Calling Home From Overseas Can Be Costly

By Kiplinger Group

Question: During a recent trip to Germany and Austria, I called the States five times, using pay phones and charging my Visa card. I returned home to find a $105 bill for a 20-minute call and a $192 bill for all my other calls, which each lasted fewer than 10 minutes. What might I have done differently? — Ray Taylor, Bend, Ore.

Answer: Ouch. Your credit card is one of many that charge sky- high rates for placing international phone calls. For your next trip, try this: If you own a cell phone, ask your wireless carrier if you can use it overseas for a low rate. Cingular (the nation’s largest provider) and T-Mobile have adopted GSM technology, the standard for much of the world. If you own a relatively new phone and use either provider, you can usually place calls from overseas.

Cingular, for instance, lets many of its customers call home from several European countries at rates of about $1 a minute, plus a fee of about $6 for each month of travel. Or you can buy a prepaid phone card that lets you call for rates of about 10 cents to 15 cents per minute.

Question: To get the lowest fares, I usually need to book air tickets well in advance. But my next trip will be to celebrate the birth of my granddaughter, and I can’t know for sure the date I’ll be flying cross-country to New York City. How can I book a cheap ticket today that will let me change my flight dates later without paying hefty fees? — Charles Kuttner, Portland, Ore.

Answer: Given that you know the due date of your granddaughter, you’ll still save by booking early on a discount airline. In the best case, you’ll have a cheap ticket and you’ll arrive at the right time. In the worst case, you’ll need to pay to rebook and your new flight date will come with a higher round-trip fare.

But rebooking on a discount airline will cost you less than the major carriers. For example, Continental typically charge $100 to rebook. But rebooking on JetBlue costs $30, and Southwest doesn’t charge a fee.

You could book your trip from Portland to New York City on JetBlue and pay about $450, including taxes and fees. In the past year on this route, says FareCompare.com, a site that gives you the lowest average fares available on most routes, fares booked just days before departure weren’t much higher than that.

We estimate that you could save between $75 and $300 by rebooking on JetBlue instead of a major airline.

(c) 2007 Deseret News (Salt Lake City). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.