GL: Canadian Calling Card

[Charles Culotta]

> Anyone knows who offers the best price on a calling card if you are calling from Canada back to the U.S.?
> Thanks
> 
> Nancy McCarley
>  
> M/V Aloha Friday

Hey Nancy,
I have no idea who offers the best price BUT here's what we did.  Last 
year when we came up and couldn't get Verizon plan for Canada I just 
went into the first store and picked the best one off the rack of phone 
cards.  The good news is that pay phones are very accessible here unlike 
the US.  Even the small towns have them.  When we were in Montreal we 
went to a cell phone store and discovered that Canadians pay a lot for 
cell phones (the government is working on that very thing now) we were 
planning to get a prepaid phone (like Tracfone in the US,  you pay $10 
for th ephone and then buy minutes when you want to)  The only option 
they told us about was Virgin Mobile but you pay about $200 for the 
phone and the "topping up" seemed confusing to me and we didn't want to 
buy a phone for $200.  So we bought a calling card by VOX, 250 minutes 
for $10, adding time is fairly straight forward.  Every pay phone that 
I've seen is owned by Bell and has a place where you can insert a card, 
but I think it has to be a Bell card and I really didn't want the phone 
company to bill me without my consent. For example, if you get a strange 
carrier that Bell does not support they could bill you for their charges 
and if they have a credit card they could just automatically bill it. 
It's a long shot but it could happen so the VOX card seemed simpler.

This year we bought the Nationwide + Canada plan from Verizon but as it 
turns out there isn't coverage where we're going to be so we canceled it 
and suspended our cell service while we're here.

this may be more info than you wanted but hope it helps.   Where are you 
and where are you going? This is a good time to be in Canada, very few 
boats....we had the locks to ourselves and haven't had to wait..Of 
course we're here early but from what the locals tell us the boats have 
been much fewer for the last few years.  C & I will be in Georgian Bay 
this week and we'll just cruise around there and North Channel for the 
next month or so and then to Lake Huron for the remainder of the summer. 
If you do come up ,stock up on supplies, it's expensive here. 
Everything like food, shampoo, bleach cleaning stuff, paper towels, etc. 
Example Chas & I split a club sandwich, fries, 2 cokes and of course the 
choc shake for C and the bill was $25 and that 's pretty standard.  But 
it's beautiful here and the weather is lovely...........

Have a good summer and keep in touch.

Pat

CHARLES C., JR. & PAT CULOTTA
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS
M/V CCRIDER
PATTERSON, LA.
charlesculotta.com