Calling Cards Blog

The calling cards blog provides updates on industry news, new website content, and other topics. We welcome guest posts.

Pingo Wins Editor's Choice Award for Best Calling Card

Posted: May 7, 2010

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 other companies.

Why? First, their rates are consistently among the lowest in the industry. Second, they have excellent rates not just from their home country (USA), but also from most countries worldwide. Third, their pricing is the 'cleanest' in the industry - and we really like clean. Clean means fewer fees and fewer fees means simpler, more honest pricing.

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New calling card comparison table

Posted: March 12, 2010
In recent weeks, we've been working on an in-depth comparison of leading calling card companies.

The new page is now live here: calling card ratings comparison.

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.
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Washington DC sues AT&T for unused calling card balances

Posted: January 6, 2010

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.

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FTC Seeks Injunction Against Diamond Phone Card, Inc. for Calling Card Fraud

Posted: August 12, 2009

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, El Salvador, Mexico, India, Pakistan, and Guatemala. But the FTC charges that consumers didn’t receive the number of minutes advertised. For example, a calling card claiming to deliver 400 calling minutes to Mexico provided only 106 minutes of calling time, and one claiming to deliver 50 minutes of calling time to Honduras actually delivered only 20 minutes".

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Pingo Calling Cards Parent Company iBasis Being Sold to KPN

Posted: July 14, 2009

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.

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Use Phone Cards for International Travel

Posted: July 10, 2009

Here is a great story about how a couple ended up paying US$52 for a 2-minute phone call from pay phone at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. When A Two-Minute Phone Call at The Airport Costs $50.

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.

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