Calling for cheap (save 5.00 euros per month)

The situation is like this - you are in a new country and you need to make a call. You have no

SIM card, you have no calling cards and the phone

doesn't take coins. So it seems like anything you are going to do is going to end up costing you a lot

of money.

A good alternative is Skype with their

new subscription service. You pay a monthly fee for a selected country, or all of Europe and you can make as many ca

lls as you like.

Calling ahead to hotels,

calling to inquir

e about something, making reservations and so on.

So, what is Skype? Skype is the most established Voice Over Internet Protocol products out there.

Normally, if you are making a lot of calls, you will pay by the amount of calls you make, which often leads to weighing up the options - "Should I call Mum on the landline, or with Skype? Should I Skype her to her mobile or landline?"

The thing is you just want to be able to call your mum or someone more useful like a hotel or airline and you don't want to have to pay so much for it.

I use skype all the time for work and I'm glad I just pay a few euros for my month of calls. Depending on what country you get the subscription for, you can call landlines or mobiles.

How to use it.

After you download Skype and set up your account, go to their website to the store then click on the subscriptions section and follow the prompts.

A trick for saving money on skype is to change your address to a country that doesn't have Value Added Tax (VAT). It doesn't matter where you are registered or where your credit card is from. Just find a country that doesn't pay the extra VAT, such as Australia, and you save a few euros each month.