I have a friend who's down on his luck and temporarily living at a YMCA. He needs a phone card in order to make calls which I'll be providing. All his calls will be from a pay phone and I need to find a card with a comparatively low pay phone surcharge. That's probably more important than the per-minute rate since the card I bought him Saturday at the drugstore charges the equivalent of $1.80 to call from a pay phone. (I know, that's outrageous). That one was 10c/minute but the pay phone surcharge is draining the card at an alarming rate.

I tried searching around but it quickly became obvious that it will take me eternity to wade through the millions of hits on Google.

My wish list is - pay phone surcharge under a buck, decent per-minute rate, no connection fee, no expiration date.

I was looking at the AT&T card from Sam's Club. 800 minutes for $27.76. No connection fee, no expiration, about 3.5c/minute, one-minute billing. The payphone surcharge is 30 minutes (=$1.04).

Thanks in advance for any better suggestions.

How is this one? (http://www.callingcards.com/shopping/card_profile.asp?TC=LE&GUID=AEB8992CA25E804F8FC50A035BC9E5C1)

That one has a nice low payphone surcharge but I'm trying to stay away from connection fees and maintenance fees. In this case, with most calls being made from a payphone, the connection fee + payphone fee = $1.24 per call each time.

I appreciate the link.

Do you have a membership to Sam's Club?
http://search.samsclub.com/eclub/search.go?BV_SessionID=_SC_1997678532.1130036629_CS_&BV_EngineID=ccddaddfmhhgjgjcfkfcfkjdgoodflf.0&simplesearchfor=phone+card&simpleitemtype=0&searchtype=simple&action=search&logged_in=No

No maint. fees and the pay-phone surcharge was 8 minutes the last time I used it (which was a while ago, you might want to follow up). $.0347 per minute. No expiration of minutes.

So, an 800 minute card is $27.76 w/free shipping.

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Wal-mart has a 1,000 minute card for $49.00. 23 minute surcharge to call from a pay phone. No maint. charges. No expiration of minutes.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=1527899

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These are both AT&T phone cards, have some sort of voicemail system, which might help you if you need to leave a message for your friend. :)

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b399/Marcster2005/Smileys/luck.gif

Don't know if you are still looking for phonecards but just found out today you can go to a dollar tree its a dollar store they have 50 minute at&t phone cards 50 minutes $1.00 no surcharges if in usa hopr this helps someone got to get these make great stocking stuffers:gd_phone: :gd_dollar :gd_pineap

Thanks to everyone for the info. I'm going with that 800 minute AT&T card from Sam's Club.

Thanks to everyone for the info. I'm going with that 800 minute AT&T card from Sam's Club.

Did you doube-check my info on the 8 minute premium? I haven't used my calling card in soooo long...

Yes, I verified the payphone surcharge on that 800-minute AT&T card from Sam's. It comes to $1.08 (31 minutes) but the per-minute charge is so low it's still worth it.

Picked up the card last night. It was cheaper in the store than on their website (card was $22.71) and the pay phone surcharge is actually 33 minutes, not 31 as I was told by AT&T over the phone. Cost per minute came to 2.8 cents.

That's some pretty cheap LD.