No Cingular Canada roaming plans!?!?

I have Cingular Nation 450 w/rollover. I am going to Vancouver for a few days on business. I remembered that Cingular had a North American roaming option and called Cingular CS yesterday prepared to pay the $9.99 or whatever, to add it to my plan. Even for a 5 day trip, it seemed worth it. I found out that the NA Roaming feature no longer exists, at any price. Dialed and received calls in Canada will cost .79/min or, if I buy the Canadian Discounted Rate plan for $3.99, .59/min.

I gently suggested that .59 was still a bit steep and asked again if there was any way to prepay for free roaming in Canada. The CS rep was very nice and apologetic. He said he personally thought it was a mistake that NA roaming was no longer available, and that some form of NA roaming may come back in the future. He added the $3.99 Canada plan to my features but also gave me a $10 credit because the feature did not meet my needs. I thanked him for his help, candor and the discount - he didn't have to do that and I have no problem with the customer service at all.

I am posting here rather than in the Cingular forum, because I'd appreciate some advice on international calling cards or other ways of cutting my phone expenses while in Canada.

Last time I was in Toronto I went into a convenience store and bought a calling card for the US, but I don't remember the brand or the per minute charge. Is there any particular calling card I should look for?

Is there another, smarter way around this problem? My current phone is locked, unfortunately, so a non-Cingular SIM won't help.

Thanx

 

Thanks. I should have said my phone is now "restricted" (due to an inept unlocking service that shall remain nameless unless they don't give me my $20 back ) and I can't unlock it with just a code.

Also, since I am traveling on business I need my normal cell phone number to work. Of course, I can call my voicemail, but that sort of defeats the purpose.

.20 CAD per minute is much better than my current .59 USD, but don't international calling cards let you call the States for much less? Of course they are a hassle because dialing is a long process and you still have the high charges when receiving calls. I figure I can work around this, though. Anyone have a recommendation on a good calling card?

 

Thanks, that's helpful.

I'm still surprised that Cingular doesn't have NA roaming. Verizon does, apparently. If I traveled to Canada/Mexico a lot, that would induce me to switch.

 

Update - I took Scrumhalf's advice and joined up with Onesuite. Given the 3.5c/min rate, a $15 intial investment gave me 428 minutes for calls to the US which was more than enough for my 4 days of work in Vancouver. For a business traveler, the 2.5c rate isn't very useful, since the only local number you generally have is the hotel phone and that's what you are trying to avoid using. It is nice to have a local number option, though.

One of Onesuite's advantages over the run-of-the-mill international phone card is that you can register up to 3 numbers with them and then the system recognizes you - you don't have to enter your PIN, just the 800/866 number and the number you are calling. Unfortunately, this did not work while roaming on Rogers in Canada. It does work from the US, so apparently Rogers was not relaying my caller ID.

Another advantage is that the PIN they give you is your telephone number plus 4 digits. This makes it easy to memorize - which ends up being quite important.

Only complaint, besides the caller ID thing which was not Onesuite's fault, is that the system is very finicky about pauses in entering numbers. If, in the middle of entering your 14 digit PIN and the 10 digit number you are calling, you pause for more than 2-3 seconds, you will get an error message and you have to start over. I was alerted to this when I called Customer Service and complained that the system was not recognizing my PIN. She said, "Don't enter it too fast or too slow".

Once I memorized my PIN, and I wasn't fumbling with my Palm Address book, I could enter all 24 digits without pausing too much and things were much better. All in all a pretty good service and I probably will continue to use them for other international calls while I am traveling. Thanks Scrumhalf! :thumb:

 

Yikes, My bill came!! How did I miss the fact that Rogers and Cingular would still charge me airtime minutes and International Roaming.??!!?! :O The only thing I eliminated with the callling card was the long distance charge.

I tried to argue with Cingular that I was calling a Canadian toll-free (866) number, therefore all I should have been using was my airtime minutes under my plan. No way, Jose. If you are outside the US you are going to be charged, and big time.

I can't understand how I missed this, or how these cards are useful to wireless users who have not swapped in a local SIM. Yes, I know about local prepaid SIMs, but this was not an option with the phone I had at the time. Now, of course, I will use this painful incident to make sure I get an unlock code from Cingular.