Calling Cards and Premium Numbers Information
Many prepaid calling cards sold in stores and on the web offer very low rates that are not the true cost you pay. Are these really a good deal after taking all the hidden fees into account?  Read more below:

Connection Fees
Connection charges often greatly increase the price. Many charge a connection fee that can be as high as several dollars for each call.
ConnectMeAnywhere: No connection fees.

Monthly/Daily Service Charge
Often monthly or even daily service charges are deducted from your available credit. These fees and charges are not disclosed or are in extremely fine print or hard to read.
ConnectMeAnywhere: No service fees.

Premium Rated Numbers
Other companies get customers to ring premium rated numbers which ends up with the customer paying more for their call than advertised. These companies offer very low rates per minute but the cost to call the premium number is high.
ConnectMeAnywhere: You do not phone a premium rated number, you phone a local number.

Quick Expiry Date
Many cards also have a quick expiry date. Customers must use all the credit on the card within a short time, sometimes just a month or they lose any credit left on the card. Some allow you to re-set expiration dates but you have to pay to extend to save unused time.
ConnectMeAnywhere: Your credit is available for 6 months from date of purchase and is reset with an extra 6 months every time you purchase.

Additional Taxes
Often prices are advertised pre-tax and then the tax or VAT added to the cost of the call. So the real cost per minute is higher than you think.
ConnectMeAnywhere: Taxes are included in the advertised rate per minute, no taxes are added after.

Rounding Up of Minutes
Large billing increments so that calls get rounded up to the "nearest 5 minutes" or so. So if you talk for 2 minutes you will be charged for 5, or if you talk for 11 minutes you will be charged for 15.
ConnectMeAnywhere: Calls are only rounded up to the nearest minute. Example: if you talk for 5 min, 45 sec you would be charged 6 min.

Charged Higher Rate
Often the advertised rate is specific to a city within the country and calling outside this city or calling a mobile is a much higher rate. Finding these rates is often hard as they are not advertised on the card.
ConnectMeAnywhere: Higher Rates to different cities or to mobile phones are advertised on our rates page and you are also informed of the amount of minutes you have available before we connect you.

Toll-Free Numbers
Toll-free access numbers are often given as an alternative to a premium rated number. However using the toll-free number will give you fewer minutes (higher rates) which are often not advertised on the card. The card will only show the low rates that you get when you call the premium number.
ConnectMeAnywhere: You phone a local landline number which you pay the cost for on your phone. We are totally independent of your phone provider and do not receive any of this cost. Many people have free minutes to local landlines; in this case all you pay is the ConnectMeAnywhere rate to connect.

We do not offer a toll-free number because from a mobile phone this is charged at a premium rate. Also a toll-free number is free for the caller but ConnectMeAnywhere would pay for the call, this would be reflected in the price and the price would have to be increased. We have made the choice to allow people to call a local number and have a lower rate per minute, through our research this option works out to be the cheapest for our customers.

Customer Service
Customer service numbers that are constantly busy or simply do not work. Trying to find out the true cost of calling can be hard.
ConnectMeAnywhere: Customer Service is available to all customers and non-customers, from technical support to simply answering questions. Our rates page is easy to use and shows all possible rates to all destinations.

Companies Closing
Card issuers that go out of business, leaving card-holders with a useless card and no way to recover the money spent. Often these companies simply re-open under a new name.
ConnectMeAnywhere: We have a long term company strategy. ConnectMeAnywhere do not only provide low-cost calling but also many new Voice 2.0 features.

Debit minutes before connecting
Some cards debit minutes or units for the entire time you access their number, even when you are listening to ringing, busy signals, or do not connect to the called party. So you are often charged for a call when there is no answer or when the line is busy.
ConnectMeAnywhere: ConnectMeAnywhere does not debit any minutes before a call is connected. Customers are only charged once a call is answered.

Poor quality connections
Many cards use cheap connections and the calling quality is often bad. One example is a friend from India who used to use a cheap rated calling card. He phoned a friend in India but the quality was so poor that he had to repeat himself many times to be heard and to hear his friend. The call might have been cheap but the time he spent on the call was much longer because they could not communicate clearly.
ConnectMeAnywhere: ConnectMeAnywhere uses high quality carriers and believes the call quality is equal to that of a telecoms provider.

Links
icstis UK - check an 09 premium rated number on your phone bill with icstis (UK premium rate services regulator).
Wikipedia - learn more about premium rate telephone numbers throughout the world.