Voicemail, Phone Cards and High Technology

[acidhartha]

Hey all. I'm new to the site, but am loving it. I'm heading to Europe in November and all points on the compass after that. Planning to do some hardcore backpacking with very little money.

I have a question though. I was wondering if anyone knew of a service where you can get a voicemail service so people could call an 800 # and leave you voice messages and you could access it internationally.

Also, does anyone know of a worldwide Internet provider that has good access in Europe and Asia? Any info in this area would be great.

Thanks!

-Ryan.

[travelpunk]

Hey acidhartha! WELCOME TO THE BOARDS!
Glad to hear that you've found Travelpunk useful

First, why an 800 number in particular? I'm thinking that you think that you can access it for free, avoiding an international long distance call, while traveling around Europe. Am I right?
I thought the same, but found out last year that 800 numbers are only free if you were calling from within the US.
I had to call my credit card company from Madrid, and it wouldn't work. I went online to their website the next day and found that they had a diffent number to call if you were overseas. Then looked at a bunch of other companies that had the same setup, including my past employer.

So, phone cards are probably going to be your only option. You can buy cheap cards at most liquor stores in Europe for cheap. $6 USD usually got me several hours of talk time to the US from Madrid. Paris was more or less the same.

Maybe you can buy a monthly voicemail box (just look in any of your local Thrifty Nickels, or other local publications of that type, for the PAGER/CELL PHONE/ VOICEMAIL ads) Last I bothered to check in LA, it was right around $5 a month for your own voicemail, but that was a while ago.

If you have a cell phone with voicemail, you're probably going to be paying your monthly bill while being overseas (otherwise you'll lose your number). In this case, use the voicemail that comes with it.

You will find internet cafes everywhere throughout Europe, so accessing your emails should almost never be a problem.

What I did before leaving to Europe for year was, disconnect my home phone, my cell phone, pager, and called or just got the word out to everyone that email is the ONLY option to get in contact with me and go out of your way to get their emails. Make sure you start that process a few weeks before you take off, just to cover your bases.

After having done so, there were no phone messages for me to check, only emails. This proved to be the best method of contact and extremely cost effective. In fact, I didn't write back many people a fast as I could of, because I didn't want them thinking that I had such easy access to the net. I wanted to come back home with stories, not update them on my daily activities. But, that's just me

If you want to keep a daily journal or update people as frequently as you want, you can create an online blog (short for web log) for FREE and send everyone the link to your blog.

Go here to set up an easy to set up, free, blog- Blogger.com


Now, I could be wrong about the 800 number thing, but it never worked for me . Maybe someone had success with it. Anyone?

[Canadian Dude]

When I was in Europe last month, I was a phone card freak, you have to watch whcih you buy, some that i got where 5E for 100 min, but if you used a payphone it was 50min, but a hotel phone you got 120min...confusing huh? I bought one in Brussels that was 5E and I got 14min...Scotland 5P got me 30 min...and so on...

Check the specs on the phone cards, EVERY LAST ONE IS DIFFERENT...different restrictions and different advantages...so shop around...most of the ones i got i could not use in other countries, so u may wanna check that as well.

My advise on the phone cards...SHOP AROUND!!
B)


PS:

TO DA BOARDS!!!

[travelpunk]

and watch out for connection fees. Everytime you make a call with certain phone cards, theres a connection fee of, say .49 cents. Five calls on a $5 card and you just wiped out half of your available credit.

Can't remember what some of the fees were, but here in the US, it's common to have a connection fee. If it doesn't there will be a monthly or bi-monthly maintenance fee of around the same charge.