MilesBuzz! - Best Phone Cards

On my last trip I discovered the phone card company I had been using for years was gone and their numbers disconnected. That company was VoiceNet and they were great and inexpensive anywhere in the world. No miles, but really cheap!

Any recommendations for a new phone card?

I prefer the billed kind rather than the pre-paid.

Thanks in advance.

try www.onesuite.com. (http://www.onesuite.com.) They are cheap and so far good

Both Costco (www.costco.com) and Sam's Club (www.samsclub) offer cards with the low rates of $0.0416/minute. (no membership fees are required at either of these places if the cards are purchased online).

I used to use VoiceNet also. What we need is a calling card with international access codes - onesuite and the costco and sam's cards don't cut it.

I use IDT/net2phone for local US and overseas access. http://www.idt.net/callcard/

If the Sam's and Costco cards you are talking about are the same AT&T ones I buy there, then they can be used from overseas, just use AT&T Direct numbers, which exist for most countries in the world. The WWW site has all of the current numbers. I use them all the time. Great deal!

Costco sells Sprint prepaid phone cards.

www.costco.com (http://www.costco.com/) > electronics & cameras > Telephones & Two-way

For local calls I like:
www.bigzoo.com (http://www.bigzoo.com)

and for International calls:
www.nobelcom.com (http://www.nobelcom.com)

is a very good company and they have a lot of cards for different countries.

The cards from Costco work great--both MCI which they used to sell and Sprint which is now on their shelves. I've used both cards to call to Europe and to call USA when I'm in Europe. The rates are great and they come with 800's in both America and European countries.

I'm going to miss voicenet, I loved them.

The Sam's Club card is a good deal and because it is an AT&T card can be used almost anywhere in the world. I too had Voicenet and was very disappointed to see them fold.

The comment above that a membership in Sam's Club is not necessary to purchase online did not work for me. Website asks for membership number to register and purchase the phone card. If you don't have a membership you can buy one online but...

So my final conclusion for a new phone card is:

TTI National
http://www.ttinational.com/callingcard.shtml

They are the card that Costco represents.
Similar in every way to Voicenet.

ordering from costco online is free shipping and no sales tax. non members pay about $1 more.

------------------
f

This is not a pre-paid card, it's an account. There is no shipping charge.

What did happen to Voice Net? Are they really out of business? I tried using them last night and the 800 number was not working.

Echelon, are local, non-surcharged, access numbers provided for overseas use of the TTI National Card? Overseas, can the card be used country-to-country, or just back to US? Also, the website is a bit light on details. For example, I didn't see what the pricing structure was for overseas use.

e-mail me and I will tell you about a phone card that is 3.9cents 24hrs/day.

Costco and Sam's have really cheap rates, but everytime I turn around they're raising the per unit charge for accessing their lines via a public phone. Presently, I think it's at six units just to connect.

Originally posted by tvl4free:
Costco and Sam's have really cheap rates, but everytime I turn around they're raising the per unit charge for accessing their lines via a public phone. Presently, I think it's at six units just to connect.

Individual carriers charge a access fee when you connect from payphones because the FCC started allowing the Bell companies to charge a connection fee back to the carrier that actually connects the call. No one will ever get me to believe that it costs 20-some cents, in some cases, to connect a call, but that's what the likes of Bellsouth, et al charge the companies connecting the call.

Yes. If you use a pay phone alot, the connect charges (units) eat up the card really, really quickly.

Check out this charge for your particular card, as its not just the per minute rate that is important!

The reason the units required is going up is that the price per unit is going down. When I bought my Sam's Card a year ago the price per minute was 5.9 cents it is now much lower. AT&T has to pay the owner of the payphone 50 cents for your use of the payphone. Even with this high charge the profitability of pay phones is decreasing and some people say the pay phone is becoming extinct due to cell phones. I don't have a cell phone, and hopefully won't ever.

Secondly, You can have a friend buy the card for you at Sam's and then anyone can renew a card with a credit card. The best news is you can re-charge your AT&T card with Diner's!!

Originally posted by pactab:
e-mail me and I will tell you about a phone card that is 3.9cents 24hrs/day.


No need to e-mail this person. The 3.9 cents per minute card is from http://www.bigzoo.com and the montly fee is 75 cents.

