Another Holiday Calling Card

We introduced the Group Talk card almost 6 months ago, but I thought I'd remind you about it since the end of the year is always so full of holidays. If you have family that you won't be seeing face-to-face during the holiday season, consider a Group Talk card.

Group Talk allows you to connect up to 50 people from across the country and around the world in one call. Many members of my family will be traveling on New Year's Eve this year, and I plan to use a Group Talk card to ring in the new year with them once it hits midnight in my time zone! Group Talk is really simple to use and works with any phone. To join your call, your friends and family can call a local access number and enter your call code. An even easier way to connect is to have the calling system dial out to your group - all you friends and family have to do is to answer the phone!

Rates are low, and the quality is much better than online group calls. Besides, I know I could never get some members of my family to join an online call - I'd lose them at the idea of plugging in a headset!

For more information on the Group Talk multiuser card, visit
http://www.callingcards.com/shopping/card_profile_grouptalk.asp

Hate Dialing Calling Card Pin Numbers?

Calling cards are great tools for keeping in touch with friends, family, and business partners worldwide, but many people who make frequent international calls get tired of dialing their pin numbers. There are workarounds, like storing the pin number in your phone's speed dial, but they usually compromise your card's security and just don't save that much time.

Yes, you heard it coming - we have a solution! We have added pinless dialing capabilities to many of the calling cards that are available on CallingCards.com. (Mobile Caller is another pinless dialing option.) We've also added speed dial to these calling cards, so you can complete your call with just 5 or 6 digits rather than having to enter your pin number and destination number. Add in auto-recharge and you've got a calling card that's just as convenient as a long distance calling plan, but with rates that are up to 90% lower!

To see whether or not the card you're interested in has these features, just:
1. Search for a calling card using the search box below the header on CallingCards.com
2. Select a card that looks good and click "More Info"
3. Look near the bottom of the "Card Info" tab to see what features come with your card

If you have any questions about pinless dialing, prepaid calling cards, or speed dial on a calling card, feel free to leave a comment below so I can help out.

Save Money...and The Earth

As part of Blog Action Day, I'd like to remind you that online calling cards aren't just great for your wallet. Sure, you can get the best available rates by shopping around and reading all of the fees before you buy. And yes, you can customize your card to your calling area to get the features and service you need. What else is so cool about buying prepaid calling cards online?

There's no card.

When you buy a plastic calling card at a store, you get the card for your wallet along with the piece of plastic or cardboard that was used to hang it, plus maybe a plastic bag and a receipt. That's three extra pieces of trash that you don't even need in order to make your call!

Suppose you could just buy the card itself. It's just a plastic rectangle, about 2.5 by 3.5 inches, no harm done. It wouldn't be noticed in a landfill. Now think about scale: over our network alone, over 100,000,000 (one hundred million) cards would be purchased each month. If each card weighs just .03 ounces (one gram, about as much as a paper clip), that would put 2,204,622 pounds (1102 tons) of plastic in the landfill each month.

The next time you need a prepaid calling card, be sure to shop online. That goes for other purchases, too - see what you can buy in digital form rather than buying the actual object.

Don't forget the classic advice - reduce, reuse, and recycle. If you already have a stash of used calling cards (or gift cards), use them for bookmarks, cut them into custom guitar picks, make your own art or craft from them, or check out these ways to reuse them:
(Note: the links below are to outside sites. CallingCards.com is not responsible for the content of these sites.)
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/08/plastic_gift_cards.php
http://faerieluna.blogspot.com/2006/09/recycle-those-plastic-gift-or-coffee.html
http://www.funqa.com/environment-ecology/2776-1-environment-3.html

Let me know if you think of any other ways to reuse plastic cards!

Affiliate Update - New Programs!

We've expanded our affiliate program! It now contains four exciting brands: OneTranslator.com, MobileCaller.com, CallingCards.com and CallingCard.com! For full details, visit callingcards.com/ap.

You can promote any of these sites from the same affiliate account (and if you're already an affiliate, you can get started right now), and track your performance by individual site or all together. Our graphic library is full of dozens of new banners for all of these brands, so you can be up and earning in no time. The commission is still the same - 10% on all successful sales, plus 10% residual commission on your customers for life.

OneTranslator is currently the only site of its kind with an affiliate program, so don't wait! If your site visitors could benefit from on-demand phone interpreters, you could be earning.... OneTranslator's customers include students, doctors and other medical staff, travel agents, professionals, and individuals from many other sectors.

Of course, if you're not interested in becoming an affiliate, you can check out OneTranslator for yourself and see how this service can help you break down the language barrier. I'm definitely looking forward to having OneTranslator with me on my next trip abroad.

