Phone Tips
Traveling without a phone
I travel all the time and I don't have a phone. No land line, no mobile.To call out, I use Skype from internet cafés.
It's divine not having a phone, but I need to be reachable. To receive voice messages, I use a service called JConnect. They give you a US phone number that can receive faxes and voice mails. When a new fax or message arrives, the service sends you an email. I have been using it for years. It's awesome.
I also have an Australia number with Skype. When someone rings that Australian number, my computer rings if I am online, or the call goes to voice mail. Sadly, Skype does not notify you of messages by email, nor does it take incoming faxes. Until Skype gets their act together, for my incoming communications from the States, I'll stick with JConnect.
Calls from the States
I have tried a range of calling cards but didn't fall in love with any of them, because they typically charge you 50 cents or more for calls from payphone—which is when you most need to use a card.For a while, I wished that Skype had a toll-free number I could call that would connect me to my account and act as a calling card. Then Mobivox came along.
Mobivox
Mobivox is the only system I've found that lets me make calls from US pay phones at a reasonable rate. Using the toll-free number, a four-minute convo costs something like twenty cents. This is far cheaper than the Pingo service which I once considered.Mobivox has other benefits:
- it links to your Skype account and lets you call your Skype contacts for free;
- it has access numbers in many countries at the same low rate. (In each country, including the US, you pay a small surcharge when you access the service through a toll-free number rather than a local number).
I plan to try out the service in Australia. I do wonder about the future of Mobivox, as the Canadian start-up was acquired by Indian company Sabse in late 2009.
Phone calls from Europe
From Germany, there's something called Open Call Through that lets you dial a special number from landlines and payphones.France has the same things. I've used a service called Telerabais. The call only costs the price of a local call. The number is 0811 31 4545. Then you need to enter the international number. Dial 00 for international, then the country code, then the number.
There are similar services in most other European countries. They can be hard to find unless you search in the local language. And at the moment, Mobivox only has toll-free access numbers in a handful of European countries.
Call from Australia and New Zealand
From Australia, it looks like Mobivox may be cheaper than phone cards: there is a national toll-free access number for a seven-cent per minute surcharge.CardCall usually has the best calling cards for Australia and New Zealand. Rates change all the time, so it's important to read the fine print on the site and find the card that (i) has the lowest payphone surcharge and (ii) doesn't leak units every day. At the moment the best New Zealand card seems to be GoTalk (25-cent surcharge for toll-free number from payphones). From payphones, it usually works out cheaper to dial the local number using a "chip" card from Telstra (Australia) or Telecom (New Zealand)—but make sure to get a chip card, as opposed to the fancy rip-off cards also offered by these companies.
Finding Hard-to-Find phone numbers
You know how hard it is to get the local phone number for the local branch of organizations such as UPS? One day, the UPS office in Shreveport called me. On caller ID, I saw their number: 318-424-7088.I googled this number. It showed on one directory: manta.com. Knowing this, I can find the local phone number of UPS offices anywhere in the country. When the window opens, just add your town in front of the search string.
Using the same trick, you can search for hard-to-find numbers. When the window opens, just add the company name in front of the search string. You can do the same on Cortera.com.
Avoiding Marketing Calls
In the US, there is now a national registry to opt-out of marketing calls. Just logon and add yourself to the Do Not Call List.In France, the same service is called the "Liste Orange" (Google it and you will find the sign-up page).
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Smiles,
Andy
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