Phone Cards!

[Maury Beniowski]

Anyone familiar with phone cards, and which one are the best?

I know that most of them work better if the number of individual calls on a single card is kept to a minimum, and the duration of the calls is as long as possible. Short durations coupled with multiple calls on single card drastically cut down on the number of minutes availed.

However, some cards are more reliable, or predictable than others. I am now using Mango 5 minute cards, and my total minutes on a 5 minute card on calls to Asia vary from twenty minutes to over one hour. This makes the cost per minute anywhere from 5 cents/min. all the way up to 25 cents/min.

Considering that the 10-10-969 and 10-10-945 providers' billed rates vary extensively depending on their target market, plus GST & PST, cards appear to be good value, but the differences can also be subtle depending on how the cards are used.

What’s been your experience?

 

[greenvalley]

Anyone familiar with phone cards, and which one are the best?

I know that most of them work better if the number of individual calls on a single card is kept to a minimum, and the duration of the calls is as long as possible. Short durations coupled with multiple calls on single card drastically cut down on the number of minutes availed.

However, some cards are more reliable, or predictable than others. I am now using Mango 5 minute cards, and my total minutes on a 5 minute card on calls to Asia vary from twenty minutes to over one hour. This makes the cost per minute anywhere from 5 cents/min. all the way up to 25 cents/min.

Considering that the 10-10-969 and 10-10-945 providers' billed rates vary extensively depending on their target market, plus GST & PST, cards appear to be good value, but the differences can also be subtle depending on how the cards are used.

What’s been your experience?

I had look at the cards, but the fine print always makes me not bother. Many of them have a high initial charge for the first minute. This causes problems because some places I call have bad exchanges and overloaded lines. If you get a bad line or it just hangs you end up having to try again and now eat the initial first minute charge. With some services like yak, you get very good rates and they seem to have good quality lines. It works for me, but if some one knows of a better deal I am always interested.

 

[Maury Beniowski]

I used Yak (10-10-945) for a long time, even won a startup promo trip to Mexico from them, but their rates are higher in some markets than Less-2-Talk (10-10-969), so I switched. I only use these services for brief calls under ten minutes. Any longer (and the longer, the better), and the card starts to shine.

 

[Maury Beniowski]

Thailand and Indonesia. Business calls mostly, and they can be lengthy. I manage bridge reconstructions in those areas, albeit from a distance.

I'm a cheap engineer, and do it for the love of it!

You're right about the ripoff part. I look at it like buying phone time in bulk. The more you capitalize the minutes on the card in one go, the more time you'll get. If you make a lot of short calls, they rip you off big time. They call it a connection fee, which is paid in minutes lost. Using the card to its capacity in one go, will get you the maximum amount to time.

 

[Hairball]

Check out VOX. It's pretty good for N. America, but I don't know about overseas.

 

[Da_Slick]

Go to T & T and try the White phonecard. I buy it from the bookstore in T & T here in Edmonton. It has pretty good reception and it's cheap too for calls to Thailand.