Save with phone cards bought online

One of the major reasons to buy prepaid phone cards online is the savings they offer:

• When you buy prepaid phone cards your domestic and international rates are usually much lower than rates offered by major residential phone service providers
• You also get lower rates compared to prepaid phone cards sold at local stores, where you pay extra for store's overhead and the little plastic and paper the cards are printed on
• Phone cards will definitely save you money if you don't have access to your home phone or your mobile phone: on the road, at the hotel, at a pay phone, etc. Much cheaper than collect calls or operator assisted calls.
  
• You can better budget your long distance and international expenses by using prepaid phone card.

The best way for you to decide as to whether you will save money on your long distance and international calls by using prepaid cards purchased online is to simply compare the rates. Check out the rates offered by your residential phone service provider and then check the phone card rates.

How to call from Canada

International calls from Canada are basically the same as the international calls from the United States if you are using a phone card. Those phone cards have either local Canadian access numbers or toll free access and may be used from regular land lines, mobile phones, pay phones and hotels. All cards come with complete dialing instructions.

Local phone card access numbers in Canada
If you are planning to place an international phone call from Canada, one of the things you might want to look for in a phone card is whether it has local access number in your Canadian city. The following cities and regions have local access for your Canadian phone cards: Barrie, Belleville, Calgary, Edmonton, Guelph, Halifax, Hamilton, Kingston, Kitchener, London, Montreal, Oshwa, Ottawa, Ottawahull, Quebec, Quebec City, Sherbrooke, St. Catharines, St. John's, Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria, and Windsor, to name a few.
To find a phone card that will work from Canada, use the link and click on the corresponding Local Access links to see if you can use it without dialing the toll free access number (remember that using local access number saves you 1-2 cents/min compared to toll free access.)

Toll free access numbers in Canada
If you don't live in one of the Canadian cities with local phone card access numbers, you can still save up to 90% on your international calls by using phone cards with toll free access. Once again, find a phone card to call from Canada and check the access numbers, virtually all phone cards have a toll free number access in addition to local access.

International calling rates from Canada
If you are in the United States and would like to purchase a phone card you could use in Canada to call back home or any other country internationally, the rates from Canada will appear in U.S. dollars. If you are in Canada, your best rates will be shown in Canadian dollars. Use the following link if you are outside of Canada and would like to see the rates in Canadian dollars.

Phone card access numbers

Just about all the phone cards have a toll-free number access number (a notable exception is, for example, the Arbat phone card that can be only used in Moscow and other Russian cities.) All the phone cards that work in the United States (for calls to the rest of the world) have a toll-free access. Most of them also have local access numbers.

If you use a local access number your international rate per minute will be lower as opposed to when you use a toll-free number. The reason is obvious: phone card companies don't have to pay for your use of their 1-800 number so they pass their savings on to you.

The list of local access numbers is found under phone card descriptions.

Find the best card that suits your calling needs (use the search form below) and click on Local Access link next to that card.

If you don't see a local access number, you can still use it with a toll-free number, the difference is about 1 cent a minute. However, if you have a cell phone with nationwide long distance included, you can still take advantage of the lower local access rate, see the post about using mobile phone to make international calls.

International calls from mobile phones

Did you know you could save money by using a cell phone to make your international calls? All you need to do is purchase a phone card with local access and make sure to use your free minutes on your mobile phone.

Phone card companies give you a discounted rate on the already low prices if you use a local access number instead of a toll free number (since they don't have to pay for your call to their 1-800 number, they pass their savings on to you.) Of course you may use your land-line to make calls if the access number is available for your area code.

But this is where your cell phone comes in: if you don't have a local access phone number for your card in your area code, just use your mobile phone (most mobile plans include free long distance) to dial the phone card access number.

Majority of cell phone plans sold in the US today are based on national long distance flat rate. You pay the same rate to call your next door neighbor as you do the other side of the country (check your cell plan details to confirm this applies to your plan).

Selected cards provide Local Access numbers. Call with your cell phone through Local Access numbers and save up to 2 cents per minute on international calls!

Here's some examples:

Phone Card	Savings vs toll-free	Local Access Numbers
	2 cent/min	34 States listed
	1 cent/min	22 States listed
	1 cent/min	NY, NJ and CA
	1 cent/min	NY, NJ and CA

How to call Internationally

1. Using your long distance provider.
The most readily available means of calling from US internationally is to pick up your phone, dial the international access code - 011 - then the country code, followed by the area code and the local number. Though this method is perhaps the easiest, it is, unfortunately, the most expensive one. Depending on the country you are calling, the rates could be as high as $3 a minute.

