people, please help nasti out with her phone in madrid issue! she needs answers!

people, nasti needs answers concerning her phone situation in madrid! help her!

calling around madrid is so expensive! calling home to the states is cheaper than making calls to mobiles around madrid and spain. i don´t have a phone in my house(i don´t want to shell out 200 euros to telefonica at the moment and auna isn´t available at my address)and can only make calls from my mobile and phone booths. since i don´t have a contract plan with vodafone, i just recharge my mobile 10 or 15 euros every so often. doing that, i could easily spend 200 euros a month, but i can´t afford that right now. i spend about 25 euros a week and pretty much just messages.

and my social is suffering! oh my f#€king god! i am such a flake flake calling people and if i can´t improve my phone situation, i´m seriously thinking about not coming back this fall.

using mobile phones here in Spain is very expensive, Nasti, as you have discovered. To help keep my mobile phone use in check, I always carry a telefonica card with me to use at the payphones, as well as a EUROCITY card to call to the states.

Text messaging is definitely cheaper than phone calls, but sometimes, if it takes two or three msgs to communicate what you could have communicated in a 1-2 min conversation, it would have been cheaper to make the call. When text msging make sure that your messages are to the point and you don´t have to exchange 3 or 4 of them to get the point across.

Social life is suffering? What about email? Could you communicate the same messages via email as you would text messages (meaning, is their instantaneous response so necessary?). All of these things are things that I have struggled with as I adapted to the horrendous phone charges here.

One final note, Vodafone is one of the most expensive carriers to call... particularly if your friends have telefonica/movistar.

Failure to get a grip on your mobile phone usage would be the most lame excuse for not coming back in the fall!!!!

phone cards, phone cards, phone cards. These save me a fortune calling to California. There are plenty of cheap and good ones. As mentioned above, EUROCITY is a good one. I used to call my family on my cell and tell them to call me back, making my call less than 1 min, but with a phone card I can actually call my friends for super cheap!

people, i need help with my phone situation with LOCAL CALLS in madrid. yes, i do use phone cards to call the united states and sometimes just call my parents for 10 seconds on my mobile and just have them call me back, but it´s my LOCAL CALLS that i´m asking about. it´s cheaper with those phone cards to call the united states than it is on my cell phone calling across town.

THE ISSUE HERE IS LOCAL CALLS IN MADRID. PLEASE HELP ME PEOPLE.

is telefonica having any deals lately?

hey, if i desired some catty talk, i´d go to some other message board about the strokes or whatever other band, or even go to groupiecentral.com or one of the other where catty boys and girls tend to congregate, but i expected better of this site.

c´mon, toss me some spanish in the subjunctive now. that will just make me smile and gurgle so hard.

if you don´t have much constructive stuffins´to say, please can it.

Looks like somebody just opened up a can of nasti-@$$. hehehe..

Can't we all just get along?!!

From what I've seen and heard, it looks like the Telefonica cards are the way to go. Everyone seems to have the same problems with the calls in Spain, but it's really up to each individual to decide what's best for them. I know we've discussed mobile/pay phones in the past on the board, so you may want to search out there too to see what other info previous posters have given.

Buena suerte!

-GG

Even though from the beginning your messages have come off as, well, NASTY, I'll help you anyway.

There are a ton of websites where you can send free messages to other cell phones in Spain. Do an internet search and find one. I always send text messages to my friends in Spain and I'm sitting here in NY. Or just don't call people... meet them in person like everyone else in Spain does.

Melinda

Basically, using a mobile phone in Spain without a contract can get pricey. It´s that simple. I learned a lot by looking at what the young people here do to save money. Text messages, text messages, text messages! They can be a pain to write but they are really cheap. There is also an option on some phones to, instead of send a regular message, "chat" even though you get charged for each message you send, it is cheaper than just one normal message (you also can´t write as much, but still a good amount). Also if you just need to tell someone that you´re downstairs waiting for them or some simple thing like that, don´t call them, give them a missed call,a "llamada perdida". Just let it ring once and hang up, you don´t get charged unless the other end picks up the phone. Due to the prices of mobile calls, people on a budget in Spain don´t usually spend that much time on their mobiles just "chatting". I guess if you were calling local non-mobile numbers in madrid, a phone card and a telephone booth would be your best bet. Just to make sure, you know that calling a mobile phone number is more expensive than calling a regular number?

Nasti-
If you don't want to pay the money for a phone in your apt. you're really left with little choice than do what you're doing and the suggestions everyone is giving you. It may seem like a lot of money, but really if you think about it, your spending more money avoiding getting the regular phone! Now even if you do decide to get a regular phone installed- calls are still not cheap! In Spain you are charged per call and the amount of time you're on the call - so you'd still have to be careful not to get carried away and spend too much time on the phone. Roe's llamada perdida is a good suggestion- my friends and I do that alot- like when we're going to meet and you're on your way out the door so that the other person knows that and can estimate how long it will take you... or even do 2 in a row if you're going to be late- stuff like that. Keep in mind also that its cheaper to call movil to movil than movil to fijo (reg. telephone). You say you have vodaphone- that may be part of your problem- what types of phones do your friends have? Its more expensive to call someone whose phone is from a different company and cheaper if you have the same company- maybe you should look into movistar or amena-find out what most of your friends have and check out the deals with the different cell carriers. Those are your choices so you can deal with it, or like you said, if its that much of a burden, don't return to Spain. That simple. Good luck!

