Cheap long distance calls in France
My relationship with my husband was long distance for awhile when I lived in California and he lived in Paris, France. The only thing that made our relationship work was one of those cheap 10-10 numbers that I used to call him everyday and talk for hours. And ICQ—with the aid of “babelfish” translator so that he could write to me in French and then I would translate and then I would write back in English and he would translate. It’s a minor miracle that we understood each other at all! He asked me to marry him via one of those telephone calls in his thick southern French accent (which I found to sound quite like Pakistani-English; even when my sister first meet him she said “he sounds just like Apu from the Simpons!”). I wasn’t really sure, if he had really asked me or not. Did he just ask me? I had to call him back to confirm.
Now that I live in France, I have the inverse problem of calling my family back in the states. I rarely do, because the rates are so expensive here. Taken from an actual phone bill: 41 minutes (22 of which is my mom telling me about her golf game) was 8 euros! There has to be a better way, I thought. And there is, but it took me three long years and heavily tariff-ed France Telecom bills to find it! telera bais.com I got the first bill and for 2 hours and 5 minutes (25 minutes of printer ink stories from mom) was only 2 euros and 70 centimes! I can call her back and let her tell me the golf story again for practically nothing!
If you live in France or visit France this the phone deal for you! No signups and no connection fees (They didn’t even pay me to tell you this, even though I sound like a commercial—maybe they will ask me to “star” in their first spot?!). Telerabais has a list of special numbers that you call first and then it asks you to enter the number you want to call and it does it for you and only charging you local tariff (if you have France telecom). There are other numbers for other phone carriers. A list is found on their website. It works for hundreds of foreign countries and their respective cell phones. Yes, I can call my sister’s cell phone for 3 centimes a minute!
This is how it works. You look up the country in the listings and call the 0811-number. When you are connected you dial the number that you want to call. For example, to call the USA you dial 0811-310-310 and then the country code plus the number and its says “one moment please”, in French and you are put through. I can call Chili, China and Cyprus for local rate in France! Haiti, Honduras and Hungary cost a little bit more, you have to check the rate chart. Now I can call home anytime, providing that they are awake—don’t forget the time difference—to ask the answers to all kinds of Jeopardy questions, to ask mom for her New York Chocolate Cheesecake recipe, and just to say “cou-cou, how is your golf game!”
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Check out Vonage You pick up the phone, hear the dial tone and dial the telephone number of your choice. There are no extra numbers to dial and no special routines to follow. It’s that simple. You don’t have to be a tech geek to use Vonage.
