$72.00 phone call! (UPDATE)

[tiggerlover]

DH had to make a call back to Italy for some unfinished business with our move and we just got the bill today. A 16 minute call was $72.00! I know I have lived overseas for a long time, but can this possibly be right? We have Sprint for our long distance service and we have .05 cents a minute on our state to state calls, so how on earth can we go to $4.50 a minute? That seems unreal.

 

[JoNo]

When I moved from Italy to the states, that was around the average for me to call my friends over there after I left. When my parents found out, they made me stick to pen & paper!

 

[momof3disneyholics]

We lived in Germany from 99-02 and I know what you mean by the phone calls. If you have a landline every call costs money, even the local ones! After a few months we switched to a cell phone as our home phone because it actually was alot cheaper. For all over our overseas calls I used to buy those AAFES phone cards.

 

[Bobbles]

I live in South Korea and buy phone cards at Osan that give me 662 minutes for 20 dollars to home in PA. And that's using a landline.
Good old American telecommunications services! Do American telecommunications rates pay for subsidizing the rest of the world because it sure seems like US has the highest rates.

 

[chrissyk]

I use www.onesuite.com for my long distance. It costs me 5 cents/minute to call Belgium. I think that Italy is the same cost through them. They are a dial-around service, so you can sign up with them and use them from any phone. It's great! I've been using onesuite for a couple of years. I have saved tons on my long-distance/international phone bill.

 

[Nutsy]

I hear ya...........when we visited the States back in Sept '02 I rang my Mum for her birthday.

I was on the phone for about 12 minutes & it cost me around $73 US. I flipped as that really ate into our holiday money & we'd only just started our holiday

At that time $73 US was equivalent to $146 Australian..............that's a heck of an expensive phone call.

 

[Elwood Blues]

Wait until VOIP (voice over IP (the internet)) takes off. For less than $30 I can make unlimited calls anywhere in north america. Overseas rates are quite low too. The neat thing about the service (you need a high speed internet connection) is that you can practically have any phone number you want. You could live in LA and have a NY number so that all your buds in NY would be making a local call. You can take the box (it looks like a CD walkman) anywhere that has a broadband connection and with a phone it's as if you're at home. While they don't support it (I don't think it's illegal) you could take the box anywhere in the world and hook it to a broadband connection and make like you never left home.

You also get all the goodies that normally you'd have to pay extra for like caller id, call waiting, voicemail, call forwarding,etc. You can have your voicemails delivered to your email too.

 

[oogieboogie]

I checked with the long distance carrier I use, ZoneLD and their rate to Italy is 5.9 cents a minute.

I think you should rethink using Sprint, MCI, or AT&T for your long distance carrier. There are other smaller companies that can give you much better rates. The big 3 seem to always have the most expensive rates or lots of hidden charges that could really inflate your phone bill.

I've used ZoneLD for years now and my rate is 4 cents a minute intrastate and state-to-state. They're really cheap on international rates too. Never had one problem with them.

 

[Dan Murphy]

We use Sam's Club AT&T calling cards, TL. Work great.

http://www.samsclub.com/eclub/main_...BV_EngineID=ccchadcmgimegemcfkfcfkjdgoodfkf.0

They are slightly less expensive in the store, and refillable. That one would be under $24.

 

[kadaten]

tiggerlover

I don't know if Sprint will, but I've had some success getting ATT to put me on an international calling plan retroactively to before my calls....so a lower rate applies and I just pay for the monthly fee. Then I cancel it when DH is back.

Although now their military plan has no monthly fee.

Give 'em a call and see what they can do for you, but yes, with no plan in place, those rates are what they charge. Crazy!

 

[Tink&SquirtsMom]

I hear ya. Dh and I had a $1300 phone bill when I spent a month in Barbados (required course abroad for my major at Berekley) during our first year of marriage.

Check out VOIP. Yahoo! is gonna announce a new VOIP product soon, until then I think it is Skype that my parents used to keep tabs on my little bros back home when they were in China for a month (mission trip).

 

[Ted and Holly]

Did someone say VoIP? Check out Viper Networks. Great quality products from an up and coming company.

I haven't gotten one yet, but being a share holder, I should.

That call to Italy would have cost you $0.025 per minute.

Ted

 

[HisEllyNelly]

I call the UK often, I use a 10-10 number and it costs me 3.9 cents a minute. My bills are not bad at all.

 

[tiggerlover]

I finally called Sprint and the gentlemen I talked to was very nice. He put us on a plan for International calling ($8 a month) and took $35 off of the $72 call. He said once we have wrapped up our military business in Italy we can call and cancel the service. With the $8 a month service calls will now be .32 a minute, not great, but not $4.50 either. It was very nice of them to give us a break.

 

[Amberle3]

Since I'm in Canada I don't know if this company works in the US, but from their website it looks like they might.

I use YAK for most of my long distance calls. My local phone company recently changed my long distance plan - lucky for them because I was about to cancel it - and it now has unlimited evening/weekend calls to Canada and the US for something like $15. If I don't make enough calls to hit the $15 mark, then I'm just charged the long distance for the month. (the $15 is more of a max price/ceiling than a plan charge).

For any other long distance calls, I use YAK. $0.05/min for Canada/US calls, and I just checked their rates for US->Italy - $0.08/minute.

www.yak.com

 

[maryisme]

Hi,

I just wanted to throw the cost of Vartec's service out there for you. I checked Italy and it is .03 a minute with a .39 connection charge.

I have family in Malta and this is the cheapest I have been able to find to call them. Hope it works for you. I've included the website (hope it works) here .