Phone cards?

I'm not sure what I can add to Rick's explanations, but I'll try. The short answer is yes, there are international phone cards sold in England that will work to call the US.

1) First, in order to make a call, you need a phone. If your own phone won't work, you can use the one in your hotel room, a pay phone on the street, or a phone in a call center (these call centers are usually targeted for immigrants who want to call home). If you call from your hotel room, beware of potentially high charges even if you're using a calling card - ask first. And not all hotel rooms have phones in them. If you're counting on pay phones, you can be out of luck - just as in the US, they're being removed with lack of use, due to pervasive mobile phones. A call center will be the most reliable bet.

2) Next, you'll need a way to pay for the call. These days, unless you're at a call center, most people do best with the International Phone Cards, which I call "PIN cards". On the card is an access number you dial from any phone; you then dial your PIN from the back of the card, then your number (instructions are on the card). If you're using a hotel phone, double-check with them to find out about any charges for dialing the local or toll-free access number on the card - make sure you won't have high charges for dialing this from your room. Rick mentions that at UK phone booths, there can be high surcharges for using these cards (I ran into this in Germany, where my €5 card would make 200 minutes of calls from a regular phone, or 20 minutes from a pay phone - still only $0.25 per minute, but hardly as good as $0.025 per minute from a regular phone).

If you're at a phone booth, you can also use locally purchased phone cards (that you insert into the phone).

3) The International Phone Cards are sold in stores run by and catering to immigrants (convenience stores, etc), as well as the call centers. Just check the rates to the US before buying, or ask the clerk to find you the cheapest card for your needs. You'll see that the cards will have big ads, but the focus of those ads is cheap rates to countries most often called by immigrants in the UK (South Asia, Carribean, Africa, etc); so, you'll need to double-check the rates to the US.

4) If you go to the call center, you just need to check the rates to the US. They point you to a booth, you call and talk (they will help you make the call if needed), and you pay at the end.

Remember that the international access code from England to the US is 00, and the US country code is 1. So, if you were dialing Rick's office 425-771-8303 from a UK land line (say, in someone's home, where you didn't have to worry about phone cards), you would dial 00-1-425-771-8303 (all in one go). This is also how you would dial it from a pay phone if you're using an insertable phone card. How you would dial it using an international phone card will depend on the card.

I'll stop now, and let us know if you still have questions.

Thank you! That is extremely helpful and easy to understand.

If you're going to be making more than a few calls, consider getting a cheap "dumbphone" while you're there. You can pop into any phone store and get a basic model with some minutes for under £30. You can usually get very good prices for calls to the US (like £0.06 per minute). And it's a great convenience, particularly if your hotel rooms don't have phones. Plus, the phone can be saved for later trips, and if you get it unlocked, you can use it in other countries.

Carphone Warehouse is a store that carries lots of different phone carriers, or you can go into the individual carrier's stores (Vodaphone, O2, etc).

Another plus of getting a UK mobile phone: receiving calls and texts on it, no matter where from, is free while you're in the UK.