It is not something like a dollar connection charge plus 14 cents per second... therefore a £5 which is about $7.50 equates to 46 seconds...

That seems plausible that it didn't connect, therefore I suggest that you contact your card provider (which will be a credit card since the system doesn't take debit cards) and say the transactions didn't provide a product.

Whilst 14 cents per second doesn't sound much, that is $8.40 per minute!