Low-Fee Phone Cards

The “Could you define low” phone card

When a phone card is tagged as “low fee”, the title serves as little more than a way of differentiating itself from a no fee or connection fee card - essentially, “low fee” tells the customer so little about the card that it becomes virtually useless. A low fee card typically does not charge a connection fee, but it may have maintenance charges, first-minute minimums or a penalty of some sort for making calls above or below a certain level. In some cases there will even be a charge for failing to enter the dialing prefix (the number one before the area code in North America), and in other cases for entering the dialing prefix, depending on the card manufacturer and type of system they are using.

Basically, a low fee phone card is a prime opportunity for phone card manufacturers to exploit uninformed consumers. While that isn’t to say that low fee prepaid phone cards are always bad, their accounting system is considerably more convoluted than those of their no fee or connection fee based brethren. Our best advice to customers who want to use low fee cards, is to examine the published rate and be wary. It is not uncommon to make what should be a $0.50 telephone call based on the card’s published rate, only to find out that you may have consumed as much as double that amount, depending on the card and manufacturer.

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Low fee phone cards typically have a variety of “low fees” levied for various actions or usages of the card - customers typically consider these to be ‘normal’ usage, and so it can be frustrating to make use of a low fee phone card if you were only looking at the published rate on the front of the card. Most phone card manufacturers are on the level, and if you call the customer service number for a particular card, they will be happy to explain how their fees are calculated. But, be sure to have a pen and paper ready and be prepared to ask for repetition, as the structures are often very awkward. Still, they can work in your favor if you understand exactly how the charges are calculated.