I have Sprint-nuff said,overpriced,I know,and I want to change.
I read an article with some cheapo tricks from people who have mucho bucks.(the article pointing out how some people’s sucessful business practices leached into their personal finances).So I know this isn’t off the wall-but doable.
One trick was the woman cancelled her LD co.and bought phone cards with minutes on them,supposedly eliminating any other charges (that access one that seems to come every 3 mos.for one.)
Is this true?I mean can I just cancell my LD and use a card,or Bradshaw’s company,or no annoying 10-10 number services from another commercial.
If I did this could I ** receive** a call with no hassle to the caller?What about 800# which are free anyway?
Anyone with any phone company protocol expertise in the house?
I have no LD carrier. When I need to make an LD call I either use a 10-10 dial-around prefix or buy a prepaid card. Achernar, why would I not be able to receive an LD collect call? A collect call would be billed through my local carrier regardless of point of origination.
Beats me why not. I guess it’s likely that this isn’t a universal. I didn’t mean to say that this should be a deterrant to going through with an otherwise feasible plan, but maybe if it’s important to you to be able to receive collect calls, you should look into it before going ahead.
I’ve got a cell phone, on which there is no extra charge for long-distance. I pay about $45 (US) a month, and I have more minutes than I ever, ever come close to using. And long-distance calls are included, so no worrying about keeping my LD calls short, etc. If I have something meaningless and unimportant to say to my brother in another time zone, I just call him, from wherever I am. It’s great.
I work for a phone company and I do that. I buy those AT&T cards at Walmart which break out to a rediculously low price per minute (and, if you refill them instead of buying new, it comes out cheaper still). If I’m just making a quickie call and don’t feel like dialing all those numbers, I just use a 10 10 number.
Since my function at the phone company is to program the phone lines, I can tell you with certainty that this will cause no problems with any aspect of your service. It doesn’t affect receiving collect calls in the least. That’s an Operator function and has nothing to do with phone company switching equipment. The part of the account that the operator sees (for directory assistance, etc) has a flag that indicates whether that customer will accept collect calls or not.
Achernar, if your friends want to be able to receive collect calls they should give their local phone company a call. Some companies block collect calls automatically and will only unblock with a call from the customer. This cuts down on the $300 “I never accepted any of those calls” billing issues. And sometimes, if the last person to have that number had collect calls blocked, the flagging sometimes just carries over, you know how computers can be
They don’t, so it’s not a big deal. I just brought it up in case it was something the OP needed to be concerned with, but it sounds like it’s not. So… nevermind!
The phone cards do seem to have one drawback, at least on the receiving end. My caller ID display shows the origin as the card issuer’s location and number, not the true caller.
It’s a little disconcerting to talk to someone you know is in New York when the caller ID says “Colorado.”
I wonder if this is true for all phone cards and is a technology change possible to fix this?
how much LD calling do you do? if your LD bill (excluding ‘access charges’ or ‘plan fees’
if it’s less then $10 per month you should look for a plan with no monthly fees. If more then you have the do the math.
You can drop your LD carrier and use calling cards or 10-10 codes to call - very easy to do with a phone with speed dial buttons. If you can’t program a pause you can program one button with the calling card number and a second with your calling card number.
OK-I’m going to look into the cards.Thanks for the replies.
What LD services charge nothing per month and have no time restrictions,ie,nickle nights,weekends,etc.
Is there a website I could research and compare them?
I’m still mystified about that universal?access fee that shows up on both my local and long distance every couple months.How do cards overcome that?
These things aggravate me,sorta like taxation without representation.I always feel like I’m being taken when I see those charges.
Well you are being taken - there is a tax on phone service to help finance the Spanish American War (well a tax that can be traced to it) - but that’s not what you asked.
Verizon LD (if avaiable in your state) has a number of plans - the one I use is $0.10/min and $0.05/min on sundays - no other fees except for taxes. My LD bill avrages about $2/month.
Sprint may have a no fee plan also ATT I think does (I personally don’t like ATT as their customer service sucks and the bastards owe me about $32 from 2 years ago and I will not even talk to them until they pay me back with interest - but that’s another story.
Also there are many more LD companies that have various plans - do a web search and you will find many less then name brands that may fit the bill (so to speak)
Also if you have a membership to Costco (or other club might have it too) they sell LD service.
I currently pay 4.5 cents a minutes for LD and toll with “no monthly charge.” Actually, there is a $3 a month fee which applies if you use less than $20 in LD, so that’s a little misleading.
I do it through “Buyersonline” which is actually the bankrupt Global Crossings, which I discovered through this site:
Also if you have broadband service (not dsl - even though you can use it w/ dsl but it is smewhat self defeating) there is a internet phone service that I’ve heard actually works (from another message board - for what that’s worth). Instead of plugging a mike and speakers into your pc (like earlier net to phone services) you connect a ‘telephone modem’ to your broadband ‘modem’ before your pc or hub. The ‘telephone modem’ has a standard telephone jack on it where you plug a normal telephone (or groups of phones - like how your house is wired) and supposably they work just as they would normally. You get a phone number (many area codes are available - and you don’t have to chose your’s if you don’t want to), And a butt load of calling services (call waiting, caller ID, voicemail, etc.) for a flat rate that includes unlimited LD and local calls. http://vonage.com/rates.php
I would personally see it more as a second phone then a primary as past net-to-phone services sometimes had lag and broken words but may be worth a shot.
Our primary long distance service for the past few months has been our cell phone. For other contexts we use an MCI card purchased as Costco which factors out to about 3.5 cents per minute and is rechargable via a credit card over the phone. You just gotta program a couple buttons on your speed dial to accomodate all the access and account data. But it works great.
We also have a no-fee ATT plan as a backup–we would prefer not to–but if you don’t designate a long distance carrier (at least it works this way with our local phone company) and somone, say a visitor, goes ahead and dials 1-area code-phone number, you are then randomly assigned a whole new long distance carrier. Joy! Do check this out in your area.
I have AT&T anytime for 5 cents a minute and 6.95/mo. fee. I use CallWave so I need the Call Busy Forwarding service. Damm. Otherwise I would try out the phone card route. I have three sons so I use many, many long distance minutes a month.
