[sandia911]

Cost effective phone cards in Spain

I'm still looking for the best phone card to use for local calls in Spain. I've run into a wall searching for these cards online. Most of them, as stated on comfi dot com include an outrageous 99cent surcharge for calls made from a payphone.

Of course, I ONLY use payphones with my phone card and only this way, in addition to skype can I totaly replace my cell phone in expensive roaming zones (like spain). What I do is go to a payphone, and make calls using a toll free 1-800, or local equivalent. Thay way I can make the call for next to nothing (or free), and talk at low rates, 2 or 3 cents/minute. Last time I did this, I managed to squeeze a 10 dollar card for near to 3 months. I'd like to redo this in Spain, and elsewhere in Europe thereafter.

WHAT CARD AM I LOOKING FOR?

[musicdisciple]

I gave up on cards. I started going to the call shops instead. Low rates and you get to be indoors.

If you don't like those or can't find one then try asking at whatever hostel you're at. Usually they can point you in the right direction. Obviously be careful if they just try to sell you one.

[sandia911]

i don't stay in hostels anymore, i couchsurf and i need to make calls anywhere, i can't depend on call shops unless they are on every corner.

[musicdisciple]

Best of luck then. Hopefully more people will post, or if you find a good card then post here so everyone knows.

[darsh39]

When i go there i don't use cards i use phone shops or local booths....

[Tim Uden]

I usually just buy a local SIM card for my mobile, then let people know my new number. That's way cheaper than roaming with your mobile and hopefully people call you before you have to phone them so you don't pay anything.

Just use Rebtel when you make international calls from your mobile. It is cheaper than most calling cards! You do have to pay for the local mobile call in addition to Rebtel's international charge, but there are usually cheap deals that bring down the cost.

Alternatively you can use call shops or find a hostel or internet café that has Skype.

[bjcbjc]

This is the only phone card link you will ever need.
http://www.timedial.net/phone-cards-price-compare/
Time Dial searches the top sites for phone cards. It is the only phone card site that calculates and compares the full cost of calling cards including all rates fees and surcharges.
Simply answer 4 questions and it tells you how much a phone card will cost you for a given period with your stated usage.

Make sure you select usage from a payphone. Most cards either charge a payphone rate or a payphone fee. One or the other.

[sandia911]

Not a bad site, but it doesn't say how much it will cost to call mobiles. Usually, calling mobiles will be twice, three or sometimes 5x the cost of calling landlines. Why they have excluded mobile rates in their countries search, I don't know. Check out a better site, comfi.dot, or prepayconnection.com. Do a Phone card search, on country name - Cellular.

Oops, I found the cellular rates. You have the click on the card. This is a great site. Thanks.

But, I must admit the site does not find the cheapest per minute rates. It may be easy to use, find a card, and with many advanced search options, it does NOT provide the cheapest rates.

This card, from timedial is 19eurocents/min to call Spanish mobiles,
http://www.cloncom.com/card.jsp?card...id_to=1436#anc

On prepayconnection, it costs 7.1UScents/min to call Spanish mobiles. Check it out.
http://www.prepayconnection.com/deta...p?product=3362

[sandia911]

Sorry, forgot to mention prepayconnection is based on calls from the US. It's pretty useless for travelers in Europe.

Comfi.com, and Timedial.com appear to the best sites, because they have an origin, and deestination card search. I wonder if there are other similar sites searching, and comparing cheap phone cards.

[sandia911]

Here is a better link to Comfi's Spain-CELL cards,

The cheapest here is 9.3cents/minute, and that's from SPAIN-SPAIN-cell (exactly what a traveler would need traveling in Spain).
http://www.comfi.com/Phone-Card/Golden%20Lotus

The only downside here, the 3minute rounding of calls (as opposed to 1 second), 99cents payphone surcharge, but all cards have that, so...
http://www.comfi.com/Phone-Card/Golden%20Lotus

and by the way, timedial searches comfi's cards too, but places ??? next to its fields. They are usually at the bottom of the search.

Conclusion, Golden Lotus is by far the best deal, simply because it has the lowest SPAIN, to SPAIN-cell rates, at 9.3cents/minute. It also has the lowerst landline rates, Barcelona 2.4, and Madrid even less. It beats the Timedial cards, because their mobiles rates are between 10-38cents/minute, and none of them offer landline rates below 5cents/minute. They only benefit they offer are 1 second rounding.

That would be this card
http://www.cloncom.com/card.jsp?card...1&AFFN=12002-0

It's one second rounding is appealing, but its 25cents/minute to mobiles, and 40cents/minute to Barcelona landlines, though Madrid is free.

So for a 3 minute call, option 1 would cost 9.3cents to call a mobile, and option 2, 25cents.

For a 30 second call, option 1 would cost 9.3 cents to call a mobile, and option 2 12.5cents/minute.

It appers that despite its 1 second rounding, the high per minute rates don't make it the better card.

I guess that shows that per minute rates to mobiles are the most important factor when choosing a traveler's phone card (as a means to replace cellphones, of course). What's the point of buying SIM CARDS in every continenet, or country when you can rely on phone cards, and use landlines to make calls (with the phone cards). Also, Webcalldirect (cheaper than Skype) is a good bet. It costs 15cents/minute to call Spanish mobiles on Webcalldirect (using internet connection), and landlines are FREE.

So, with Webcalldirect, and Golden Lotus I believe making calls (betwen 1-4/day) in Spain should cost no more than 10-20dollars for the whole month of November.

[bjcbjc]

http://www.TimeDial.net/phone-cards-price-compare/

Just to let you know that TimeDial.net has added mobile rates. You can now select that you are calling a mobile phone. All the cards mentioned on this thread except for prepay connection are availible through Time Dial including all Cloncom and Comfi's cards. The downside is that some data is missing and replaced with question marks.

Quote from site = "In particular toll free rates are not provided by some companies and mobile rates by an another. Our suggestion is to search by local rates then click on the cards to find how much extra the toll free rates are (all required information can be obtained by clicking on the cards). Hopefully the phone card companies will provide the data soon."

[bjcbjc]

Time Dial have replaced the question marks with data.

http://www.TimeDial.net/phone-cards-price-compare/

Quote from site

"We have written some web bots that crawl the phone card sites to obtain this missing data so mostly the problem is resolved. If you still see question marks it usually means the info is not displayed even on the phone card supplier's site. "

[goodyboo]

i use this one

http://www.phonecard-deals.com/

but i do international calls most the time.