Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Calling long distance is expensive if I just pick up the phone and dial. To avoid the high cost, We resort to all kinds of side-steps: cell phones with national calling plans are on example.
I use a pre-paid calling card to reduce my calls to about four cents a minute.
Once I called my daughter in Australia from here is Connecticut. The call was short. The cost was over $200. I went the direct way and the most expensive.
Surely there are cheaper ways to keep in touch with family.
Enter Clark Howard.
Being a consumer advocate was my career path not taken. I all most did it...did volunteer research for Ralph Nader in college. I was a Nader's Raider and loved it. I loved learning how things work, especially our economic system.
Clark Howard is a consumer advocate. From his website, I researched various programs for long distance service. Skype was my choice.
Here is how it works: Go to the skype website and download their free program. Go to the electronics store and purchase a headset...earphone and mic combined. Get the other party to do the same thing. Choose a telephone address. Most people use their name. Learn the other person's name/phone address. At a prearranged time, plug in.
It worked beautifully! My daughter, my grandson and myself talked for a long time at no cost to either of us. We were talking through our computers. There are other options, like computer to land line phone, but computer to computer is fine for us.
There was some delays in our speech transmission, caused by Skype's program or by the shear number of people using the program. I can put up with that.
We have a "date" to call each other next week at the same time.
The world is shrinking. I can talk to Australia as if the country, as if my daughter is right next door.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Melanie O. said...

I love Skype - and I'm thrilled that we can chat now and stay connected. I feel like I need to write them a thank you letter or something. XOXO

8:27 PM  
Blogger gardenbug said...

We'll have to add a video cam or web cam...what ever they call it. Then We can teleconference.

7:19 PM  

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