<p>Sorry to start another thread about a topic that has been discussed many times, but I need help.</p>
<p>Unless I am not looking in the right place, I am finding it isn’t as cheap to make the international calls I want. My daughter has an UK cell phone and I want to be able to call her from either a landline phone or cell. Currently I use What’s App for texting to her Blackberry and my husband can BBM with her. We can also Facetime from my iPhone to her iPad and she has cheap rates to call us from her cell so most of the time we are covered. Yesterday I needed to talk to her ASAP as I was at the bank and needed a quick reply. What’s App doesn’t always deliver the text immediately, so she didn’t see my text as soon as I would have liked. </p>
<p>It looks like with Skype, it would cost between 20-26 cents a minute to call to her UK cell phone; of course a call to a landline is only about 2.5 cents a minute. I have check prepaid international calling cards, and on the surface those seem to be half the price. We actually have a card that my husband has used for business, but I don’t know what the international rates are, but will look into that tonight. Costco use to sell an international prepaid card, so I will look there again and see if they have it and what the rates are.</p>
<p>What am I missing here? I always hear how cheap Skype is, but calling from a US phone to a UK cell is not cheap!! For my daughter the reverse is cheap, but not for us.</p>
<p>Does she have a reasonable data plan on her phone? Google chat is a good way to send instant messages (you will need Vtok app or something similar for your iPhone since Google uses Flash). The caveat is that both users have to be signed into their Google accounts at the same time to be able to chat.</p>
<p>Costco’s calling cards are not a bad deal either, unless you decide to recharge:</p>
<p>I used google voice to send texts, and google+ hangout to video chat rather than skype. I would typically get his attention by sending a facebook message. Facebook flashes a message alert if he is using his computer, not that he is necessarily always on fb . Then we would fb chat and migrate over to google+.</p>
<p>That is all the free stuff. He also had a local cellphone, and I have his cellphone number. In case of an emergency I would call his cellphone, make it quick, and just pay the $2.75 per minute ATT international calling rate. I called his cellphone exactly once in 4 months, and that was really more to test it than an actual emergency.</p>
<p>somemom-Well at least I now know why is it so much more to call her cell than it is for her to call us! We are fine with texting, gchat, and Facetime along with her calling us; it is just those few times I might want to get her immediately, like yesterday at the bank that I need a cheaper rate. </p>
<p>Like most people, my daughter doesn’t have a landline and spends 50%-75% of her time on the road with work travel, so her cell is the best way to talk to her. </p>
<p>Unless someone knows of a specific calling card or other way to call from our landline or cell phone to her cell phone, I will compare the prices of different calling cards and Skype credits.</p>
. Then we would fb chat and migrate over to google+.</p>