Travel Forum / Destinations / USA and Canada / May 2006

I use Primus Passport global calling card for this. They may not be
the cheapest, but they send me a bill in the mail, which I usually get
after I get back home, and they give me 40 days to pay it.

They have tollfree phone numbers for access, or local access numbers,
which may be cheaper, and they cover a large number of countries, so
you can use their services for all of your travels once you establish
an account.

You can buy it on the internet. No need to top it off, as they send
you a bill. There are no monthly fees, there is a connection charge of
50 cents in US, no connection fee elsewhere.

http://www.affinitytele.com/primus-passport-global-calling-card.htm

My daughter uses OneSuite, which is a similar service, probably
cheaper, but you prepay by credit card and then top it off.

http://www.onesuite.com/

I have found callingcards.com a good site to compare different cards and
find the cheapest one for the type of calls you will be making.  There
are different fee structures depending on; rate per minutes, increments,
connect fees, recharge options,... a nice way to compare.

If you want to "take the card home with you" if there are minutes left
iscard.com allows you to phone from almost any country in the world.
I used them once and they also had a good technical support line.

In all cases they will e-mail you the PIN and their access numbers after
the Internet purchase so you can use the "card" immediately.

Phone cards are easily available.  Grocery stores, Wal-mart and every liquor
store sells them .

OneSuite.com
TalkLoop.com

You don't need a physical card. They have 800 access and local access
(local access is cheaper). Like most cards, there is a surcharge for
initiating a call from a pay phone.

Unfortunately, I don't think that it's possible to sign up online
without a U.S. address, phone number, and credit card number. TalkLoop
does take PayPal.

If you know someone in the U.S., they can get the PIN for you, and you
can pay them back.

You can of course buy calling cards at lots of places in San Francisco.
Chinatown is usually the cheapest, but don't get scammed. Bargain on the
price. Walgreens is a safe place to buy them, and there are many
Walgreens in San Francisco. Costco sells them more cheaply, but you have
to be a member to get in.

I am going to recommend www.onesuite.com too. I first used OneSuite when
my wife and I went to Mexico for a week and we wanted to check in on the
kids. I had a bad experience with hotel calls, as I think everyone has
experienced, and decided it wouldn't happen again. A friend recommended
OneSuite so we put 10 dollars on an account. We ended up making calls
everyday back to Canada for a week. It was surprising to realize after
checking our account when we got back home that we still had about 5
dollars on our account. You can't go wrong with OneSuite.
JT