There is a better deal though. As stated above, the card from http://www.onesuite.com is an even better 2.9 cents per minute and has NO fee. Plus, the onesuite card works better, you never get busy signals like BigZoo. I love it, it's a great card!

The those who don't like pre-paid, echelon is right, the ITT card is the best. Get it through the American Travel Network for the best deal.

For a comprehensive phone card comparison, go to http://www.clarkhoward.com

Mac


------------------
¡Viaja con Dios!

Originally posted by pactab:
e-mail me and I will tell you about a phone card that is 3.9cents 24hrs/day.


No need to e-mail this person. The 3.9 cents per minute card is from http://www.bigzoo.com and the montly fee is 75 cents.

There is a better deal though. As stated above, the card from http://www.onesuite.com is an even better 2.9 cents per minute and has NO fee. Plus, the onesuite card works better, you never get busy signals like BigZoo. I love it, it's a great card!

The those who don't like pre-paid, echelon is right, the ITT card is the best. Get it through the American Travel Network for the best deal.

For a comprehensive phone card comparison, go to http://www.clarkhoward.com

Mac


------------------
¡Viaja con Dios!

And with that accidental duplicate posting, I am now officially a FT Evangelist.

Hallelujah!

Mac

------------------
¡Viaja con Dios!

Originally posted by macbravery:

...
There is a better deal though. As stated above, the card from http://www.onesuite.com is an even better 2.9 cents per minute and has NO fee. Plus, the onesuite card works better, you never get busy signals like BigZoo. I love it, it's a great card!


I agree. Onesuite is reliable and has good (but not excellent) voice quality. It is easy to recharge and has real-time account access so you can check right away how much that last call to Timbuktu cost you. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

true...but I just read in the FAQ that there is a .55 access charge from hotel phones....no good for me...

I've been using a card (not prepaid, an account) from TTI National for several years, though I noticed that the rate I pay is about 1 cent more per minute than the link, so my rates are a little different than the one for the ttinational link posted above.

What's really funny is that they will literally send me a 6 page paper phone bill for 31 cents. The best thing about this card .. there are no monthly fees and no ridiculous surcharges. There are taxes and there's a small surcharge for using a pay phone. There's certainly no charge for using a hotel phone, because I do that all the time.

TTI National is actually owned by Worldcom now. Last time I lost a card, they sent me a new one, and it's lost its TTI logo, but the rate and bills are identical. (Customer service now answers as "Worldcom" and the toll free number for making calls answers as "Worldcom", but the bills still say TTI National .. I checked with them and the rates are identical to my old card.)

Here's what they said the rates were for a few international cities. (Caveat .. my card is not the same one as the tti national card in the link above, so that one may be different.) Are these rates any good?

Each direct dial international call has a 95 cent per call surcharge. There's no surcharge on domestic calls. These are per minute rates to the US. They also provided country-wide toll free numbers when I asked for them:

Thailand: $1.30 per minute
Hong Kong: $1.57 per minute
Singapore: $1.61 per minute
London: $0.96 per minute

I'm pretty sure the billing is in 6 second increments.

The customer service number for the card is 800-741-9200. The card is labeled Worldcom/Worldphone.

UAL Traveler: I'm pretty sure you can call non-US to non-US also. When I asked for the rates, the rep asked me if I wanted the rate from country X to the US.

-David


[This message has been edited by LIH Prem (edited 05-17-2001).]

47CFR64.1300

Sec. 64.1300 Payphone compensation obligation.

(a) Except as provided herein, every carrier to whom a completed call from a payphone is routed shall compensate the payphone service provider for the call at a rate agreed upon by the parties by contract.
(b) The compensation obligation set forth herein shall not apply to calls to emergency numbers, calls by hearing disabled persons to a telecommunications relay service or local calls for which the caller has made the required coin deposit.
(c) In the absence of an agreement as required by paragraph (a) of this section, the carrier is obligated to compensate the payphone service provider at a per-call rate of $.24.

[61 FR 52324, Oct. 7, 1996, as amended at 62 FR 58686, Oct. 30, 1997; 64
FR 13719, Mar. 22, 1999]

That's where your six-unit "surcharge" comes from.

Sthokie: Thanks for posting the link for noblecom.com

After looking at the prepaid Global Call card from noblecom.com, it really looks like the best bet for international to US calls. On the downside, the cards are one time use prepaid only .. no recharging, so you have to plan ahead .. they are good for a year from first use.

