Phone Cards

This post is relevant for people who make a lot of international phone calls, specially to countries like India using phonecards purchased from phone card companies online. You can benefit from this post only if you own a credit card that allows you to reverse the charges in case of dissatisfaction. If not, consider applying for one. If you don’t even want to do that, I am not sure if this will help except for increasing your general knowledge.

Frauds!!! That’s the summary in one word for majority of online phone card companies. One of the most used and most abused service on the internet is that of selling a phone card. There are hidden charges, bad call quality, dropped quality, bogus numbers etc. etc... I am not sure why do sites do this. But here is a thought.

First, there are enough people out there who don’t care. They just accept bad service as something to live with. Second, law of large numbers, not very many people complain. Third, even if some do and call customer service, they are put on hold for eons. In short people give up and the phone card companies benefit from this. Trust me, I have tried most all major phone card services online, all of them are same. Frauds!!! Especially companies like 9278 and callnation (I think they are owned by the same person). Union telecard was good till sometime then they also started doing the same thing as others.

I make a lot of international phone calls. So I really need the phone cards. After toying around for couple of years, I think I have some hang of the system. After all, I never lost any money to these guys.

First, buy the phone cards on the web. You get better deals. But!!! don’t buy them without reading point 2.

Second, buy the phone card with a credit card allows you to reverse charges. This service is offered by most major credit card companies that assures the customers that the product that they purchase will perform as described else your money will be refunded. It is like a free insurance, if your product does not work, your money will be refunded. The refund is usually immediate, i.e., the moment you call. It is easy for the credit card companies to do so. Why? Well the phone card companies are totally dependant on the credit cards to do business on the web. If I am unsatisfied with the phone card, I call my credit card, they lodge a complaint with the phone card company and ask them why shouldn't their payments be stopped. Most likely if the phone card company knows they were cheating they will not protest and not even respond to the credit card company. After a month of not getting any response, the credit card company makes the refund permanent. The phone card company in turn will block your account for further purchase.

Third, so what do you do and how do you stop these fraud companies, after all you do need a phone card? You don't do anything nor do we stop them. Buy phone cards from these online companies, as a matter of fact place a $30 order or more in a single go. Place big orders. Then when you don’t get your promised 100 minutes for a $3 card (you only get 60), call your credit card company and tell them everything. This constitutes false promise, so you will get your money and your credit card company will hold the phone card companies payments. In other words you got 10 phone cards which you used to make 600 minutes of international calling and you get your money back. I sincerely believe that if enough people start doing this, the dubious phone card companies will go out of business and we will be left with honest sites.

Fourth, sign up for free offers. GorillaMobile offers $5 worth of free calling for new subscribers. You don’t have to pay anything upfront or give your credit card number. Just sign up and use.

Fifth, have alteast one service which is reliable. Earlier, I used to use BigZoo. Very good service, very honest. I guess that’s why they went out of business. Now, I use WQN. They don’t charge if your call is disconnected before one minute for international calls. Their rates are very reasonable and if you get your friends to signup too you get $5 worth of calling each time and your friend gets the same. The best part is they don’t have 3 minutes rounding or connect charge or any other hidden charge. If you like the service and want a $5 signup bonus use the code number 3907608 when signing up.

In the next blog I will write about my experiences using VOIP to make cheap international calls.