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Avoid the airport pay-phone heist.
The conversation may be brief--a variation of "Honey, I've landed safely." But the cost of such an interstate call from an airport pay phone can be excessive--up to $7.66 for a three-minute call, or 60 times more than you need to pay.
Consumers who use pay phones at an airport or elsewhere have dial-around options that cut such costs. What many people do, however--because it means pressing the fewest numbers--is dial "0" plus the phone number they're calling to have the call billed to their credit or calling card, industry experts say.
But there's a catch, especially at airports. AT&T is the "picked" long-distance carrier at 86 of the top 100 U.S. airports. The picked carrier, whose name is posted on the pay phone, is the one your call is automatically routed to if you use the dial "0"option.
And AT&T's charges for this service are among the highest in the industry. AT&T imposes a $4.99 service charge plus 89 cents per minute if you dial 0 and want the call billed to your credit card or regional phone-company calling card. That's $7.66 for a three-minute call--at a time when competition has cut the cost of a long-distance residential call to as low as a nickel a minute. (Pay phones nationwide also have picked carriers--mainly AT&T, Sprint, and MCI. Fees are comparable to airport pay-phone fees.)
You can use 800 dial-around numbers and other calling cards to avoid AT&T's fees. The cost of a three-minute call that way can be considerably lower.
But a prepaid phone card can be cheaper still. Cards with per-minute charges of up to 10 cents per minute provide good value. The best we found was Sprint's prepaid ...
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