to us was maintaining contact and flexibility as long as we needed it, so we were willing to pay for the privilege. I paid for both U.S. and Dutch cell phone plans for months, in order to make sure our friends and family could reach us, and that we could easily access all our accounts on both sides of the Atlantic during our transition. Our logic: Do we even KNOW all the U.S. websites and accounts that require two-factor authentication with our U.S. phone numbers? Better to maintain that connection as long as we need it.
So here’s what we did:
Add an international plan to our phones (which, at the time we did it, maxed out each month at $150 for the first phone and $100 for the second phone)
Get eSIM cards for each of our phones that allowed us to add a Dutch phone number to the same device that operates our U.S. number (it’s SUPER helpful to have a Dutch number as early as possible, as some accounts require it)
Pay for Dutch data/phone plans for each of our phones, which are quite inexpensive (we went with T-Mobile, for less than €40 per month per line)
Plan to port our U.S. numbers over to Google Voice the next time we traveled to the U.S., and then ditch the U.S. phone plans (more on that below)
Clearly this approach wouldn’t work for everyone, but it did give us one fewer thing to worry about during the transition when we were selling a house in the U.S. and setting up our life in the Netherlands. With dual phone plans, we knew that we could call U.S. numbers at no charge and didn’t have to risk being locked out of any accounts that were sending verification numbers to our U.S. phone numbers.
Btw, having the U.S. SIM and Dutch eSIM at the same time was pretty easy. I could toggle between the two to write texts and make calls; for data, I could dictate which one my phone should use, or I could set it up to switch automatically to whichever one had the better signal at the time. I had no issues when traveling within Europe all summer. The only time I had some unexpected charges was when I accidentally called a U.S. number from my Dutch line, and paid handsomely for a one-hour phone conversation.
So when to leave the U.S. number behind? For me, the timing worked well when I traveled back to the States about five months after the move.
What: Port your U.S. number to Google Voice, effectively canceling your U.S. cell phone plan
How: Invest about 20 minutes to carry out the process on your computer and phone, and pay a small fee ($20 for me at the time)
Why: Stop paying for a U.S. cell phone plan, but keep your U.S. number for texting and collecting voicemails (and dialing out when on Wifi) … and keep open the option to re-establish a U.S. cell phone plan with the same number
Porting your number to Google Voice requires physical presence in the United States. I’ve heard you used to be able to use VPN to trick the systems into thinking you’re in the States, but it seems they’ve wised up to that. From my friend’s kitchen counter in Portland, I kicked off the process to port my number over, and about 36 hours later, it was done processing.
I now receive texts to my U.S. number via the Google Voice app on my phone, and each time I receive a call to that number, it comes through as a “missed call” on the Google Voice app, and I can listen to the voicemail (if the caller leaves one). I can also use my computer or my phone to dial out from my U.S. number, as long as I’m on Wifi.
To make sure that the Google Voice process goes smoothly, look up instructions specific to your service provider. For example, I was asked for a PIN for my AT&T account, and it turns out it wasn’t my account PIN that was needed, but a special PIN that AT&T issued once I requested from my account webpage.