I use my cell phone to make long distance calls. Why not? Just wait until after 19:00, or call on weekends, and talk as long as I want without a per-minute charge. But last month I made a couple of long distance (Verizon) calls, and talked for a while. The “daytime” call was $0.38/minute, and the “night” call was $0.25/minute. What the freak??? :eek: In L.A. I was paying $0.15/minute, and I think I got a USAA discount as well.
So what long distance carrier charges the least, without having to do the 10-10-xxx thing?
Oh, and today I got a snail-spam from Verizon offering me unlimited local and long distance for “only” $65/month. :rolleyes:
My wife bought an MCI prepaid calling card at the local office supply store with 670 minutes of long distance for $20.00. I thought that was a good deal (3 cents per minute) and it works very well but you have to input a PIN number in the dialing process.
The best place to check out the rates: www.saveonphone.com. The current leader (and it has been for a couple of years now), is ECG Communications. No monthly fee, no minimum, interstate calls are 2.75 cents per minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Can’t beat that with a stick!
Their intrastate rates vary quite a bit by state, but a lot of those are very good, too.
I believe that ECG is a reseller of serivce actually provided by Qwest.
We pay no monthly fee, and 7c/minute for long distance at any time, day or night.
This is a grandfathered deal that my wife brought with her when she moved here from San Francisco a few years back. I don’t think this is available to new customers.
With my Sprint cel phone I never pay long distance and I never roam. I pay $35 a month for more daytime minutes than I’ve ever used and unlimited nights and weekends. Totally worth it.
I used Skype p2pVOIP to talk to my parents when I was back in the States, and they were in Japan. Aside from the cost of the microphone for my computer, it was completely free.
Given that you could get the same service for less than half the cost, why stick with it? And Jeff Olsen, it sounds like you’re paying over 7 times as much as necessary. It’s all the same service - these days, there’s no difference between long distance carriers when it comes to quality or reliability. Sometimes, the service might vary (how long you wait when you call them about, say, a billing problem), but if you don’t have any problems, you never have to call them, anyway (I can’t remember the last time I had to call a phone company about anything). And these days, the cheapest carrier also happens to have the best customer service!
I don’t understand why anyone would willingly pay more for the same product.
Very interesting site, Early Out. I’ll call Verizon to see if switching long distance will have an adverse effect on my local service.
ECG does look good, but when I checked their international rates Canada is not listed. Since I live a stone’s throw from the border and have occasion to go to Canada from time to time, it would be good to be able to make calls there.
According to the chart on another “cheap phones” site (www.phonedog.com), ECG’s rate for Canada is 8 cents/minute. Probably best to call their customer service number and ask. It also appears that you might have to call them directly to get the 2.75 cents/minute rate - their online signup form is still showing 3.5 cents/minute.
I use Affordable Voice Communications www.avcinc.com . I get 3.85 cents Interstate and 4.38 cents Intrastate (Indiana). Most of my calls are in state so it’s a pretty good plan. I’ve seen some that are cheaper, but not cheaper enough for me to switch.
