Pingo.com has won our 2010 Editor's Choice award for best international calling card.
Pingo is almost in a class by themselves in the calling card industry. We strongly recommend them.
Pingo has earned the top spot 2 years in a row for many reasons: low rates, clean pricing, flexible dialing options, excellent promotions, strong customer support,... There's really nothing bad you can say about them.
One decisive factor for us is pricing: Pingo simply has better pricing than...
The new comparison does a deep dive analysis of many key factors, including:
Type of company
International reach
Low rates
'Clean' cards
No hidden fees
Live customer support
Extras
Special offers
To be honest, we learned some things ourselves by doing this analysis. Most important, it helped clarify who are the good, better, and best companies - and it really highlighted which companies are less good.
The District of Columbia filed suit against AT&T in an effort to claim the unused balances remaining on old prepaid calling cards.
It is estimated that 5% to 20% of the purchased value of calling cards goes unused - for calling card users, it is hard to time calls exactly to consume all the purchased time and/or people simply forget they have the time.
The suit is based on the idea that the unused balances are 'abandoned property' which the city is entitled to collect under District law. This is similar to how the city would handle, say, a residential property that was abandoned after a homeowner died with a proper will and no surviving beneficiaries. In such case, the city would claim the property which then either use it or sell it.
On July 29th, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a permanent injunction against Diamond Phone Card, Inc. of Elmhurst, NY for calling card fraud. The complaint alleges that Diamond sold cards that delivered dramatically fewer minutes than were advertised.
The owner of the company and a key employee were also cited individually. The case was filed in the US District Court in New York.
Diamond Phone Card sells prepaid calling cards through retail outlets. It markets primarily to recent immigrants to the United States.
The FTC charged that Diamond Phone Card "advertisements made bold claims about the number of minutes the cards would provide for calls to a wide range of international locations, including the Dominican Republic,...
iBasis, the parent company of Pingo Calling Cards, is selling its remaining shares to Royal KPN (aka Koninklijke KPN), a large Dutch telecommunications company.
iBasis, a leading wholesale carrier of international long distance phone calls, is based in Burlington, MA, USA. The transaction involves KPN buying the remaining 44% of iBasis that it didn't already own. The value of the transaction is about US$49 Million.
KPN and iBasis originally joined forces in 2007 when they combined their international voice networks to create a massive global network across the Americas, Europe, and Asia.
Their cell phones weren't working, but they needed to reach the people who were picking them up at the airport. They went straight for a pay phone that accepted their credit card and made the call that way. It wasn't until they got their credit card bill later that they realized how much they'd been charged.
Apparently, they tried to protest the charges, but weren't able to ge them revesed. So, that's an...
Today, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a $1.3M settlement with Clifton Telecard Alliance One (CTA) for calling card fraud. Also named in the settlement was Mustafa Qattous, the owner of CTA. The settlement resolves a lawsuit filed by the FTC against Clifton in April, 2008.
The FTC charged that CTA "misrepresented the number of calling minutes consumers would get with its calling cards, charged hidden fees, and failed to disclose that consumers’ cards will be charged whether or not the calls are connected".
As part of the settlement, Clifton is ordered not to misrepresent the number of minutes of talk time a customer can expect to receive. As well, CTA is required to fully and "conspicuously disclose any material limitations"...
Today, the IDT Corporation announced that they were buying the remaining 49% of Union Telecard Alliance (UTA) that they don't already own.
UTA, which was founded by Carlos Gomez in May, 2003, is the exclusive distributor of IDT prepaid calling cards in the United States.
UTA has built a network of over 850 sub-distributors that sell IDT Telecom calling cards in retail outlets around the United States. Union Telecard Alliance also sells cards through it's website
In addition to card distribution, UTA is also involved in developing IDT's calling card marketing strategies, including ideas for...
