Best way to call China from US

[I love San Diego 18]

May I highly recommend Google Voice (google.com/voice) I use it to call China and it costs $0.01/minute.

I am not sure if they have an app for apple, but android phones can integrate google voice to automatically activate for international calls. You can also use it with a landline by calling your google voice number, and then dialing china from there.

[Mike and Yaoling 46]

My wife just pays out of pocket on Skype on the occasion she needs to call her parents as it only costs about 1.1 cents per minute. It's taken us over a year to go through $10 of Skype credit. If her parents need to call her, they just call her cell number and my wife hangs up and calls them back with Skype.

My fiance is in China and we are in a similar situation. It is very cheap to call them, but an arm and a leg to call us. Also, China mobile wants a huge deposit before allowing international calls Did you have to put down a deposit to allow your mother-in-law to make the initial call before you hang up and caller her back?

One of her brothers has wifi in their apartment but her parents do not, so cell phone only, leaving QQ out of the picture.

Edited September 16, 2014 by MichaelYaoling

[SBB 74]

My fiance is in China and we are in a similar situation. It is very cheap to call them, but an arm and a leg to call us. Also, China mobile wants a huge deposit before allowing international calls Did you have to put down a deposit to allow your mother-in-law to make the initial call before you hang up and caller her back?

One of her brothers has wifi in their apartment but her parents do not, so cell phone only, leaving QQ out of the picture.

I am not aware of any deposit made to their account. They call us on their land line. They have wifi/internet but it's not terribly fast and mostly used for my father-in-law to play beat the landlord online. Occasionally my mother-in-law will send my wife a message on QQ asking her to call, but she's not tech savvy and has trouble with pinyin, so she doesn't do that much.

[Ighaepero 2]

I was using Xvoice to call wifey when she was still in China and she is using it now herself, nearly a year after coming here, to call family.

http://www.xvoice.com/

The good thing about it, for those preparing evidence, is that they have downloadable phone call logs.

Edited October 29, 2014 by Ighaepero

[Dan & Juan 12]

My experience is..

If you have AT&T on your cell, you can do international texting included in your plan, which is nice if you can use it.

I brought a magicjack to China and that worked really great while I was there. If you can get them to hook that up then they can call for free anytime to any USA number, and you would dial the US number and it would ring there. It's annual renewal not monthly.

Google voice is the best choice. I buy credit on my wife's account and she uses it less than she used to, but at $0.01- $0.02 per minute there really is no big deal call as much as she wants. there are apps for smart phones and I have mine ring anywhere I want, so I go on the website and have it ring on my office phone. Very handy to also keep your identity more private.

Being tech challenged gvoice is the answer. If she can get a text message from them she can call them which is a good value all around