Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam's Club

Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

I made my regular trip to Sam's Club today and was amazed that they lowered the AT&T phone cards to less than 3 cents a minute.

When they were 3.4 cents, I cancelled my long distance carrier on my home phones and use the prepaid cards for all long distance calls. I've saved quite a bit and now I can save even more /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif.

Anybody else do that?

Marty

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

Hello Marty:

Yes, I got a card from Sam's a year ago. It has so many minutes that I'll be stuck at 3.7 cents for quite a while.

But it's bye bye to my home-phone long distance. It's worth it to enter all the digits to keep the costs low. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one.

Paul

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

Paul

The last card that I bought from Sam's (last month, I think) was only 3.4 cents. It's going to take a while to use the 500-600 minutes that I still have.

Marty

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

The Shell station here has a phone card for 1.9 cents per minute. I think their trying to get on our good side despite gouging us at the pump.

I get free LD with my cell phone with 1500 minutes night weekend and holiday air time. 300 minutes peak air time. The free LD has saved roughly $50.00 per month. I seldom go over the free airtime. But thats just me. If you use a lot of long distance time, the phone card is the way to go.

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

Fortunately, the difference between regular service and < 3 cents is relatively not that much of an improvement over the difference between regular service and 3.4 cents.

Wow, that seemed easy to write, but I'm not sure now that it's easy for me to understand. Well, the point is that the savings are still quite large. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

Tombeis,

A card for 1.9 cents per minute. I don't think anyone can beat that.

(That's a challenge)

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

you have to read the fine print.
betcha there are several gotchas in there.
minimums per call connection fee ect.

[ QUOTE ]
Paul_W said:
Tombeis,

A card for 1.9 cents per minute. I don't think anyone can beat that.

(That's a challenge)

[/ QUOTE ]

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

About 15 years ago, I was an executive for MCI Telecommunications. This was before phone cards but we did install special payphones that were hooked up to the MCI network.

The only problem was that no one could figure out how to charge the caller. As it turns out, every call from these phones was free and no one (except MCI and the caller) ever knew it. The one phone I remember best was at National Airport in Washington. Tremendous usage - no income.

Marty

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

We've been using the Sams cards for our long distance for about two years now, that and the 2000 nationwide long distance weekend minutes my wife gets for her cell phone each month.

The 1.x cent gas station cards are a rip off. The fine print specifies that the rate is only achieved if you meet a certain minimum call length each time you use it since each call has a service fee on it. So IOW to get the rate the call has to be 10 minutes the card only has a set number of long distance calls to be used on it.

Its a ripoff that you never see until after you've bought the card.

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

Can those Sam's club cards be used outside the US?

I might have to get a few since I had burned up an AT&T 800 minute card in 2 calls to home the last time I was in Germany. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ohgeez.gif

-Jason

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

Jason

I just checked the fine print on the back of the card and it has instructions to call other countries. So, it appears that it's good for calling other parts of the world.

Marty

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

There are several variables to all long distance. My Uncle has built a long distance business into about a 40,000 person customer base. He did this right from his little bitty office with 4 employees over the last 8 years. I worked with him in earnest for about 2 years and still dabble in it. His is not MLM and not a rip-off. We looked at providing phone cards about 2 years back. Many were rip-offs. You have to check for everything from minimum call length, access charge, activation charge, call rounding, expiration dates and any other name they can come up with. Most calling cards charge you .25c-.75c if you make the call from a payphone. I haven't looked at a card in a while but it sounds like they have improved. Make sure you read all the fine print before jumping on that .01c a minute card. Cards are actually very cheap for the provider. The biggest cost is the card itself.

The biggest expense for a long distance provider is generating a paper bill and payment processing. I believe it works out to over $4.00 to produce a paper bill and collect when you add in cost of paper, computers, envelopes, postage, QC and bill processing. This expense doesn't include bad debt. So now you see why pre-paid calling cards are so cheap. It is also the reason they want to get you to view your regular bill and pay on-line.

Just my .02 per minute

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

[ QUOTE ]
Marty Weiner said:
and it has instructions to call other countries. So, it appears that it's good for calling other parts of the world.


[/ QUOTE ]

But can you call from other countries such as Germany to the US?
-Jason

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

Why not call At&T Customer Service at 1-888-854-6740 and ask them. They're open 24/7.

Marty

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

Thanks for the number, Marty. I'll probably give 'em a call tomorrow afternoon.

-Jason

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

[ QUOTE ]
flownosaj said:
[ QUOTE ]
Marty Weiner said:
and it has instructions to call other countries. So, it appears that it's good for calling other parts of the world.


[/ QUOTE ]

But can you call from other countries such as Germany to the US?
-Jason

[/ QUOTE ]

We had looked at those cards for my brother who got stationed in Germany for about 8months in 2002, to try and make calling home easier.

The way I understood it you can place a call to another country from the USA and vice versa.. place a call to the USA from another country.

BUT..

Those calls WILL NOT be at the 3.4c/minute range obviously. The back of the card had detailed how many units it would cost to place the call either direction. The cost was different depending where you called (I thought Sams Club's website might detail it.. but I guess not). I think Germany cost like 3x/4x the units for calling either direction (USA<->Germany).

Even AT&T's website does not list how much it costs for international calls. Sheesh. Gotta call the 1 800 # that Marty listed then. Thats a pain in the neck.

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

I've been using a Sams club card for a year or so now. I've been buying in big bulk (You can recharge the card for up to 2500 minutes at a time over the phone and that gets the price down to 2.5 or so I think if I'm remembering correctly)

It's a pain to dial all those numbers, and every so often they change the message length where they ask you if you want to listen to the instructions in spanish and remember to shop at sams club (for a while they actually said "Remember to shop where you bought your card" which I thought was pretty funny) so my auto dial doesn't always have the right timing to go through. But if you're willing to endure that you can't beat the price.

I've got sprint service with no monthly fee at the house, so they charge me like 35 cents a minute if I forget to use the card, but at least I can make a long distance call if for some reason the card isn't working, and that has happened a couple of times.

They seem to route your call through whatever exchange has open lines, it messes up the caller ID data and you'll be coming from a different city every time you call someone.

But as I said, you can't beat the price. I'm very satisfied with mine. Minutes never expire and no other charges unless you're calling out of the country.

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

James

There are additional charges for dialing from a payphone.

Marty

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

What I did was put the number in the address book of my Palm Tungsten, then when I need to dial I use a little app that tone dials the number into the phone automatically. That way I always have my long distance plan with me. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Re: Phone Cards < 3 Cents Per Minute @ Sam\'s Club

I have used a Demon dialer for years; you can program it to dial numbers based on names, (easy to remember) or numbers, entered on the phone keypad, so you can add long strings before the number you want to dial..also it's great for busy signals; it repeatedly dials then alerts you with a beeping when it hears a ring.. don't know if it is still available, but this unit seems to be basically the same;

http://www.technologyarts.com/reviews.html