Instant PIN. Rechargeable calling cards. PINless dialling

Calling cards related fees

When you buy a prepaid calling cards, it usually associate with more hidden charges. You need to pay attention to several common hidden charges, or the card can turn out to be a lot more pricey.

• Connection Fee: It's charged when a telephone call is connected. It varies between 10 cents to as high as $1. The easiest way to find whether a cheaper phone card with connection fee is good or not is to find the average time for your phone calls. If you make 10 mins calls, a card for 5 cents/min with $0.50 connection fee is actually more expensive than a card for 9 cents/min with no connection fee. It's better to use a phone card without connection fee if you are not sure the person you are calling is there, and the phone call may trigger an answer machine. Phone cards with high connection fee are good for making very long calls.

• Tax: Some prepaid calling cards charge a monthly tax or one-time tax, and it can be as high as $1.50. Try to avoid it by finding the information for your phone card carefully.

• Maintenance Fee : Maintenance fee will be deducted from your calling card if there is still enough balance. It won't be charged on your credit card. It could be as high as $1.50, so check it out, too. The maintenance fee can be charged every month, every two weeks, or every week. Maintenance fee is also called sweet fee by certain phone card companies.

• Minutes Rounding: This is the basic unit to record the length of your phone calls. Industry standard is one minute rounding, as in the case of your residential telephone services. Prepaid phone cards can be rounded to one, two, or even three minutes. If it rounded to 3 minutes, your 30 seconds phone call will be considered as 3-mins phone call and your 4 mins phone call will be considered as 6 mins phone call. Statistically, on average, for 2 mins rounding, you will be charged for one more minutes for each phone call, and for 3 mins rounding, you will be charged for one and half more minutes for each phone call. So try to avoid using phone cards with more than one minutes rounding.

  Calling cards rounding:

  • 1 min rounding: your phone calls will be billed in 1 minute increment. You don't lose any minutes.
  • 2 min rounding: your phone calls will be billed in 2 minutes increment. For example: calls between 2-4 mins will be billed at 4 mins, calls between 6-8 mins will be billed at 8 mins.
  • 3 min rounding: your phone calls will be billed in 3 minutes increment. For example: calls between 0-3 mins will be billed at 3 mins, calls between 6-9 mins will be billed at 9 mins.
  • 6 min rounding: your phone calls will be billed at 6 minutes increment. For example: calls between 0-6 mins will be billed at 6 mins, calls between 6-12 mins will be billed at 12 mins.

• Pay-Phone Surcharge: Prepaid calling cards provide the most convenience when you want to make cheap phone calls while away from home, but there is generally a surcharge between $0.325 up to $0.75 associated when you use a public pay-phone. Payment for the use of a public pay-phone is required by FCC. However, from the variation of this surcharge, it's obvious that some phone card companies use it as a way to profit.