Pages tagged with 'calling card rates'
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Advertised per minute rates and actual per minute rates are generally not equal. Normally, the actual rate you pay will be higher than the per minute rate advertised by your vendor.
Your advertised per minute rate is the stated rate you will be charged per minute of billed time. This is typically the rate most prominently used to promote a particular calling card - like, for example, a card to India advertised at 5.9¢ per minute.
Billed time is not widely discussed, but it is the actual amount of time you are billed for a given call. Billed time in generally higher than your...
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Calling card companies use a billing increment to determine the actual time in minutes and seconds you will be charged for your call.
They do this by rounding up your actual talk time based on applicable billing increment. If you use any part of the next billing increment, you get charged for the time of the entire increment.
Using billing increments allows calling card companies to simplify billing - and they also let them squeeze a few more cents out of each call.
Billing increments are sometimes also referred to as minute rounding or rounding increment.
The most common...
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The per minute rate of a calling card, phonecard, or prepaid plan is the amount charged for each minute of billed time.
Billed time is the amount of actual talk time rounded up to the next billing increment. For more on what that means, check here.
But back to per minute rates: As you shop for a card, you will find that advertised per minute rates vary widely from vendor to vendor and from card to card - like by a huge amount.
It is easy to get confused - maybe that's the goal! And probably nobody really understands how it all works - except maybe the vendors themselves....
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Calling card pricing is complicated and, frankly, a bit annoying. The advertised per minute rate is generally not the actual rate you will end up paying. Your actual rate will usually be higher - sometimes much higher.
Your actual rate will be higher because of how billing increments work combined with other fees and surcharges that are added to the per minute rate for most cards.
These fees can easily double or triple your actual per minute rate.
As well, some vendors do not fully disclose all applicable rates and fees - or they bury them in the fine print. Many people get hit with...
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Dozens of companies sell hundreds of calling cards - all with complicated pricing. How do you know which card to buy?
The short answer is you want a card with a fee structure that is well matched to the kinds of calls you make. And you want that fee structure packaged with a nice set of advanced dialing and billing features.
Unfortunately because of the complex mechanics of calling card pricing, the only way to know which card is the best match for you is with a detailed pricing model. We've got one of those, but it isn't online yet, so in the meantime...
The next best thing is some...
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Long distance and international calling card rates are much cheaper than most landline and mobile phone plans.
The savings can be extraordinary - calling cards and prepaid phone plans can easily save you 50% off normal international long distance calls and in some cases can save you 90% or more.
In one case we saw recently, the advertised per minute rate from a name brand carrier was 70¢ to an international destination and it was 1.9¢ from a popular calling card - that's a savings of 97%!!! Wow!
Even among calling cards, there are huge price differences. This can be seen most sharply...
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