2. Phone cards bought at a retail location.
A cheaper alternative is to use a calling card - a prepaid debit phone card. You purchase a certain amount of minutes that are subtracted with each call you make. A phone card might have either a toll-free or a local access number that you dial from your home phone or perhaps a cell phone. Phone cards can be purchased at a gas station, a grocery store, a warehouse club, retail stores, etc. While using a prepaid phone card bought from a brick-and-mortar retailer will save you money over using your home long distance company, you will still end up paying extra for a little piece of plastic the card is printed on and for the retailer's overhead.

3. Phone cards purchased online.
The cheapest alternative is to buy prepaid phone cards online. This is not a brand new technology, in fact it's been around for over ten years. The phone cards you find online are often from the same companies that sell them in retail locations, but because they are saving money on printing, marketing and delivering those cards to brick-and-mortar locations (and giving retailers their share to pay for their overhead), they offer you the same services at a much lower price.

As we've mentioned before, the sales of online phone cards have been around for years. In these years, only those companies that offered the best quality for the best price have been able to survive the competition. Moreover, certain companies specialize on certain locations; it is best to shop around different international phone card providers to find the best rates. For example, one company might offer the best rate for calling Mexico, but if you are looking for calling card to call Russia, you won't get the most competitive rates.

With that in mind, there are online stores that offer you a variety of calling cards only from those companies that have been around for years and who have been consistent in receiving a positive customer feedback. One such store is Calling Card Calls, representing a Boston-based communications corporation that has been in business since 1996.

How to select a phone card company

One of the main reasons why a person might be cautious about buying a phone card online is the fear of the unknown. In the case of phone cards we are talking about the unknown phone card company. I mean, not many people have heard of ACC, IDT, NTC and the like.

One way to overcome such a fear is to stick with what we know. AT&T has been around for decades and is a very familiar household name. In fact, you can buy AT&T phone cards online from the comfort of your home, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. AT&T prepaid phone cards are packed with features. Moreover, AT&T is the only phone card that offers toll-free access in over 100 countries around the world. However, all this comes with a price, and AT&T would cost you more than any other calling card from all the other smaller - compared with AT&T - companies trying to compete with the international telecommunications giant.

So, how could you know which company you can trust?

1. Does the store that sells the phone cards have a 1-800 customer support number?
This is first step in identifying whether you should bother with any phone card from them. Is there a live help, someone you can contact not only via an e-mail, but through a legitimate toll-free number? If there is such a number, you can proceed with the next step of identifying whether you can trust a phone card company.
Somewhat related to that: is the live help available in a number of languages? If the company has been around for a while, it tends to respond to the customers' demands. Obviously, when dealing with customers looking for means to call overseas, it is better to respond to their demands by providing customer support not only in English, but in some other languages as well.
Calling Card Calls offers you a toll-free support in English, Spanish and Russian. Call them if you'd like to check them out (the numbers are at the bottom of the contact page).

2. Does the phone card provider have a live customer support?
This is somewhat related to the preceding point. Only an established telecommunications provider will supply you with a toll-free number to talk to a live customer service representative. Take a look at the cards offered on Calling Card Calls. Click on any card and note that each phone card provider will supply you with a number to call for support. This number will be e-mailed to you with your PIN and instructions. Alternatively, you may contact the Calling Card Calls customer support to obtain the information, including customer support number, on any of the calling card provider companies.

3. Does the phone card store use a secure ordering form?
Now that you are satisfied with the fact that there will actually be a live person to talk to if need be, it's time to see how secure is the ordering process. There are sites that requests you to fill out a form with your personal information, including your credit card number, that do not use any encryption. How can you tell? Look at the URL (address) field of your browser - encrypted pages contain https:// in their URL, there is also an indicator that you are on a secure page located at the bottom of your browser, usually represented by a lock symbol.
All purchasing transactions done on Calling Card Calls use a 256-bit High Grade Encryption. You can check that for yourself, without buying a card. Select a card, click on the Buy button and proceed to the next step (once again, you don't have to go all the way through with the purchase.) You will notice that you are taken to a secure site. Check the security certificate while you are there by clicking on the little lock at the bottom of your browser.