How to Make 800 number calls from Mexico

[doncoulter]

Regarding "weird billings": With many (or perhaps all?) Telmex plans, most calls to the U.S. are at no additional cost. But there's one big exception, namely, calls to the 880, 881, etc. numbers. I don't think Telmex says so explicitly, but in my experience they indeed charge for such calls -- about 6 pesos a minute, last time I checked. That can add up, given that one often spends a long time on hold when calling an 800-type number.

For that reason, whenever I need to call a company that uses such a number for customer service, I try to find a non-800 number to call instead. Googling often works. For credit-card companies, there's usually a number on the back of the cards that can be called collect.