But long-distance calling can produce some unpleasant surprises.
A London reader says he was billed $31.63 on his Capital One MasterCard after using it for a pay phone call from Prague airport to Amsterdam that lasted "no longer than about one minute."
When he questioned the cost, the service provider told him that $31.63 was their basic international rate. Fortunately, the reader was a first-time user of the service so they reversed the charges.
Wherever possible, I use a Bell Canada Calling Card to phone home. Here's how it works: From my hotel room, you dial 9 to obtain an outside line. Then you dial a toll-free number, which varies depending on what country you're calling from, to reach Bell Canada. Finally you punch in a PIN number that includes the digits of your home telephone number, then the number you are calling.
You can phone Canada from more than 130 countries and be billed in Canadian dollars. You can call from one foreign country to another, too, but Bell warns that rates are "premium priced."
You can still get tripped up by stiff hotel connection fees.
Last spring, I phoned home from Holland. At checkout, I was handed a bill for 9 euros (about $15). When I protested, the clerk explained that the hotel charges 1 euro per minute even for local calls. (Bell Canada, by the way, only charged me $10 for the actual long-distance call).
Travelling in Switzerland a few months later, I took the precaution of checking with hotel reception first about their fees for making a local call. It was only a few cents per minute. (Bell's charge for my six-minute call was $8.21).
One way to beat hotel connection fees is to buy prepaid calling cards that give you a set amount of time for a set price.
When I visited the Caribbean island of Curacao, a sign in my room warned that long-distance calls were expensive. I noticed a public telephone in the lobby and asked a hotel employee if I could use it. I could if I had a prepaid card, he replied, and pointed to the gift shop.
The card I bought cost less than $6 and was good for 20 minutes. It still had some time left when I was ready to leave so I gave it to another guest who was staying longer.
Be wary of using pay phones in Caribbean and Mexican resort areas plastered with signs offering long-distance service to the U.S. and Canada. They may redirect your call to an alternate provider who will ask for your credit card number. Aside from the obvious danger of giving a stranger in a strange country such information, who knows how much the call itself will cost?
MAIL CAN BE SENT TO DOUG ENGLISH, C/O LONDON FREE PRESS, P.O. BOX 2280, LONDON, ONT. N6A 4G1; FAXES TO 519-672-1824.
Travel taxed to the max
Canada and British Columbia improve highway safety, create jobs
Government of Canada endorses life-saving technology for Canadian vehicles
