International calling providers in the UK and their hidden fees
The company behind a dozen websites offering so-called cheap international calling services is Finarea SA. They have a company registered in Switzerland, but surprisingly they operate from Austria, which can be assumed to be for tax reasons.
All of their websites have one thing in common, they are charging a hidden fee variance like a £ 1.50 reload fee plus 3.5% for credit card fees, and let’s not forget 5p connection fees for every phone call.
The average consumer recharge is usually £ 5. On some of its websites, Finarea SA advertises a very low price of just £ 0.05 per call to some international destinations. But if all the additional hidden fees are taken into account, the price per call increases dramatically.
Suppose you want to buy £ 5 of credit because you would like to take advantage of the promised 0.05 p / min call and make 50 calls to an international destination of 10 minutes each.
As you already know, you may have to pay 6.80 (i.e. receive £ 5 in credit with a cost of £ 1.50 in recharge fee and 3.15% credit card fee) to make 50 phone calls that last 10 minutes.
But the scam continues. You will have to pay a connection fee of 5 pence for each phone call. After 10 phone calls, you will have already paid 50 pence in connection fees and after 50 phone calls you will have paid an incredible £ 2.50 in connection fees alone.
Do you realize that you are now paying 10p / min per phone call and that’s without considering the £ 1.50 reload fee and the £ 0.30 credit card fee?
Now he has only made 25 phone calls, but has paid well over 10 pence; you have actually paid 17 pence per call using this model.
Not all services charge both a recharge fee and a connection fee. Let’s take a look at all the Finarea SA website offers that I could find.
- telediscount charges a connection fee of 5 pence, which means that after making 40 calls you will have already paid £ 2
- telephone charges also between 5p and 10p connection fee
- Telesavers charges between 5p and 10p connection fee
- bestminutes same as above
- dial the same as above
- telestunt same as above
The biggest perpetrators are the services that operate like topupdiscount and topupnow.
- topupdiscount blatantly charges a connection fee and a reload fee.
- topupnow uses the same practices as topupdiscount
Whoever uses either of these two companies is getting a very bad deal.
You can check the rates on their websites.
http://www.topupdiscount.co.uk/rates_printer.php and http://www.topupnow.co.uk/rates_printer.php
In addition to Finarea SA and its so-called cheap phone call services, actually very expensive, there are other companies such as Storytelecom, Rebtel and Just-dial.
Storytelecom offers a number of phone services with a hidden rate variation.
- The Storytelecom business card requires the user to purchase a card worth £ 5, £ 10 or £ 50. The £ 5 card expires after just 30 days, the £ 10 card after 60 days and the £ 50 card. after 180 days.
- Storytelecom’s mobile service charges not only a connection fee, but also a disconnection fee of between 1p and 20p. This focus is unique to your cheek.
- Storytelecom’s Dial-Now service does not display revealing hidden fees in its terms and conditions.
- Rebtel is a company that markets itself as a cheerful brand similar to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, but unfortunately my regular calls to Spain were charged at much higher rates than advertised on their site as soon as BT closed the number provided by Rebtel.
- Just-Dial explains on its website that any unused call credit that has not been used for 90 (ninety) days or more will expire.
It is surprising that most companies expect their customers to read the fine print. But not all companies hide their fees as members of parliament trying to disguise their real costs.
