If I call overseas and no one answers do I still pay?

Question

Like lets say I call Egypt or Dubai or Lebanon do I still get charged if no one picks up?

Answer 1

You should never be charged for an unanswered call, but unfortunately it can happen sometimes

Your telephone office has no way of knowing directly when the person at the distant end picks up the phone.   It has to rely upon the telephone exchange at the distant end to watch for that and send back a signal which says, in effect, "O.K., he's answered, you can start charging" (it technical circles we call this signal "answer supervision").

So if the equipment at the far end sends back that signal BEFORE the person has actually answered, you will be billed for the call.   Unfortunately, some foreign telephone jurisdictions have been known to deliberately send answer supervision ahead of time (because they will receive a portion of the call cost).  

There are also some of those low-cost dialaround and calling-card companies which are too cheap to use proper answer supervision for billing, and instead simply use a timeout principle.  They just assume that if you haven't hung up after, say, 30 seconds, then you must have gotten an answer and they will start billing.   That means that you would also get charged if you received a "Call cannot be completed as dialed" recording and didn't hang up quickly enough.

Answer 2

no

Answer 3

no, unless the machine picks up. i call my mom in germany all the time and let it ring and then hang up and she knows to call me back

Answer 4

nop

Answer 5

No, but if the answering machine picks up you will pay so count the rings!!!

Answer 6

All the answers are right except for Egypt.  the infrastructure there is terrible.  You could get billed if you call a town outside of Alexandria or Cairo.  (for a 30 sec ring)