How To Beat Long-Distance Phone Companies At Their Own Game
Mar 11 '01
The Bottom Line Don't be a hostage to long-distance phone companies! There IS another way!
Everyone knows what it’s like to wade through the seemingly endless list of long-distance phone companies and their convoluted calling plans. And keeping up with the constant changes that are made to those plans can be even more unnerving. Nearly all plans come with a "monthly fee" that can range from $3.00 to $5.95 per month, along with per-minute charges that vary widely, and change frequently. Some companies even require you to receive and pay your long-distance phone bill entirely online, in order to get reasonably low per-minute charges. To me, having to depend on both my ISP and my PC to never screw up or break down so that my bill isn’t missed or my payment isn’t made, is just a wee bit too risky. Not to mention that I’m not too crazy about having my checking account number floating out in cyberspace. Encryption, you say? Uh huh…ask any grade-school-aged hacker what they think about "encryption"….
And don’t be fooled by those ads that say "No monthly fee!". If you read the fine print under "monthly fee", it states; "determined by your long-distance carrier". In other words, you can’t use them solely for your LD calls. You still have to be signed up with some other company (Sprint, AT&T, MCI, or whatever), first. So you ARE still paying a monthly fee…just not to them.
The fact that these companies charge a monthly fee even if you never make a single long-distance call during the month is obnoxious. Think about it…years ago, when your local phone company handled both local and long-distance calls, or even when your local company routed your LD calls through AT&T, the only "monthly fee" that you paid was the local phone company’s monthly service fee. There was never any other monthly fee paid to any other carrier.
But now, your local phone company of course demands that you choose a long-distance carrier; and if you don’t, they’ll pick one for you. So you do your homework…you fire up the ol’ PC and start researching the various rates and plans for the mind-boggling list of carriers now in existence.
Then, three months later…
…you emerge from your computer room completely hairless on the left side of your head, mouse permanently clenched in your hand dragging behind you, then stumble into the living room (because your once-20/20 vision is now somewhere around 20/700), and promptly begin talking to the television set about what you’ve learned in your search.
Now that most of my own hair has grown back, and I’m no longer talking to screens of any kind, I could give you a (very) long list of the current long-distance carriers and all the plans out there. But I’m not going to. (And not just because I’m being a brat.) I’m not going to because, very simply, it doesn’t matter.
--(Don’t panic, now…I didn’t drop a few marbles along the information superhighway.)—
It doesn’t matter what long-distance company you choose. And it doesn’t even matter if you choose a plan that charges 35 cents per minute 24 hours a day. It doesn’t matter, because…you are never going to use it.
Here’s The REAL "Plan", And How To Do It:
What we want:
1. Not a cent more than five cents per minute for any call, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
2. NO "monthly fee" to anyone, period.
Nope, not impossible. Here’s what you do:
1. Call the long-distance carrier of your choice (Sprint, AT&T, etc.…it doesn’t matter which), and ask them to switch you to the plan they have that has no monthly fee. Yes, these companies DO have plans that carry no monthly fee, but they would never advertise that fact. There IS a catch, of course. In order to get this marvelous no-fee plan, you have to pay out the nose in per-minute charges. Example: Sprint’s no-fee calling plan charges 30 cents per minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! But we’re not going to be concerned about their per-minute charges, so they can charge three bucks a minute, for all we care.
2. As soon as your no-fee calling plan is activated, and you want to make a long-distance call, DO NOT just dial one-and the number. Instead, use this particular "10-10" number before you dial: 10-10-811. I’ve already done the research on all the "10-10" numbers, and this one is the best. They charge 5 cents per minute 24/7, with NO limitations whatsoever (you wouldn’t believe some of the rules with several of the other 10-10 numbers!), and the connection is always clear and static-free.
But don’t forget-- always dial 10-10-811 (then 1, plus the number) when you make a long-distance call. NEVER just dial 1-plus the number. Because if you do, then you’re using your regular LD carrier, and you DON’T want to pay their horrendous per-minute fee.
In this way, you are: never paying a monthly fee, and never paying more than five cents per minute any time of the day or night, any day of the year. Plain and simple…and huge savings.
So raspberries to all those long-distance carriers out there that thought we were blindly going to "ante-up" every month…! :-)~~
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Epinions.com ID:
ClaireKS
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Member: Claire (Nickname: LadyWolf)
Location: Northern Virginia
Reviews written: 62
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About Me:
Avid nature conservationist and friend to all living things.
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