Lawd!!!! Yall should see my cellphone bill for last month! T-Mobile is going to put me in jail!


LOL!!!!!!

Do you not use a phone card?

yep same with verizon til I got them all caught up.
There are two things you can do. Actually here is what I finally did. Even if you get a phone card, it'll still eat at your minutes.
For international calls, get a Virgin mobile pre paid phone and get those $20,$50 calling cards to use with them. Use that strictly for your international use.
Next, in events where you have to make internatinoal calls on your Tmobile phone, ask them if they have a calling plan for your country. I called verizon and I can now call Palestine for .20 a minute now as opposed to $1.49

oh dayum i thought there was free money here, given the topic title

charles...haven't you learnt notting yet, t'aint notting free

yeah, ricca, T-mobile got you and Qwest has me in indebted servitude

Girl PINGO!!! Now TMobile will lie and tell you that you can not use a computer based (phone card) as a my fav's but it is a lie. If they give you problem PM me. I transfered from Verizon to TMobile because of the my favs, but when I tried with the phone card as one it did not work. So my know it all azz called and complained several times until one smart arze rep told me to call tech support. Tech supprt told me the reason for the problem. Since Pingo gives you the number you call in real time. I was able to see that if I pressed 8 it would register 7 times so phone number ended up being 60 characters long. I then called back tec support tier 1 who in turn sent me to tch support tier 2 after a few days tech support 3 called me to keep calling the Pingo and let them no how the tones were registering. With in days they were able to pinpoint the problem and write a program to patch to tonal signal to not repeat.

Over the course of four days I was on the phone with them for like 9 hours sorting out this crasp. At the end of the process tech support tier 3 called me and offered me a reward for my help in the matter. Those basta3ds offered me an additional 9 hours of minutes that had to be used in 3 months or I would loose them. Well guess what I never went over my package, so I LOST THEM.

In fixing that issue it crossed over to the throw away phone cards. So everyone you can make them as your my favs.

If you have any questions on how to explain or what to say to them, if they question you about using phone cards or computer prompted services as a my favs. pm me I will assit you

Just in case...

1. www.skype.com (set up the account with your info and even auto recharge and you can either talk for free with you both on skype or your SO can call you for about 2 cents per minute on your home or cell phone)
2. internetcalls.com (you set up the account and it gives about 300 minutes a week, I believe, free to call the U.S. I used this extensively while abroad.)
3. jaxtr.com (you get free minutes on short calls and you both can set up an account and it will even ring you on your cell or home, your choice)
4. www.tel3advantage (set up and account and it is billed directly to your bank card or a credit card - no lost minutes and connection fees. This way you can call from your cell or home or wherever you are with a local access number. You set up the account to recognize any number that you like so you won't have to dial any PIN code. You can also set up speed dials. So I dial the access number from my cell and press 1# and it rings to my SO. You are charged in whatever increments you request.)
5. phone cards (cheap but sometimes you can waste a whole card and not be connected)
6. Vonage (pretty decent international rates)

All in all, I'd say that I almost never make the calls. This process is already too dang expensive. There is a fairly new voip company that is making Africa plans but they wanted to charge me $150 for just 500 minutes a month. No way!

Best of luck!

Broadvoice is 8 cents a minute if you can get your SO to get a landline. They can carry those with them everywhere.

I used tel3advantage, their service sux for me.
I lost minutes, got cut off, fake rings, terrible connections...eeeyuck!
I will never use them again. But that was just UNOz experience.
The rest of them, I know nothing of. Currently, I use callingcards.com.
They are...okay.
Good Luck to ya.

No, Zee.....I always used my cellphone. But the reality hit when I had to download the calls from January 1 2007 to now. I could have taken all of us to Ghana and back. LOL! Thanks for all of the suggestions. I am going to do some research after work today and see if I can come up with a less expenseive way to keep in touch with my SO for this remaining wait.

Thanks again,

Erika

Wow. I thought my calls were expensive

I use www.pingo.com, 15.5 cents a minute to Ghana cell, you can have speed dial numbers, and no PIN necessary if you program it that way. All I do is dial the pingo number and then 1 and I am connected to my fiance. They also have local access numbers which makes it 14.5 cents per minute.

