Phone Calls from Europe to USA
 

I would like some advice from those of you who travel often to and from Europe.

I will be in Switzerland this summer. I usually go to the telecom store there and buy a phone card to use in their public phones whether for calls within the country or to the USA. Sometimes I have used the phones within the Post Office where there are booths and an attendant that you pay. These two methods Have worked for me in the past as the most reasonable. But I haven't been there for a few years. Perhaps things have changed.

What do you recommend as the least expensive method of calling home from Europe?

For calling back to the USA, I think the cheapest and most convenient way is to use the toll-free number in the country you are calling from to access your long distance carrier at home (ATT,MCI,Sprint,etc.) and then dial direct with credit card or with the help of a US operator, very convenient and no language dificulties,etc. also a way to get mileage for the calls if you are signed up for that program. The toll free access numbers from each country are listed almost daily in the Int.Herald Tribune in ads for AT&T, MCI, etc.

You, however, cannot use this for calling within Europe so you may need to get a calling card anyway, just not in such large such a large denomination.

I use a call back service when I im europe. When you get there you call them on a 800 number from the Country and hangup. they call back and ask you for your code and the number that you are calling England was 8 cents and Italy was 14 cents. The name of the Company is enlinea Communiications 1 800-797-2797 . It works Great and they bill on the Credsit Card. John Rahn 520-746-1122

Definitely go with the local calling card. Its way cheaper and less of a hassle than using ATT or MCI. Shop around though, tabaccis or newstands often carry several different brands that market to different countries. Some phone cards are rechargeable too.

lala

AT&T, MCI and Sprint may be the most convenient but are also very expensive. The miles hardly make up for the cost.
Callback services are great if you are staying in a home or apartment. But it's very difficult to use in a hotel unless perhaps it is very small. In that case they may be more likely (and more able) to cooperate. They need to know what to do when the "callback call" rings at their switchboard.

Up until now, I always used the Voicenet calling card. But now that they went belly up I'll have to find another discount calling card. I've never used a prepaid card from Europe but I imagine it's a good alternative.

Nobelcom.com offers a prepaid for 18 cents per minute, they use the AT&T network, so I'll assume it's via the local AT&T access numbers. I have never used them, I too was a voicenet user and will very sincerely miss them. These prices are a couple of pennies more then Voicenet was, but certainly less then the big three will charge. Site96.net offers many prepaid cards too.

If you use AT&T, MCI, or your sprint calling card you will pay rates considerably higher then you should be paying.

[This message has been edited by cordelli (edited 05-29-2001).]

This past March I visited Switzerland and needed to call back home to the US on several occasions.

Believe it or not, the calls averaged 15 cents per minute from my hotel room using the hotel's phone system. I know better than to use a hotel's phone line for long distance calls . . . but did it anyway and was pleasantly surprised by the inexpensiveness of the calls. Did this in at least three Swiss cities and the costs were about the same.

Go to Sams Club ( I suspect they have them at Wal-mart too) and buy a prepaid ATT card. They come various demoms, used two 350 min cards last year Fall in France/Italy/GB.
Mike

Man. I can't think of a place in the US where you could dial from your hotel phone, domestic long distance, and get rates like that. They mark everything up incredibly on long distance at US hotels.

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I use www.ekit.com. Their rates are the best. Their rates are better than AT&T, MCI etc. Check out all the info on the web. I have used them from more than a dozen countries in Europe, Asia and and the USA. I am completely satisfied.

[This message has been edited by MSP2000 (edited 05-29-2001).]

I recently spent ten weeks in Switzerland. The post office there (at least the one in Bern where I was staying) sells a bunch of discount prepaid phone cards that you access through an 800# and pin code. At Bern, they even had a neat chart comparing the prices of the cards for different countries. Keep in mind that when using any prepaid card from a pay phone you get charged a .50 sFr connection fee (you also get charged this fee when using a regular phone card). You can of course also buy a regular phone card, but I didn´t really see a need to since every pay phone I saw in Bern took credit cards which seemed to get charged the same rates.
I don´t know if this is the case everywhere there, but where I was staying, there was a charge of something like 1 or 2 cents every few minutes for using the toll-free access numbers.

Yonatan

P.S. Having used an MCI calling card in Europe and gotten charged something like $3/minute, I wouldn´t recommend going that route.

Seems like a general travel forum topic, or maybe an OMNI topic to me.

Djlawman

Sorry if I'm in the wrong forum with this topic. I'm new to this and after considering my choices I opted for The Buzz. I guess it will take me a little while to get it all sorted out.