Getting calls overseas on home number

Since my husband, Jim, and I have elderly family members, we wanted a way to keep in contact with them while on an Overseas Adventure Travel tour of Greece in May ’08. Our cell phone service is provided by Verizon (800/922-0204, www.verizonwireless.com), so I contacted the company to see if we could purchase a phone which would work in Greece.

Under their Global Travel Program, Verizon shipped a phone for overseas use directly to our home, at no charge. The equipment was set up with the same phone number as my local cell phone, thus anyone at home could dial my normal number and connect to us overseas.

The only cost was whatever roaming fees applied. (For us, that amounted to less than $10 for three weeks.) We designated the dates of our departure and return as the time frame when the overseas phone would override our local roaming charges, and there were no other costs incurred by us.

When we returned from Greece, we shipped the phone back to Verizon using a mailing label provided by them.

I don’t know if other cell phone companies have similar programs, but if you’re looking for a reasonable way to call home or to receive emergency calls, it would be well worth checking this out with your cell phone provider.

The phone was mainly for our peace of mind and it worked wonderfully. While in Greece, we used it a few times just to let family and friends know we’d arrived and to brag about being on the Aegean in a sailboat!

I had notified everyone I would normally chat with that we’d be out of the country and asked that they not call unless it was an emergency. My husband, who gets more miscellaneous calls, left his phone at home to take messages. We also left our home phone message machine on. . . and came home to a lot of political campaign messages!

MARION DURHAM

Tempe, AZ