Things to Look Out for When Buying Phone Cards

By: Ben Cohen Ben Cohen

The Truth about Phone Cards

Phone cards can be used from any phone
in your home country and payphones / other people’s landlines whilst abroad.
First of all you it’s important to note that phone cards have hidden fees. If
you have ever tried to call someone using a phone card you will know that your
money seems to go pretty quickly and that you will never know where or how. The
degree to which fees are hidden varies from site to site.

On our calling card price comparison
tool on a site called Time Dial (Calling
Cards) you can select various options for cards without certain fees. For
example you can specify you want cards without maintenance fees but the catch is
usually higher rates per minute. No payphone fee and no maintenance fee options
are in an advanced options section on the site; this section is really best left
alone in most circumstances. All the phone cards on Time Dial charge maintenance
fees (if they exist) to the cards balance so if there is no credit there is no
charge. Some companies charge the maintenance fee to your bank account but only
tell you about this in the small print so watch out for these if you only want
to use the card for a limited time.

Most phone cards do not have a payphone
rate they charge a payphone fee. Some companies have an option which allows
users to find calling cards without a payphone fee so they have come to the
right place. However if cards don’t have a payphone fee they will usually charge
a high payphone rate per minute or have a very high standard rate resulting in
higher prices than those phone cards that charge a payphone fee.

There are very rare exceptions to this
rule for example the "Aussie card" from Cloncom has a good rate per minute which
doesn’t increase when used from a payphone and has no payphone fee. Cloncom are
a good company to work with, have good customer service and good rates but it
really best to go through our site to find the best possible deal.

The most obvious charge is the rate per
minute; this varies depending on whether you are calling a local number to
access the service, using toll free access or a payphone.
For example one site lists local rates
in the search results section labelled “rate per minute” but doesn’t make it
clear that you can find the toll free, mobile and payphone rates per minute 3
clicks away in a long list.

An important thing to mention is that
you shouldn’t use phone cards from cell phones in a foreign country. You will
pay roaming charges. You make the biggest savings when calling from cell phones
in your home country. The final fee to talk about is rounding which varies
usually from 1 second to 3 minutes. Good rounding terms comes at the price of
higher rates.

If you take anything away from this
article it should be this. If the phone card you’re looking at doesn’t
explicitly say it has a particular charge it almost defiantly will do. If it
doesn’t state what the charges are then don’t buy it.