If you have any questions about OneTranslator or our affiliate program, including co-branding, please feel free to drop me a note in the comments.

Calling Cards: The Perfect Gift

Some friends of mine are getting married in a few weeks, and I knew just what to get them (along with something off their registry, of course): a calling card! Since I knew they'd be honeymooning in Cancun, I got them a calling card with enough minutes to call home from Mexico at the best rate (I chose the World Access Card - no connection fee, 3.7 cents/minute, 1-minute billing increment). With the calling card, my friends can spend their hard-earned money on fun in the sun, not on calling mom and dad.

Calling cards are a really thoughtful gift for many occasions. Weddings and other big family events that demand a lot of phone time are good candidates, but so are housewarmings and going away parties (since the recipients will have lots of talking to do with old and new friends). Students and travelers always welcome calling cards, especially if they'll be going abroad, and if you shop carefully you can get much better rates online than the recipient would be able to find in his destination country. If you have friends or family who live in another country, consider tucking a calling card into your next birthday or holiday card - it will make staying in touch so much easier.

A calling card is an unexpected but useful gift that fits any lifestyle (no clutter, nothing to maintain), but is much more personal than a gift certificate or cash. Online, prepaid calling cards are also convenient, even for last-minute gifts, since they're delivered within minutes! What other occasions would be good for giving calling cards? Fall and winter holidays are right around the corner, after all....

Free Calling Cards (365 Days a Year)

Every so often, the free calling card offer we developed for Montel viewers gets republicized on "deal" and coupon websites across the internet. You don't have to wait for your budget-conscious peers to drop you that link again - you can get a free 10 minute calling card any time just by visiting CallingCards.com. You can use your free card to call from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world, landline or cellular. You don't have to give us any credit card or other payment information - just some basics like name and email address to protect you from fraud.

As I've noted in recent posts, there are a lot of consumer concerns about prepaid calling cards, many of them well-founded. Our free card offer is our way of proving to you that we won't sell your information, misinform you about rates and fees, or offer poor call quality - we've been in this business for more than seven years, and we take our customers very seriously.

Keep our free calling card in mind when you're traveling, too! International students are also fans of our free calling card...sometimes 10 minutes is all it takes to get back in touch with friends and family.

Avoid Bad Calling Cards

I just read a CNet article about prepaid calling card scams that was written about seven years ago. I think the industry has cleaned up its act a lot, but there are still things consumers must do to make sure they're getting the best deal. (This is true of any purchase, so keep your eyes open the next time you buy anything!)

Here are some things you can do to make sure you're getting what you think you're paying for in a prepaid calling card:

1. Check for fees
A reputable calling card provider will always detail every tax, fee, and surcharge that goes along with each card. This information is usually on a card's profile page or in its details (not the most obvious locations), but it's worth finding. I gave a detailed breakdown of calling card fees a while ago.

2. Check the billing increment
There are some notes about the billing increment in the article that's linked from #1, but here's the bottom line: big billing increments can eat away your minutes if you're not careful. If you buy a 100 minute card with a 10-minute billing increment and use it to make 10 calls that last 20 seconds each, your card will be used up. 10 calls x 10-minutes each = 100 minutes. But, you say, I only talked for 3 minutes and 20 seconds, not 100 minutes! Remember: the billing increment is the unit in which you will be billed, so if it's 10 minutes, anything up to 10 minutes will be billed as 10 minutes, and any calls from 10 minutes and 1 second to 20 minutes will be billed as 20 minutes, and so on.

3. Make sure you can contact the company
And that there's a customer service number for your card. Our contact information is readily available on our website, and each calling card comes with a customer service number that's printed near the top of the purchase receipt. If you can't find contact information for any company, why would you consider purchasing from them, for calling cards or anything else?

This was inspired by the Prepaid Calling Cards section of the How Stuff Works coverage of long distance scams. It's a good article, and definitely worth checking out. Some more notes, based on their information:

• CallingCards.com has been around for more than 7 years, and we won't be going anywhere any time soon. We are one of the premiere providers of online calling cards.
• We fully disclose any fees that might be associated with our calling cards, and we do our absolute best to ensure that card information is accurate across our huge inventory.
• We deliver all of our cards online, and we have a variety of measures in place to protect you against fraud at many levels. You won't ever have to worry that you will be billed for a card you don't receive, or that you won't receive a working PIN number.
• There are some things over which we have no control, like pay phone and cell phone surcharges. These are determined by the carrier, not by us.

Knowing as much as you can about your purchases is definitely a smart decision. If you have any questions about prepaid calling cards or CallingCards.com, please feel free to leave them in the comment below so I can help you out.