The per-minute rates are really cheap and there are no surcharges, and it's the AT&T network. It doesn't say on the web site if there are countrywide toll-free access numbers or not. Does anybody know if they use the AT&T countrywide toll free numbers for calls originating overseas?

They don't have a phone number posted.

They don't appear to have any country-country access for non-US calls. but I only tried one or two combinations.

-David

P.S.: I found a number I had written down for TTI National customer service in case anybody wants it: 800 893 5094. This is a number that they actually answer as "TTI National".

Originally posted by LIH Prem:
Thailand: $1.30 per minute
Hong Kong: $1.57 per minute
Singapore: $1.61 per minute
London: $0.96 per minute


LIH Prem, these rates are not good at all. I know calls using readily available local phone cards that you can buy at the hotel gift shops in Singapore. Thailand and Hong Kong will cost a lot less than $1/minute to the U.S.

Speaking of Worldcom, if you use MCI as your long distance carrier, calls from overseas to your home phone is priced at the same rate as if you're calling from the U.S. to the overseas location. I think you have to be a subscriber to their international plan at $3/month.

Thanks, Echelon, for alerting me/us to the demise of VoiceNet. I would have been really "up a creek with no paddle" had I discovered this situation on my next trip overseas.

I had just gotten VN to increase my credit limit by a substantial amount to avoid being cut off in the middle of a call. I guess I'll have to start over with a new company. I will also have to reenter a whole new set of country access numbers into my laptop dialing program.

C'est la vie!

[This message has been edited by kappa (edited 05-17-2001).]

dupe

[This message has been edited by anthonyanthony (edited 05-17-2001).]

I too had been a loyal user of VoiceNet for many years. I was trying to use them to make a call from a LAX payphone last week, and I kept getting the "this number has been blocked from your area code" recording. It didn't occur to me that VoiceNet might have gone out of business -- I thought the payphone company was blocking my call.

It took this thread to make me realize that they're gone. Even their web site www.voicenetcard.com (http://www.voicenetcard.com) is blank. It's actually kind of rude the way they just pulled the plug on everybody without any kind of recording at their phone number or at least a web page to announce their demise.

I tried signing up for TTI. I dislike them asking for my social security number. I typed in 000-00-0000 so we'll see if they still set me up.

Ah well. As much as I hate pre-paid cards I might switch to such cards because the rates are just too good to pass up. Pre-Paid cards are more than half as cheap as the pay-as-you go calling cards.

bp888:

Thanks for your response ...

Just to clarify .. Echelon asked about charge-type phone cards .. the tti national card is not a prepaid card.

We ended up discussing both types of cards in this thread.

I agree with you, that there are prepaid cards with much better rates than the tti national 'charge' card. I thought that the noblecom.com Global Card (uses AT&T network) was the deal for me and I plan on using them when I can, but I'll keep the tti national card with me as a backup in case I'm stuck somewhere with no prepaid card in hand.

Thanks,
-David

Here's some of the best all-global calling cards you'll ever need:
http://webpagers.net/globaltel/globcard.html
http://www.net2phone.com/

I applied for the TTI card and just like the talker above I did not enter my SS#, just all 9's. Well today I got an alert and noticed that Worldcom had done an inquiry on my credit?! How did that happen? I never gave my SS#. Any ideas?

You must have given them your Credit Card # or enough information to do a credit check, which can be done without a SS#


Originally posted by pointman:
I applied for the TTI card and just like the talker above I did not enter my SS#, just all 9's. Well today I got an alert and noticed that Worldcom had done an inquiry on my credit?! How did that happen? I never gave my SS#. Any ideas?

Found this link a while ago. Lots of calling card plans all in one place and they have a "Best Rate Calculator".
http://ld.net/callingcards/?b46

------------------
www.KegWorks.com (http://www.KegWorks.com)

Draft Beer Dispensing Equipment and Compact Refrigeration.

Also see: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum101/HTML/002117.html

On a related note, I subscribe to what I believe is the very lowest priced
"dial 1+" service at home. The company is GTC Telecom http://www.gtctelecom.com/bus_longdistance.asp and they charge 5 cents a minute 24/7 with no monthly fee, monthly minimum or minimum connect time. On the downside, no miles! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif
But considering MCI's less generous offers than in the past, combined with their horrible customer service, I rather save the money.

