International phone cards

[swom]

This has nothing to do with cruising, but you are all so wonderful with all the answers that I told my SIL that I'd ask you all about this.

My niece is going to Costa Rica in a couple of weeks and we can't seem to find international phone cards for her to use while there.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[doyleb]

This has nothing to do with cruising, but you are all so wonderful with all the answers that I told my SIL that I'd ask you all about this.

My niece is going to Costa Rica in a couple of weeks and we can't seem to find international phone cards for her to use while there.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

DW and I went to Australia / New Zealand in March this year and had the same issue. I purchased 2 $10 AT&T 'International' phone cards beforwe we left only to realize when we tried to use them in Sydney that we couldn't! We ended up buying international calling cards in Sydney (for AUS) and Chirstchurch (for NZ). They actually ended up being cheaper to buy them locally and call back to the States that the AT&T cards would have cost (on a per per minute basis) assuming we could have gotten the AT&T cards to work!

 

My recommendation - buy a local card from a ship in Costa Rica. Hopefully it won't be an issue finding one...

[chris2597]

same thing in Mexico and the Carib.....The phone cards have to be purchased in the country to have them work. The phone cards purchased in the US are for calling out of the US only...

[VinnyNKellie]

Picked up an MCI international card at Costco,, Worked just fine in Italy, Greece & Turkey.

[TheParrotHeads]

Picked up an MCI international card at Costco,, Worked just fine in Italy, Greece & Turkey.

I am looking at getting one for our upcoming trip. However, did this work on any phone, especially in the room or did you need to find a public phone that would take the card?

[JGR01]

At least with the US phone cards there is a 'feature' that charges you HUGE number of minutes for making a phone call from a PAY PHONE. I think it is like 35 minutes extra for the pay phone connection .. not a good option when you are buying 200 minutes and want to make several calls..... LOOK at the details.

 

There are some web sites that give you information on 'calling from' and 'calling to' countries. Tho the one I looked at with Google search only had calling from the US as an option.. so I do not want to recommend any one site or company. try searching there yourself...

[VinnyNKellie]

The card worked as expected from our Hotel in Geneva (4 Seasons) , they did charge a 1 Euro "fee" for the call to the Toll Free Number. I think the charge from the Port pay phone in Greece (Rhodes, Santorini, Athens) was .67 cents,, give or take. I think it was a bit cheaper in Kusadasi and Dubrovnick, There was nothing in the line of extra minutes charged. Have change handy, or a credit card for the basic charge,, When we left Rome for home, the card still had 75+ minutes on it. When you use the MCI card, it will tell you up front how many minutes were available. It differs in each country. If you get one, go to the web site to get the latest toll free numbers for each country traveled. It was a good item to have, with one exception, (Corfu) it worked as advertised.

[TheParrotHeads]

The card worked as expected from our Hotel in Geneva (4 Seasons) , they did charge a 1 Euro "fee" for the call to the Toll Free Number. I think the charge from the Port pay phone in Greece (Rhodes, Santorini, Athens) was .67 cents,, give or take. I think it was a bit cheaper in Kusadasi and Dubrovnick, There was nothing in the line of extra minutes charged. Have change handy, or a credit card for the basic charge,, When we left Rome for home, the card still had 75+ minutes on it. When you use the MCI card, it will tell you up front how many minutes were available. It differs in each country. If you get one, go to the web site to get the latest toll free numbers for each country traveled. It was a good item to have, with one exception, (Corfu) it worked as advertised.

Thanks for the help. I am hoping it really works in Santorini, where we will be for 9 days. Otherwise, I'm considering the use our Verizon cell phone.

[doyleb]

Thanks for the help. I am hoping it really works in Santorini, where we will be for 9 days. Otherwise, I'm considering the use our Verizon cell phone.

 

That is an option as well, but advanced planning is needed if you want to use your cell phone overseas. One CC couple we met on the Australia / NZ cruise were planning on using their cell (Verizon as well I think) in AUS, but never got it to work correctly, despite repeated and expensive calls back to their cell service provider in the States. We lent them our calling card...

 

brendan