Best phone company for miles?
 

It's time for me to switch phone companies. Which phone company has the best mileage promotion at the moment?

For standard long distance service, there are lots of 10,000 mile for five or six months offers. You can find them on the Telephone page of my web site below.

There are also a lot of options out there that might save you more money than the mileage plans. Try to aviod plans with monthly fees. You should also check out the VOIP offerings from Vonage, Broadvoice, Packet8, AT&T, etc).

I love miles, but if it is going to cost a lot more, I tend to opt for the cheaper plan.

You can sign up for a major company's mileage offer, get the plan that gives you the minimum charges per month, and then use a dial around service or phone card for most of your calls. The fees for the miles work out to very cheap miles.

This is true - I earned a lot of NW and AA this way, earning miles from Sprint and AT&T. A few months' of $6-7 bills (with taxes) would yield 10,000 cheap miles.

But I quickly grew tired of the hassle of getting out of these deals. I could never easily call up a phone company, without being put on hold, and say "I'm done with you." I could call my local provider and ask for help, but that sometimes didn't work. Or...it would work, I'd get switched, and I'd get $6-7 bills from two companies! And neither of them would integrate with my local provider.

So I bailed on the whole phone-for-miles thing. I negotiated the best wireless rate I could get (passing on miles in favor of a flat percent-off my MRC) and signed up for a bare-bones CLEC to get a cheap home phone with no-fee LD. (I never use wireline LD to begin with.) Eventually, I'll dump the home phone altogether...