Best way to call Germany
 

What is the cheapest way to call Germany from the US? We have AT&T for our cell service. I've looked into adding international calls to our exisiting plan. It's $3.99 per month and about .09 to a landline and .26 to a cell phone. But, I'm worried because the fine print says that this does not include taxes & fees. We all know how much this can add. Any suggestions?

Buy an international calling card from Costco. About 30 bucks. It also works to call the US from abroad.

I have a couple old AT&T Prepaid Phone Cards, originally bought at Sam's Club where they were about 4 cents a minute for domestic calls. I used one to call Germany the other day -- each minute used up 4 units, so basically it was around 16-18 cents per minute. I thought that was quite reasonable. I am now planning to add minutes to the card, so I can continue to use it.

10-10 numbers can be cheap. Details here:

http://www.10-10phonerates.com/

The Costco cards mentioned above are great for calling the US from Germany. last I checked, they were quite a bit cheaper than using a calling card bought in Germany.

I use PennyTalk,

http://www.pennytalk.com/

The calling rate to Germany is $0.02/minute plus a $0.49 connection charge.

At the risk of being accused of not answering your question directly, may I ask what the situation is?

Is there a family member who will be in Germany for some length of time? Do you want to just have phone service to keep in touch a few times a week, or would it be nice to gab for an hour or two a day?

If the latter, you should look at a service called Skype.com which allows two people at computers anywhere in the world to talk forever without any charge whatsoever. A computer Skype user can also call a landline for a very small per-minute fee.

Robespierre, the calls are for my daughter. She has a friend in Germany and would like to call her friend once a week or so and talk for 10 to 15 minutes.