It is the best service I have had with a phone service to call Ghana. I pay only for the minutes I use when I connect and don't have to worry about being stiffed my money. You can easily recharge on the internet or over the phone as well, or have automatic recharges.

Why would ya'll call directly from your cell phone? Use your daytime minutes to call the calling card. Or better yet, do what I do and just call from your landline and don't use any daytime minutes.

I KNOW how you feel!

Right before my husband's interview I learned that the hunderds of dollars spent on calling cards would not count as evidence of our relationship. So I added International Long Distance to my cell phone in order to create a 'paper trail' detailing the calls. When I got that bill ............ it took my breath away!!!!! Thank goodness that I quickly learned about www.pingo.com.

Hang in there. It will all be over soon.

I used to keep track of the bills and I could have bought myself a nice computer car with the amount of money I spent calling Africa. Like everyone else, I didn't realize the process would take so long and towards the end of the wait I started scheduling time to call in order to budget. Don't fret, it doesn't stop when your SO arrives because he'll have tons of people calling him once he gets here. (snicker-snicker) I think We_Destiny has one of the best answers to that. Having the two cell numbers is a great idea in that case. Even a Go phone is good for those incoming beeps.

Does anyone know of a phone service that could let my hubby call me and I just pay a monthly amount?

He's in West Africa (Gambia) and their is no way he could call regularly without paying almost a months salary for a 1 to 2 hour call. Yes, THAT IS BAAAAD.

Thanks for any info.

(Feel free to repost this for a better idea)

PINGO rocks!!!

PINGO rocks = Agreed!

I just barely signed up after reading about it here and spent half of what I normally do for an hour call!

"Flashing" someone calls your number from their phone and lets it ring two times just so you can notice the number, you can then call them back.

That's what we did. Saved us a ton of money.


I loved it too because I could call from my cell phone sooooo easily. I'm never home long enough for skye or the other carriers.

Yep - it's awesome! I love the speed dial feature - especially when you are disconnected or reach 'dead air' which seems to happen so often when calling Nepal - wonderful to not have to dial the whole long number again.

I had the same problem when calling my SO all the time...first did it with my landline... BIG mistake, and then i started using verizon EVEN WORSE...

now i have a Net10 prepaid phone....15cents a min for ALL international numbers, and calls to mexico & canada are only 10cents a min. i LOVE this thing, i talk for hours and its soooo cheap

I use PINGO every so often but sometimes when I use it my husband said it uses a very old network and the connection is just to staticcy. Love the price but the connection is unreliable for Cairo.

Ricca711,have you tried calling cards ?I found a site called " Alosmart " that i've been using for almost 3 years now.The name of my card is,pinless/rechargeable,and can be purchased for $25,$50 or $100 dollars.I think the cost is about 12.5 cents a minute to call Accra mobile.A $50 credit last me around 5 weeks and I call my wife EVERY DAY..There are cheeper cards,8 cents a min,but the quality and connectability are poor not to mention loss of min's for some unknown reason.
Check out the site, http://alosmart.com/,it sure beats paying T-Mobile $2 dollars a min.The best part is it doesn't matter if you're calling from a land line or cell phone,the cost per min remains the same.I use a local access number since it cost about 1 cent a min more to use the 800 number.Problem is there's no local number in my area so I place my calls thru N.Y. using my cell phone so I don't get nailed with long distance charges.I hope this info can help you save on your calls to Ghana

You guys should try www.joinvip.com I have used them for years and never had a problem and I pay about 7cents a minute. Also I gave my family back home my pin number and they call me that way, and I just top up the card automatically.

Its cheap and I never have dropped calls, and the connection is clear.

I use sprint with an international plan 9cents per minute.

I used to go broke calling my husband when he was in Liberia, but I finally caught on to Pingo when I needed to save our phone calls for his interview. I love it and I have been a huge supporter of it. We still use it now to call his family from time to time.