| |
Glossary
The following glossary will be helpful for our
customers to understand our quality control system and hidden
charges in prepaid phone cards.
Prepaid phone card related
charges:
Terms used in our quality control
system:
Prepaid phone card related
charges:
-
Connection Fee: Also called
first-minute surcharge. It's charged when a telephone call
is connected. It varies between 25 cents to as high as $3.
The easiest way to evaluate whether a cheaper phone card with
connection fee is worthwhile or not is to estimate 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 is good for the case when you know
your party is there and you intend to talk for a long time.
-
Tax: Believe it or not, some prepaid
phone cards charge a monthly tax or one-time tax, and it can
be as high as $1.50. Try to avoid it by checking the information
for your phone card carefully.
-
Maintenance Fee : Some
phone cards will start to charge a maintenance fee either
when the first phone call is connected or after the first
phone call is finished. 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.
-
Minutes
rounding on our website:
- 1 min rounding: your phone calls will be billed
at 1 minute increment. You don't lose any minutes.
- 2 min rounding: your phone calls will be billed
at 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
at 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.
- 1 then 2 min rounding: for your phone calls, the
first minute will be billed at 1 minutes increment, and
after that it will be billed at 2 minutes increment. For
example: calls less than 1 min will be billed at 1 min,
calls between 1-3 mins will be billed at 3 mins.
- 1 then 3 min rounding: for your phone calls, the
first minute will be billed at 1 minutes increment, and
after that it will be billed at 3 minutes increment. For
example: calls less than 1 min will be billed at 1 min,
calls between 1-4 mins will be billed at 4 mins.
- 4 then 6 min rounding: for your phone calls, the
first 4 minute will be billed at 4 minutes increment, and
after that it will be billed at 6 minutes increment. For
example: calls less than 4 min will be billed at 4 min,
calls between 4-10 mins will be billed at 10 mins, calls
between 10-16 mins will be billed at 16 mins, etc.
- Note: the last three types of rounding offer benefit
to the customers. If the party you are calling is not there
or if you reach an answering machine, you may only lose
1 minute.
-
Pay-Phone Surcharge:
Prepaid phone cards provide the most convenience when you
want to make cheap phone calls anywhere, but there is usually
a surcharge between $0.30 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.
-
Communication Fee:
Some phone cards that look pretty cheap can turn out to be
not cheap at all. Certain phone cards are advertised with
an attractive total minutes in the card. But that number was
calculated based on a single call per card. Certain phone
cards charge a communication fee up to 25% of the phone call's
cost. This makes the rates to be 25% more expensive in reality.
The advertised total minutes looks more attractive because
this fee is usually applied after the call is finished.
-
Long Talking Fee: Certain
phone cards charge this fee that's rarely known to lots of
customers. If the customer talked for more than 20 mins, 40
cents will be charged for every 20 minutes talking time. This
equals to 2 cents more per minute.
-
Hang-up Fee: When the remaining
balance of a phone card gets to less than the amount required
for a one-minute phone call, this fee may apply to reduce
the balance to zero. Then the phone card will be purged from
the system soon.
Terms used in our quality control
system:
Billing Accuracy
- Five: No extra charge beside all charges listed
- Four: actual rate is higher than advertised
by less than 10%
- Three: actual rate is higher than advertised
by 10-25%
- Two: actual rate is higher than advertised
by 25-50%
- One: actual rate is higher than advertised
by more than 50%
Ease of Connection
- Five: No Busy Signal
- Four: Occasionally busy, but can get connected
within a few tries
- Three: I tend to use the card during certain
time. Busy but can get connected with several tries
- Two: during certain time; Have to try many
times to get connected
- One: I try to use the card throughout the day.
Seems always busy
Voice Quality
- Five: Crystal clear;
- Four: clear voice, sometime echo
- Three: Echo most of the time
- Two: Broken voice sometimes
- One: Broken voice most of time, difficult to
hear
Customer Service
- Five: Willing to correct problem within 24
hours
- Four: Solution within 3 days
- Three: Solution within 7 days
- Two: Unwilling to correct problem
|
|
