Comments on: Ill Communication

By: daithi mac mhaolmhuaidh

daithi mac mhaolmhuaidh — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 22:20:52 +0000

I just pick up a bunch of phone cards every couple of months to phone Ireland from the States. Much easier.

By: No Preference

No Preference — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 12:30:16 +0000

I have been using voice over I/P from Vonage for about a year. This service allows you to make unlimited calls anywhere in the US and Canada for $35/mo, and international calls at low rates. It shares your computer's high speed internet connection (DSL or cable). It uses a digital phone adapter which you must hook up yourself, but it works with your regular phone. Voice quality is not bad. Phone services such as voice mail, call forwarding, and call waiting are included in the basic price. This has worked well enough for us to unplug our old home phone service. Its Achilles heel is that it is dependent on the reliability of your internet connection, and will also fail if your power goes down. My wife and I have cell phones for backup.

By: laura

laura — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 05:42:27 +0000

Thanks for the warning. I’ve had equivalently bad experiences with AT&T—no collection agencies involved, but they repeatedly switched a number back into the name of a housemate who’d left more than a year before, stopped sending me bills, then cut off service because I hadn’t paid the bill I hadn’t gotten. This happened 3 times over a year and each time I had the number transferred into my name AGAIN; when I finally called to have service terminated, they insisted I couldn’t do it because the phone number wasn’t in my name. I ended up paying a ridiculously inflated bill because at some point they had also unenrolled us from the reasonable rate plan I’d signed up for. Then to get AT&T to stop being my long distance carrier I had to call my local carrier and have THEM change it, in addition to spending hours on the phone with AT&T and sending them written notice. I pretty much switched to my cell phone and the occasional pre-paid card. Phone companies just suck, I guess.

By: Dennis Slater

Dennis Slater — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 04:58:03 +0000

Sam’s Club sells phone cards for around 3 cents a minute. I have used them for some time and changed my phone service to reflect that. We cannot make long distance calls from our phones. Saves a ton of money. And you do not have to pay all those taxes, franchise fees, connection fees, etc. that we did when we used a long distance service. There is still a $5-6 federal access fee on our monthly bill that we cannot get rid of. My typical phone bill is $13-14 plus the access fee plus all the taxes, etc.. The phone card can be easily recharged and is virtually theft proof from what I can see. A thief could not use more than what is on the card anyway. Get a phone card from Sam’s Club and cut out your long distance service. Program the numbers into your phone and be happy.

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 02:36:14 +0000

Something else to watch out for w/ such systems- it’s quite easy to miss-dial, sometimes resulting in very large fees. I regularly used a dial-around through World exchange, and have had no problems w/ them. But, I once accidentally reversed two of the numbers w/o noticing, only to get a $500 phone bill for an hour long call. (The normal rate would have been something like $7). The call had been re-roughted through Kazakhstan, through some shady business. Thankfully MCI, who was nominally the billing agent, re-billed it. But, it can be quite a shock.