On a related note, I subscribe to what I believe is the very lowest priced
"dial 1+" service at home. The company is GTC Telecom http://www.gtctelecom.com/bus_longdistance.asp and they charge 5 cents a minute 24/7 with no monthly fee, monthly minimum or minimum connect time. On the downside, no miles! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif
But considering MCI's less generous offers than in the past, combined with their horrible customer service, I rather save the money.

On a related note, I subscribe to what I believe is the very lowest priced
"dial 1+" service at home. The company is GTC Telecom http://www.gtctelecom.com/bus_longdistance.asp and they charge 5 cents a minute 24/7 with no monthly fee, monthly minimum or minimum connect time. On the downside, no miles! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif
But considering MCI's less generous offers than in the past, combined with their horrible customer service, I rather save the money.

On a related note, I subscribe to what I believe is the very lowest priced
"dial 1+" service at home. The company is GTC Telecom http://www.gtctelecom.com/bus_longdistance.asp and they charge 5 cents a minute 24/7 with no monthly fee, monthly minimum or minimum connect time. On the downside, no miles! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif
But considering MCI's less generous offers than in the past, combined with their horrible customer service, I rather save the money.

On a related note, I subscribe to what I believe is the very lowest priced
"dial 1+" service at home. The company is GTC Telecom http://www.gtctelecom.com/bus_longdistance.asp and they charge 5 cents a minute 24/7 with no monthly fee, monthly minimum or minimum connect time. On the downside, no miles! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif
But considering MCI's less generous offers than in the past, combined with their horrible customer service, I rather save the money.

On a related note, I subscribe to what I believe is the very lowest priced
"dial 1+" service at home. The company is GTC Telecom http://www.gtctelecom.com/bus_longdistance.asp and they charge 5 cents a minute 24/7 with no monthly fee, monthly minimum or minimum connect time. On the downside, no miles! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif
But considering MCI's less generous offers than in the past, combined with their horrible customer service, I rather save the money.

I apologise for all those multiple posts. For some reason, when I hit "submit," nothing happened so I kept trying. I've never had this happen before.

http://thedigest.yellowbrix.com/pages/thedigest/Story.nsp?story_id=20382878&category=Telecommunications&ID=thedigest

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by Neal:
I apologise for all those multiple posts. For some reason, when I hit "submit," nothing happened so I kept trying. I've never had this happen before.</font>

It happens to me almost every time, and I assumed it did to everyone else. Weird.

Using an AT&T PrePaid Phone Card for calling the US from Europe isn't that inexpensive. Yesterday I bought a 45-minute card from Wal-Mart for US$4.50, barcode #07698-04478. Inside the package is this list of nations that you can call the US from, and how many minutes the card entitles you to:

Canada, 11 min.
France, 5
Germany, 6
Ireland, 5
Israel, 3
Italy, 3
Japan, 4
Mexico, 4
UK, 4

The European rates range from $0.75 to $1.50 per minute...argh!

------------------
Middle Seat

I, too, used VoiceNet. Does anybody know of a calling card that doesn't charge a surcharge from a pay phone?

Every card that I know of charges a surcharge from a Pay phone, voice net did too. The owners of the phone collect some amount of money per call (think it's 35 cents) and it just gets passed along.

I still miss voicenet.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">I, too, used VoiceNet. Does anybody know of a calling card that doesn't charge a surcharge from a pay phone? </font>

I dabbled in selling long distance services a while back. I sold Voicenet cards too. As far as the payphone surcharge, it's a Federal thing. I saw a post somewhere on FT that said the surcharge was a "connection" charge. That is incorrect.

A few years ago, it became illegal for payphone owners to charge for making a toll free call. (Many private payphone owners had begun to do this.) Then, payphone owners started complaining that their phones were unable to make money by coin paying customers when the lines were tied up by people making free calls. (Yes, I know this is ridiculous.) The Federal government then added a payphone surcharge of something like 28.6 cents per call from a payphone. This surcharge is then passed along to the payphone owners. The calling card companies usually round it up to 30 or 35 cents a call.

If you used Voicenet or continue to use any other calling card from a payphone in Canada, you'll notice there is no surcharge since it's a USA tax.

The payphone owners must really be up the creek without a paddle now that most everyone carries cell phones. I suppose now they'll want a surcharge places on all cell phone calls. I wouldn't put it passed them!



[This message has been edited by Neal (edited 06-03-2001).]