Direct Telephone Services

For those with AT&T, Sprint, and MCIWorldCom credit cards, all of these companies offer direct dial services that can be used to phone home to the States or Canada. Those without cards can use these services to call collect. Be warned, though, that the first one minute of these services will cost you a bundle - as in five dollars for the first minute, and then about a dollar a minute after that. It is much cheaper to use coins or a card to call home, and then have them call back, or to use one of the cheap-rate phone cards mentioned above. If you just want to leave an answering machine message of “I’m alive and well,” a phone card or coins will save you big money over these services. For instance, I once made a forty-second call from Assisi, Italy, to San Francisco, California, on a Sunday afternoon. It cost 1400 lire - about USD 1 at the time. The same call using AT&T would have cost USD 4.38.

All these companies use the enormous fees they charge you to take out ads proclaiming how cheap they are compared with the other guys. Should you need an access number, remember that they are advertised in the International Herald Tribune almost every day. These companies also give out little wallet-sized cards with their access codes in various countries.

And most international operators will look up these codes for you on request. (Thank them profusely when they do.) Phone-home services also exist for those from Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand, but they are VERY expensive. Also, the companies are a bit dodgy, and seem to come and go every few months. The best advice I can give to those who need to call back those countries is to find a compatriot who has been in Europe for a few months and ask their advice on what is best and cheapest.

WARNING: Ignore those stickers promising cheap and easy “phone home” services that you find slapped on the interior of phone booths all over Europe. These aren’t instructions from the phone companies - they’re from rip-off artists who will charge you upwards of five dollars a minute if you use them. ATT and MCI are bad enough, but the sticker companies are run by con men, pure and simple.