Phonecards
 

Any of you international travelers have recommendations on phone cards used from outside the US? I just called MCI (my long distance carrier), and this is what they quoted me for a call from the UK to the US (that call being to a # other than my home):

$4.99 "connection fee"
$2.38 first minute
$1.76 thereafter

Ok, $10.89 for a three minute call from the UK to the US? Are they on crack? Granted, they offer $0.10/min from the UK to your home #, but that's useless to me unless I want to have a conversation with my answering machine.

Any companies out there that don't charge an arm and a leg?

Thanks...

AXEY:
I highly suggest IDT GLOBAL CALL CARD, a prepaid card- $25 minimum. They advertise in airline magazines and I recently used them extensively to call from the UK back to the US. To activate call 1-800-299-2534

Sample rates would be:
From USA, per minute +15c/call
USA 8c; Canada 10c; Germany 12c; Japan 15c; UK 10c.

Back to USA:
From UK-10c
From other places - much higher.
You can access a toll free UK# from most phone booths 0800-279-3325. Very good operation.

The best prepaid phone card I have found is one sold by Costco (I think it is issued by MCI} for $18-20 for 200 minutes. It has worked at all USA pay phones so far, and most importantly, works at USA hotels often without the $1.00-2.00/call charge tacked on by (mostly) the quite greedy business and luxury hotels. I also use it when my ISP doesnt have a local assess number. Works great.

You must belong to Costco to purchse or get a friend to buy one for you. I will try to see if they are valid outside the USA (I have a trip to Vancouver next week and a trip to London the week after that).

After getting gouged for a while by MCI, I switched over to Primus, a provider here in the UK. It is 6 pence (about 10c) per minute back to the US from the UK and not that much more than that from the rest of the world. They keep a balance of your funds and each call debits off that account. Sounds similar to the IDT card discussed above, but with better rates from the rest of the world.

I set up the deal here in the UK, so I am not sure what their presence is in the US.

www.primustel.com

I just bought a caling card from Sam's Club. Their cards (AT&T) are 10 cents per minute. They list many countries on their advertisement. The most I saw was 30 cents per minute.

A friend checked out the Costco phone cards for me - the current deal (at least here in San Francisco) is 10 cards, 50 minutes each, for $50. It's tied to Sprint; I don't know their rates to foreign countries or back to the U.S., but it definitely works for those situations - the card comes with a list of access phone numbers for various other countries.