WARNING: Dexcom G7 and going out of Great Britain

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Proud to be erratic

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Last week I spent just under 5 days in Alsace, France along with a 6hr excursion into Germany. I no longer have free roaming data on my phone out of UK and the WiFi in both hotels was very poor.

48 hours after I'd arrived in France the G7 app on my android phone "froze", then told me to close and restart the app - from which it came up with a message telling me my sensor was not registered in the country my phone was in and I had to contact Dexcom tech support. I then spent a further 4 days without CGM before I finally got home and was able to speak with tech support to get the sensor paired again with my phone. Meanwhile I had to revert to finger pricking, which proved to be "interesting". I was travelling with a group of 35 others and dining under collective arrangements in a different venue for every lunch and dinner, off fixed menus for each restaurant. Pre-bolus was negligible, since I needed to see portion sizes as well as the items described in Alsacian french to guess the carb content. My BG ranged from 2.9 to 16.3 - my "management" was basically pretty inept! And there were moments when I really felt my insulin had turned to water (or I had the wrong socks on!) - substantial corrections didn't work. [How I missed CGM, even inaccurate CGM!]

Discussion today with the tech support folk that we (normal humans) are allowed to talk to was courteous and helpful - in that I am now reconnected back at home. I had to fully uninstall the app and reinstall it, which was unnecessarily tedious since I had to watch a video before I was allowed to select the 'next' box - 3 times for 3 videos; and tick allow for each option before I could proceed to the next step, making the various option choices pretty irrelevant. If you didn't allow the most demanding option you didn't proceed; eg for allow location there were 4 or 5 permutations including 'approximate location or precise location' and only precise location was acceptable. [So why is approximate even offered? One example!]

My current sensor is being replaced along with a courtesy extra sensor. I self fund G7 and only 10 days ago committed to quarterly payments for 9 sensors at a time; I don't particularly need extra sensors - but it seems for the longer term if I want to travel overseas I'm going to need a Reader, which costs £250. But that "swap" or discount couldn't be negotiated!

However the core issue for me is that G7 is fitted with a geolocation device which will automatically disconnect your sensor from the phone app IF you are in a country which doesn't yet sell G7. France and Spain (to where I am next driving through to visit my family in Gibraltar) are 2 such countries where currently G7 won't work to a phone app. It appears there is no-one that I can phone in TECH Support (as opposed to tech support) to discuss my concern, (but I can email them) and no-one in tech support can ask anyone in TECH Support to contact me to discuss my wider concern about finding out while in France that my app won't work! This limitation created by geolocation components is not written in the handbook nor declared on the website.

Lesson to be learnt for Dexcom G7: check if the country you are travelling to allows your sensor to remain paired with your phone app OR get a Reader. The current list of countries seems pretty small, only Austria, Germany and Ireland within Europe.
 
Blimey!
 
Tdm said:
Blimey!
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My response at that time was a fair bit stronger! Incidentally G6 does NOT have this geolocation capability- it's just in the new tech G7 for Dexcom.
 
Wow! That’s pretty unbelievable really as a product-developmemt step.

Being a person with diabetes and having a holiday overseas is not exactly a rare situation, and it’s certainly not something I would have even considered as a risk.
 
everydayupsanddowns said:
Wow! That’s pretty unbelievable really as a product-developmemt step.

Being a person with diabetes and having a holiday overseas is not exactly a rare situation, and it’s certainly not something I would have even considered as a risk.
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Here's a reddit thread with similar comments,
https://www.reddit.com/r/dexcom/comments/12ptnmo

Which seems particularly weird. As you say, it's not unusual to go on holiday and to need to start another sensor. I can understand (kind of, anyway) not being able to use a sensor that I've bought abroad, but not being able to use a sensor from my region that I've taken with me? That's just not acceptable.
 
Bruce Stephens said:
https://www.dexcom.com/en-gb/faqs/can-i-travel-with-my-dexcom-g7 suggests there could be issues if you needed to reinstall the app (maybe because your phone crashes or something weird). I don't see any hints of other problems being mentioned.
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Well that's not quite true as written by Dexcom. I did nothing unusual to trigger the initial freezing. Because I had no roaming data and while I was in a Restaurant that didn't offer WiFi the app decided it should / could stop working. Then it invited me to close and reopen the app, which led to it deciding I was no longer in GB archangel the frozen screen to a default screen that thereafter locked me out.
everydayupsanddowns said:
Wow! That’s pretty unbelievable really as a product-developmemt step.

Being a person with diabetes and having a holiday overseas is not exactly a rare situation, and it’s certainly not something I would have even considered as a risk.
Click to expand...
Nor had I and the everyday tech support were pleasantly apologetic, said they were taking notes to pass onwards but also said even if I had managed to contact them on the Friday after the Thursday eve failure I still would not have been able to uninstall and reinstall successfully 'cos of being in an invalid country.

What I couldn't establish was whether there was some higher authority who could have bailed me out! Anyway something to get an answer to from an appropriate e-mail to TECH Support tomorrow! Of course I had 2 reserve new sensors (from my recently received package of 9) which couldn't have been used anyway. Apparently this doesn't apply to the G6.
 
Proud to be erratic said:
What I couldn't establish was whether there was some higher authority who could have bailed me out!
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It sounds like this (whatever this is) is by design, which is crazy and obviously unacceptable. So please keep pestering them until they clarify what the situation is, because it sounds like what they're doing is highly problematic and dangerous (and DSNs need to know).
 
I suspect they’ll be getting quite a few irate calls about this as G7 gets adopted more widely, and when those people start taking holidays abroad… 😱
 
I’m lucky that I have a G7 reader so it seems like this won’t be affected, is that right? However, I’m unlucky in that I’m more likely to see a flying pig than go abroad soon.

