Beware Of These Things When Choosing International Calling Cards!
Rodger Strouden
Do a search on one of the major search engines like Google or yahoo for international calling cards and you will find more than a million pages offering them to you. Many state that they're the best, but how do you really know? It is important for you to educate yourself on many different things before making a purchase. Rates per minute can be attractive sometimes, but other things like maintenance fees can really screw up your investment. For example, sometimes you'll have pin-free access to a card, but the voice quality will suffer.
You want to ask yourself, "How am I going to be using the international calling cards that I purchase?" You may be a person who is going to talk a lot. If that is the case, you'll probably lean more towards a product with a low price per minute. Beware though, because these cards can have maintenance fees. If you don't use the cards that often, you can go with a non-fee card that has a higher cost per minute. Whatever you decide, my desire is for this article to help you in your decision.
International calling cards and their rates.
A ton of things come into play when an international calling cards company is determining what rate they are going to charge for the long-distance time. From time to time, you will find cards that have extremely reasonable rates per minute. However, that is usually made up by charging things like maintenance fees, pay phone fees, connection fees, and other types of fees that make the international calling card companies more money. Don't go cry in the corner just yet though. Regular long-distance rates with your phone company are still often much higher than what you can find with prepaid international calling cards.
Quality varies greatly.
VOIP and other technologies have drastically changed the quality of international calling cards. Most of the time the lines that you are calling through are the normal data lines that companies like AT&T and Sprint are using for their international calling as well. AT&T and other companies sell their lines at wholesale rates to international calling card companies. You will often find international calling cards at lower rates than the major companies like AT&T and Sprint, but for rates that are even less.
The "re-chargeability factor"
If you are going to be using your card often, and purchasing a lower dollar amount, you want to make sure that you are purchasing a card that is easy to recharge. Some cards don't allow you the ability to recharge them quickly. In these cases, you actually have to go online and purchase a brand-new card, get a brand-new pin, and have a whole new card number. My personal recommendation is to look for international calling cards that are easy to recharge. These cards can be charged by simply logging on to the Internet or calling a certain phone number. Quickly, efficiently, and easily.
"Holy connection fee, Batman!"
When you are reading the fine print of the international calling cards that you purchase, make sure you take a look what the connection fee may be. Getting connected can often cost you a lot of money. I have seen companies charging $.15 for every time that a call gets connected. And I've seen companies charging upwards of one dollar. These connection fees can really eat up your international calling cards budget. Another thing to look for with the connection fee is the amount of time that the calling card company considers a connection.
Fees for maintaining your international calling card.
Once again, many cards that are on the lower per minute side will often have a weekly or monthly maintenance fee. This can be as little as a penny per week, or as much as five dollars per week. if you are going to be talking a lot, it's a good idea to have a maintenance fee because you're getting such a low cost per minute that it makes up for it. However, if you are not going to be talking that much on the phone, it is important to not have a maintenance fee.
"But I didn't talk that many minutes!"
Get this... international calling cards have many different rounding intervals. Some cards may round at three minutes and others may round at one minute. Your goal should be to find international calling cards that have the lowest minute rounding possible. That way, when you speak for 45 seconds, you will be charged for one minute... not for five. Sure, a four second per minute rate sounds great on many international calling cards! But it's not so great when your minutes are depleting like crazy on your card because you have a five minute rounding point.
Who uses pay phones anymore?
If you are going to be using your international calling card from a pay phone here's something you need to think about. It is very important that you see if there are going to be any payphone charges. Quite frankly, you don't want to be paying something like $.89 every time you use the international calling card from a payphone.
There are a great variety of international calling cards available all over the Internet. It is important to look at what cards are right for your lifestyle. Think about things like how often you're going to use the card, how long your conversations will be, whether or not you're going to be using payphones, do you need toll-free access phone numbers, and are you going to be using your card over the Internet. All of these things need to be thought about being considered to make sure that you're purchasing the best deal for you on an international calling card.
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