Calling from a normal phone to a landline or mobile: Find the cheapest override provider. These are specialist, no-frills call companies where you don’t need an account or to change your home phone. Call the special access number, which will usually start with 0844, and then simply dial the number you are calling.

The access call is charged to your normal phone bill at a set tariff, say 1p a minute, and this is the only cost; the override provider gets a cut of this call revenue.

There are roughly 30 different override providers and prices vary widely. To find the cheapest for each country, use the free tool I have on my website at moneysavingexpert.com/callchecker.

Check your home phone package: Check if you have inclusive international calls. Some of the more widely used home phone packages, such as Talk Talk’s International 3, may include free unlimited calls to some international destinations.

Amex users pay over the odds on eBay

Consumers who use Paypal, the internet-payments company, when they buy and sell on auction site eBay are being charged hundreds of pounds over the odds to use their American Express cards, writes Ali Hussain.

British users of Paypal, which is owned by eBay and processed $11 billion (£5.6 billion) of online transactions in the last quarter of 2006, are stung by conversion charges every time they use their Amex cards because payments are converted from sterling into dollars and then back again — even if the transaction has no US connection.

This oddity emerged after a Sunday Times Money reader found he had paid £270 more than expected for a car he purchased on eBay.

Jeffrey Folkins, 46, an investment banker from Kings Langley in Hertfordshire, used his UK-issued Amex and found the £5,300 he thought he would spend had been converted to £5,574. “There was absolutely no US or any foreign involvement in this transaction and yet I paid £274 in foreign-exchange costs,” he said.

Folkins’ card was issued by Amex UK, which is a UK-registered company and subject to British banking laws.

No other credit cards are subject to such a system, and Folkins points out that had he made the transaction using a card from Morgan Stanley or Citibank, both American firms, there would not have been the same problem.

Paypal said it posted a notice to all Amex customers about their conversion policy.

Folkins said: “It didn’t cross my mind that it was possible to take a payment in sterling and then convert it into dollars

and back again. I guess a lot of people wouldn’t notice if they were buying something for £20 or £30. But I was paying for a car, and when you’re talking thousands of pounds, the extra cost really adds up. I won’t be using my Amex card again if I buy anything else through eBay.”

Amex has refunded Folkins’s loss and said that it was working to resolve the matter. “Customers can use their cards to make a purchase via Paypal,” it said. “However, due to technical constraints, these transactions are currently billed in US dollars.”

Paypal said: “Amex currently processes transactions made through Paypal in dollars, so sometimes people lose out on the exchange rate. It is a technical issue with Amex’s system and is not something we make any money out of. We are also working with Amex to resolve the problem.”