Wasn’t there a similar issue with the Libre (3?) being geolocked? I don’t see why the companies can’t give U.K. users a special PIN to enter or something if they go abroad. I don’t think that would have helped the Libre issue as that was someone buying it from abroad to use here, if I remember correctly.
 
Sounds like a form of “geo locking” to prevent copyrite infringement? This is similar IP (intellectual property.) protection to something like a film or music. But we are not talking about licensing agreement on “entertainment.” Dexcom need to sort this out. I don’t use Dexcom. But I am concerned about the possible redundancy whilst elsewhere with Libre.
 
Inka said:
Wasn’t there a similar issue with the Libre (3?) being geolocked?
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It's certainly the case that Libre 2 sensors (and I think 1) were geolocked in the sense that you could only use the appropriate sensor with the appropriate app. (Presumably because there may be different prices in different regions and they want to maintain those differences.) I assume the same is true for Libre 3 but maybe there's more to it (I don't remember hearing anything else).

It's all very annoying and it feels like it ought to be possible to buy a sensor while you're on holiday somewhere, but I understand there's a plausible argument for them not to want to allow that (because of the risk of grey imports).
 
Just to counter this, I live in the UK and was in France for nearly 3 weeks and wore one sensor over and then started a new one while in France and had absolutely zero problems starting the new one. I’m on IOS so maybe this is an android thing.
 
Interesting @rianos. Couple of questions please:

Whereabouts were you in France? I was in Paris for the first 24 hours and my failure started after I'd been in Alsace for about 12 hours.
Did you have roaming data for your phone? This was asked by tech support when I phoned them yesterday (not that I can see the immediate relevance).

Thanks, just trying to clarify my options for when I drive through France and Spain for Gibraltar later this year.
 
Bruce Stephens said:
It's certainly the case that Libre 2 sensors (and I think 1) were geolocked in the sense that you could only use the appropriate sensor with the appropriate app. (Presumably because there may be different prices in different regions and they want to maintain those differences.) I assume the same is true for Libre 3 but maybe there's more to it (I don't remember hearing anything else).

It's all very annoying and it feels like it ought to be possible to buy a sensor while you're on holiday somewhere, but I understand there's a plausible argument for them not to want to allow that (because of the risk of grey imports).
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Morning Bruce I know you can use Xdrip app with G7 and all Libre sensor globally, because I have.
 
Bruce Stephens said:
It's certainly the case that Libre 2 sensors (and I think 1) were geolocked in the sense that you could only use the appropriate sensor with the appropriate app. (Presumably because there may be different prices in different regions and they want to maintain those differences.) I assume the same is true for Libre 3 but maybe there's more to it (I don't remember hearing anything else).

It's all very annoying and it feels like it ought to be possible to buy a sensor while you're on holiday somewhere, but I understand there's a plausible argument for them not to want to allow that (because of the risk of grey imports).
Click to expand...

Could you not just download the app from the app store of the country you’re holidaying in? Perhaps it’s the ‘non-matching’ app that causes issues.
 
Inka said:
Could you not just download the app from the app store of the country you’re holidaying in?
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I think so, though there can be complexities because Google/Apple know who you are and what country you live in, so you may need to do something to change that.
 
Inka said:
Could you not just download the app from the app store of the country you’re holidaying in? Perhaps it’s the ‘non-matching’ app that causes issues.
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No, because G7 is not yet available in France and so is not findable on Playstore in France. Nor in Spain. I have not got the tech skills to find "workarounds".

The only possible "hook" that might (somehow) prevent this would be if I had committed to temporarily having roaming data from 3, my current service provider, at £5 per day. The lack of both data and WiFi seems to be the reason - or so the tech support lady I spoke to kept returning to. I was on Eurostar for part of the previous day, then in an Ibis hotel with some limited WiFi and a brief break in the evening as we went elsewhere for dinner. The following morning (failure day) I was out again on a visit all morning, back to the Ibis with poor WiFi, then a wifi-less TGV train to Alsace and a hotel with even less WiFi. At some stage I deliberately switched off roaming data - to prevent accidentally triggering roaming charges while travelling.

But all of this still does not in any way justify Dexcom arbitrarily stopping their app from working with no explanation: neither in their 140 page User Guide nor on the app screen as it occurred. Dexcom prevent 'screen shots' as a 'security policy' - or to make sure there is little record of periodic failures.

I first realised my phone screen had frozen just as I arrived at the evening restaurant. I had already taken a small holding bolus, which I'd logged on the G7 app (and which never got transferred to Clarity) while waiting for plates of food to arrive to allow me to improve my split bolus guestimate. The daily graph from Clarity for that day shows my last entry mid afternoon - whereas this problem first became evident around 8pm. In that period the sensor was in harmony with the phone until the screen freeze.

It is triply frustrating: I was put at risk getting a hypo with an fp of 2.9 while walking home - fortunately amidst a group of friends who made sure I got back safely. I'd self-funded G7 to try to step away from the constant difficulties with unreliable and unpredictable CGMs - and to reduce finger pricking dependence! The rest of my outing was spoilt because of regular fps to monitor myself for the rest of a busy programme of events and different venues and menus for lunches and dinners. My BG was far from well managed, as my meter shows.

To cap it all the onus is on me to write to Dexcom because the TECH Support won't be contacting me (despite tech support recording my complaint and concern) and Dexcom only provide phone nos for sales or the pleasant but powerless tech support folks. You can't even get transferred to a tech support supervisor.
 
I'm not 100% sure that this would work but there are quite a few affordable VPN systems available which allow to select the country you want to appear to be in. All you would then need to do is select the UK and travel wherever you like.
 
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