Free Ten-Minute Calls From Your Land Line To Overseas
From Pogue in the NYT:
Listen to a 10- or 12-second ad, get 10 minutes of free calling to any of 55 countries. According to the company, 85 percent of all calls are under 10 minutes long, so most calls are covered.If you have a cellphone, this concept can save you big dollars when you're calling overseas. If you're among the millions of low-income Americans who have landlines and basic phone plans, you can save 50 cents or $1 every time you call long distance, since you begin every FreePhone2Phone call by dialing a local access number.
To try out FreePhone2Phone, I dialed a local number, which I looked up at FreePhone2Phone.com. To reach the New York City access line, you'd dial 1 (646) 500-8620.
...Here's the fine print:
Each call is limited to 10 minutes. A warning tone beeps every 5 seconds for the last half minute, and then you're cut off.
If you try to call the same number again the same day, your call is limited to five minutes, to prevent you from exploiting the system by calling back over and over all day.
Larry C. from New Joisey has a better idea:
Free is always nice (hard to argue with free), but there is no way you should be paying $2.50/min for calls to Paris otherwise.For example, I use a service called Localphone that lets you call internationally for really cheap, for example, it's $0.009/min for calls to France, the UK, etc.
And, you can set up local access numbers so you never have to dial pins, etc.At $0.009/min, why bother messing with FreePhone2Phone?
Clark Howard has something to say on international phone service - and he has talked about Magic Jack and another, similar service on the air.
Radwaste at January 17, 2011 1:10 PM
I have used some local number services before. The only problem I have had is a lot of times I got bad connections (e.g. echo). That and maintaince fees - One I used that was pretty good but every month they charged a $1 fee.
I just looked at the local phone service linked there. For calls to France, they list 5 rates depending on land/mobile and carrier. There are 10 categories listed so there could be that many different rates. That also seems confusing...and all the rates listed are more than the $0.009/min listed here.
The Former Banker at January 17, 2011 1:12 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2011/01/17/free_tenminute.html#comment-1824038">comment from The Former BankerI use Skype, The Former Banker, 2 cents a minute to land lines in France. Dunno if it's more to mobiles, can't remember. And the different rates for France are pretty much the same...and my friends I call there mostly have Orange.fr, as do I (mobicartes -- pay as you go) when I'm there, although this time, we frugalized by just leaving extra time to get places so we wouldn't have to call or text people to tell them we were running late.
Amy Alkon
at January 17, 2011 1:38 PM
I have used Skype too. Actually that is what I use most only now do it computer-to-computer so it is free.
On that particular services, to France it is $0.014 to $0.018 while mobile is $0.12 to $0.40. That is quite a difference. When I used to use a different service a while back to call Japan the rate was either 0.03/min or 0.14/min and I wouldn't know which it was without asking the person I was calling (landline or mobile).
In Japan, calling was quite reasonable if you could get a phone.
The Former Banker at January 17, 2011 2:31 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2011/01/17/free_tenminute.html#comment-1824059">comment from The Former BankerMy friends in Paris all seem to have international long distance. A few of them are older, but anybody younger I'm friends with (like my artist friend Little Shiva -- see her cool site at http://littleshiva.com/) will usually be on Skype.
Amy Alkon
at January 17, 2011 2:52 PM
Vonage is great too. For $20/month I have unlimited calling anywhere in the U.S. and to like 30 other civilized countries (including France).
Insufficient Poison at January 18, 2011 7:02 AM
Just curious - who here gets all the long-distance calls, including overseas calls, that he/she wants to make, but manages to spend less than $350 per year?
If so, can you do that with just a cell phone and no landline?
(Currently, I have only a landline.)
lenona at January 18, 2011 9:05 AM
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