ABC News and Consumer Reports Reveal Dirty Calling Card Secrets

Last night, the local New York ABC 7 News ran a short segment on calling cards that would certainly be of interest to our readers and anyone else making international calls on a regular basis. The segment outlined some of the difficulties in using calling cards, and the hidden fees that some people don’t even realize they are being charged. The basis of the story came from a Consumer Reports article about the downsides of calling cards when making international calls.

As the reporters explain, calling cards can tend to appear to be inexpensive, but most of the time you end up paying a lot more than you think due to connection fees, hang-up fees, daily or monthly charges, and/or ridiculous rounding fees, meaning cards that will round your call up by three minutes or more, often doubling your total call time.

The newscasters and Consumer Reports recommend making sure to closely read the terms and conditions of the calling cards, but as they also point out, this can be difficult to do when the cards are sold behind the counter like they are at many convenience stores. Also, the terms and conditions of calling cards have been found to use tricky and deceptive language to try to disguise their fees and make it difficult for people to understand.

Luckily for all you international callers out there, there is a service out there where you can avoid all of this AND get better rates and clearer calls. This service, of course, is StanaCard. While Consumer Reports mentioned that Skype is a great way to make international calls, they failed to mention that Skype is generally close to 50% more expensive per minute than StanaCard. Pingo, which is also mentioned, is also more expensive on average and they do not use the local SmartDial technology that StanaCard does, meaning you have to dial the long international number every time you want to make a call!

So if you or any of your friends or family needs to make calls abroad, make the right decision and go with StanaCard. Not only do we have extremely low rates and great connection, but we also give $10 to any customer who refers someone, and we also give $10 to the person who they refer! To check out the video, see below.

Rates Drop to all South Africa Mobile Phones!

As the exciting final rounds of the 2011 Cricket World Cup approach, a seemingly mediocre South Africa squad has proven that they have what it takes to win the Cup. After the group stage, South Africa sits on top of group B with only one loss, a close defeat against England. South Africa cruised through the rest of their matches, including a win over the number two seed India. On Friday in the quarterfinals, the squad will face the last seed to make it in Group A, New Zealand. Though South Africa is the favorite going into the match, they are not underestimating New Zealand. Top off-spinner Johan Botha says of the match, “You can't judge New Zealand by past form or recent form, they are a good team and on their day they can beat anyone. I think it's going to be a close match and hope it goes our way."

In the midst of this current winning streak, we have decided to decrease our rates to South Africa! The new rates have decreased over 20%, and are now well over 35% cheaper than other providers, including Skype. The price to call mobile phones in South Africa is now just 14.99 cents a minute, so now you can call all your friends and family back home to talk about the game Friday.

A $10 credit will now let you call South Africa for up to 66 minutes! That is about 37% cheaper than Skype, and unlike Skype and most calling cards, we charge absolutely no connection fees. You pay only for what you use.

Also, since we have local access numbers in South Africa, your friends and family in South Africa can use StanaCard to call you and take full advantage of our local dialing technology and great services!

You can refer people you know in the country and you will both get our referral bonus, and they can refer their friends as well! Simply refer us to friends, their first purchase is doubled and you get up to $10 worth of bonus credit as soon as they make their first call with us. For more information, check out our blog.

Traveling abroad soon? See how to avoid all roaming charges no matter where you go.