Calling Home From Europe

[rebeccalouise]

I consider myself an experienced traveler and I did something really stupid on my last trip to Venice.

On my hotel nightstand was a card telling you how to call home using your credit card. You dialed the number, gave your credit card number and voila- you can call and check your voicemail or whatever.

 

Anyway, I was there for two days and used this number four times- figuring it was still cheaper that reversing the charges, which I can't do to check my voicemail anyway.

 

I got my credit card bill and for each call (none were more than 2-3 minutes)- I was charged $ 41.00. That was $ 160 for about 12 minutes! More than $ 10 per minute and since each charge was for exactly $ 41 dollars- it is probably a flat fee. Yikes.

 

So my advice ( I did this on my prior trip) would be to buy the prepaid cards at the kiosks at Piazzle Roma or whereever you are in Europe. I bought a 5 Euro card and I had about 20 minutes of time on that.

 

And another thing- don't reverse the charges... very expensive. I did that in 2002 and my bill was $ 400 for about 50 minutes of total calls.

[Hlitner]

Darn good advice. There are several kinds of pre-paid cards and depending on where we are traveling dictates what we buy. If we are spending a lot of time in a single country we will usually buy a phone card intended for use in that country (they are usually the card of the national phone company). But, when we are traveling in multiple countries we try to pick-up a generic phone card (Cable and Wireless used to have a good card) that works in any country (they have toll-free numbers).

 

Hank