All of this makes me realize how lucky we are here in the U.S. to have fairly cheap telephone options. I am on a mobile calling plan with free unlimited calling on weekends, free calls to other people with the same service provider, etc.--plus 800 weekday minutes (split between my husband and me) for about $70 a month (that's for two mobile telephones).

We have dropped long distance from our home telephone and just use the mobiles for long distance calling. And of course, we have free local calling (which for me includes four regional area codes in an enormous 5-county metropolitan area) on our fijo. I think we spend under $90 a month, total, for all our calling--and we are on the phone a lot, with family spread out over about 6 other states.

I wonder why there is such a difference in the price of phone service in Spain (and the rest of Europe)?

aww shucks peeps, thanks for the advice even though you haven given me the miraculous answers that i was hoping for.

i think that eventually i^ll probably fork over the money over to telefonica for a phone card, be it 200 or whatever.

see, i{m very much into sending messsages. it{s just that some spaniards here don{t always take to messages and can be a tad insulted by them after a while. also, calling on a street phone gets so old. i just plain love the feeling of being surrounded by the walls of my room while making a call pertaining to a delicate situation.

and no, i am not one of those american girls who spends hours a day on the telephone. i just need a phone right now so i can{t be neglectful of my contacts, which are quite a few.

how much do monthly telefonica bills come to. how much do they charge for around spain(mobile, fijo) calls? does it cost much less to call from a home phone o a movil through telefonica(i cannot get auna as my address, fug)? what are your home phone bills like?

Nasti-
For phone calls to movil phones- use a movil! When you call from a reg. telf. it gets expensive. So use your reg phone for regular calls only. Use a phone card with your reg. phone for your international calls- that should keep your bills down.

As per avg. phone bills... hard to say- depends on who you're calling and how long you tend to speak on the phone. Avg from 40 - 60 euros. But it also depends on what services you chose with telefonica.

Here's info on phone what a phone call costs from your home phone to another fijo:
Nacionales
Tipo de Llamada Tarifa llamada mínima Tarifa Normal-Importe/minuto adicional (1) Tarifa Reducida-Importe/minuto adicional (1) FRANQUICIA (Número de segundos sin coste adicional al iniciar)
Metropolitana Connection fee: 0,0685 € reg hour additional minute: 0,0240 minute cost at reduced fare: € 0,0099 additional free seconds after additional connection(so if you don't talk more than 160 sec. you only get charged the cost of the connection of the call): € 160 sg.
Provincial Connecion fee: 0,0833 Reg. price add min: € 0,0384 Reduced fare: € 0,0264 Free seconds before charge:€ 0 sg.
Interprovincial Connection fee:0,0833 € Regular min: 0,0678 Reduced min:€ 0,0378 Free time after connection of call:€ 0 sg.

For more information go to telefonicaonline.com it should pretty much answer all of your questions. It gives info as per times for reduced fares/reg fares and costs from a reg phone to a movil and even breaks down how much calling different movil carries would be (Amena is the most costly, vodaphone, moviline and movistar are the same.

This is a little bit of a mystery to me. I must confess that I don't use my mobile much, since it is office-issued, and they will charge me up the wazoo if I use it for personal calls, and I don't want to have to carry around two mobiles if I were to get a personal one. Also, up to now, I haven't really found the need to have a mobile since I have a fixed line at home.

However, everywhere I go, I see Madrileños of all ages gabbing away on their mobiles, especially young Madrileñas. What's up with that? If mobile calls are so expensive, do I just happen to see the independently-wealthy users? Or is Papa paying the bills?

No, most people just suck it up and pay the bills (I should say recharge the card!). Cell phone use is soooo common because people are more often out and about then they are at home. It also depends on the plan. I have a good cell phone plan that calls from 4 in the afternoon to 4 in the morning (when I use it more- between those hours are mostly work hours so not too many calls to be made from a cell- a landline is used here ) are cheap- so not a big deal.

There you go Nasti- what call plan do you have? Maybe you should look into a different calling plan (you can change them at any time).

You might want to consider buying a second SIM card (that is if you have a need to make personal calls as well) for personal calls. It´s tiny and fits perfectly in your wallet. Simply replace your company´s sim card for yours when you want to make personal calls!

Hola Chica,
What is a SIM card?

Booklady- its like a computer chip that goes into the phone that retains all the memory etc. that you have programmed into your phone. When we talk about recharging the card, its the chip they credit the account on

Subscriber Identification Module

Chica, yeah it's good to have 2 SIM cards
I have 2, first one is so cheap in Finland and the other one is cheap abroad and my girlfriend can send free SMS to it. They have a deal with Vodafone, so it works nicely in Spain. I keep the "extra" SIM card under the back cover of my phone, between the battery and the cover of course it doesnt fit like that in all phones, but most Nokias and who would use other than Nokia

I once saw a cover for the 3310 noikia style phones that had a switch on it so you could switch SIM cards without having to open the case. I think I saw it in El Corte Ingles. BTW I should correct my last post, sending chat messages and sending regular messages are the same price.