Do all long-distance carriers now charge a monthly fee?
Doc
plan that gave me a flat LD rate and charged me $5/month.
At the time it seemed like a good idea but now I'm sure I'm losing
money on it, and the monthly rate has gone up since then. Until I
went on to that plan, if I didn't make out of state calls, I AT&T
didn't charge me anything.
I figured I'd switch back to the way things used to be. Nope. There's
is no longer any plan where you don't pay anything if you don't make
any LD calls. Cheapest plan they have is $2.99/Mo
Not a tremendous amount of money, but wondering if there's any LD
carrier that doesn't charge anything if I don't make calls.
Thanks
Evelyn C. Leeper
You also do not have to designate a default long distance carrier at all.
We dropped AT&T when their monthly charges went from $3 to $9 even with
no calls. We use OneSuite for all our long distance and have no
designated LD carrier. Calls to toll-free numbers still work as before
(which is how one makes calls via prepaid services such as OneSuite),
but if we try to dial any regular LD number, we get a message that we
must dial a long distance carrier code first (1-0 followed by a
three-digit code).
This is actually better for us, since we never could keep track of which
in-state calls were long distance and ended up paying much higher rates
for them before.
--
Evelyn C. Leeper
He who knows only his own side of the case
knows little of that. -John Stuart Mill
John A. Weeks III
Doc <docsa...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Not a tremendous amount of money, but wondering if there's any LD
> carrier that doesn't charge anything if I don't make calls.
I was with Power Net Global until recently. They did not
charge a monthly fee. I dropped them when I went 100% cellular.
-john-
--
======================================================================
John A. Weeks III 952-432-2708 jo...@johnweeks.com
Newave Communications http://www.johnweeks.com
======================================================================
George Grapman
dial around service.
Evelyn C. Leeper
>> You do not need a long distance carrier. You can use phone cars or a
>> dial around service.
> but to each his own.
Reminder: if you have a phone with programmable numbers, you can program
the toll-free number for a pre-paid service into one of them, and your
PIN into another. (Some services let you specify numbers from which you
can call that don't require a PIN, e.g., your home number.)
George Grapman
>> You do not need a long distance carrier. You can use phone cars or a
>> dial around service.
> but to each his own.
know a elderly person who makes , maybe, 20 minutes of LD calls. This
works for him.
Evelyn C. Leeper
Also, in-state long distance calls are often charged at exorbitantly
high rates by carriers such as AT&T, while the pre-paid services charge
all calls at their low rates.
timeOday
> We dropped AT&T when their monthly charges went from $3 to $9 even with
> no calls. We use OneSuite for all our long distance and have no
> designated LD carrier.
OneSuite has a monthly minimum too, sort of - the minutes expire.
Evelyn C. Leeper
Yes, but $10 lasts for six months (I think). Even with our low usage,
we use that much. (Don't forget, you can use these minutes anywhere,
not just from your home phone. In fact, you can share the minutes with,
say, your parents.)
Bill
Doc wrote:
>
> Not a tremendous amount of money, but wondering if there's any LD
> carrier that doesn't charge anything if I don't make calls.
Ask your local provider if they offer their own LD. I have
Verizon and I was able to pick Verizon LD with no monthly fee.
However, that was a while ago and things may have changed (but
it still pays to call and ask).
Bill
Rick
Bill, did you miss the thread earlier in the year about Verizon changing
that policy?
Verizon LD *used* to not have a monthly fee. But as of April this year
Verizon now assesses a "shortfall charge" of $2.19 a month, when you
include the taxes. As they explain it the "shortfall charge" is the
minimum you pay if you don't use any long distance service. "Shortfall"
- I feel so inadequate somehow... 8-)
At the time they implemented this fee change there were also several
reports of Verizon assigning themselves as the LD carrier to people who
intentionally had no LD carrier assigned to their phone.
Better check your bills going back to April 2007 - when Verizon started
assessing the "shortfall charge" for LD service.
Rick
Bob F
"Evelyn C. Leeper" <ele...@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:o8nYi.50$dP...@newsfe10.lga...
> Abe wrote:
>>> You do not need a long distance carrier. You can use phone cars or a dial
>>> around service.
>> True enough. I prefer a single carrier, and to not have to use a card,
>> but to each his own.
>
> Reminder: if you have a phone with programmable numbers, you can program the
> toll-free number for a pre-paid service into one of them, and your PIN into
> another. (Some services let you specify numbers from which you can call that
> don't require a PIN, e.g., your home number.)
And if it has a pause key, you can program the toll-free #, pause,pause,PIN into
one programmable #.
Bob
Jim Prescott
>carrier that doesn't charge anything if I don't make calls.
There are several. Here are some sites that let you compare rates:
http://www.saveonphone.com/
http://www.phonedog.com/long-distance
http://www.phoneratefinder.com/
Note that if you do much in-state long-distance you can get much better
prices with things line onesuite.com than with any 1+ carrier. If you
can program the access number into speedial on your phone this can be
almost as convenient as 1+ dialing.
If you have high-speed internet there is also skype.com which runs about
$30/yr.
--
Jim Prescott - Computing and Networking Group j...@seas.rochester.edu
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of Rochester, NY