International Texting/Calling question?

I was a customer service rep for Verizon and the truth is no you can not call or text your friend in Australia without getting international fee's. when callling or txting outside the US it cost alot more depending on where your calling or txting too. most International txt rates are .25 each but can be different regardless of your txt messaging plan. To find out your actual rates call customer service by dialing *61 on your phone they can easily pull up the information and give you the correct rates.

text messages sent to other countries are 20cents per message and 25cent per picture messages. Different countries have different calling rates so try to call verizon and ask

My boyfriend who is in New York and me in Australia: He got unlimited texting so we could text each other.... until he received his bill.... $500+ so he rang AT&T who told him it was unlimited for USA but 25cents for International plus he is getting charged for receiving my texts too. Calling is expensive too. I have a Skype subscription which is good for me because i can call him on his iPhone as calling the USA mobile or landline is the same price and very cheap, but will be more expansive the other way around for mobiles as America is one of the very few country that have special phone lines that makes the price the same for mobile and landlines. So he would send me a message asking me to call him.

Calling Australia from your Verizon phone will cost an additional $1.49/minute to call a landline and $1.55 to call a mobile at their standard rates. If you pay them an extra $3.99/month they'll give you discounted rates of 7 cents/minute landline and 23 cents/minute to call a mobile: http://b2b.vzw.com/international/Long_Distance/Asia-Pacific/Australia.html The cheapest way to make cell phone international calls is to use a 'dial-around' service, such as a calling card. I found rates of less than 2 cents a minute for both landline and mobile here: http://b2b.vzw.com/international/Long_Distance/Asia-Pacific/Australia.html For the $3.99 Verizon wants to charge you for their discounted rates you could talk for 200 minutes using a dial-around service. For texting you might want to investigate sending them as e-mails instead: the format to send a text message via e-mail to a Verizon phone is [email protected] where the x's represent your 10 digit phone number. The Australian carriers may have a similar capability. For more tips and tricks on cell phone international calling check out: http://www.squidoo.com/Cell-Phone-International-Calling-Guide