response 1 of 41:

Jan 11 07:58 UTC 1996

Within the past week I received two flyers for different reduced-rate
long-distance dialing services. These require that you just dial in a
five digit code before the telephone number, and you get significant
savings without changing your regular LD carrier. They are:

10297 - Long Distance Wholesale Club:

You dial 10297 first, and you "save 15-50% on interstate long distance
calls"

Dial and Save:

You dial 10457 first, and you are guaranteed "25% saings below AT&Ts
long distance calling rates".

[replace the word "dial" with "punch" in the above, if you wish  8^}.]

This is stated to all be FCC approved, etc, and are possible by the
company buying long-distance time "wholesale" from LD providers, and
offering the services at less than major-provider retail rates - they
claim.

Does anyone have more information about these services? Do they really
save 15-50%, or 25%? Are there any "catches"?

response 3 of 41:

Jan 12 06:36 UTC 1996

I got the 10297 thing in the mail too, and was impressed by what broad claims
they were making, while still being incredibly short on specifics.  I couldn't
even find a specific reference to which long distance company was charging
the rates the savings were for, although I think it alluded to it being AT&T.
I'm using Sprint, primarily because they're what my parents have been using
for years and I didn't see any reason not to continue using them when I moved
out.  There probably are cheaper options, but Sprint is actually willing to
say how much they're charging, and their rates seem quite reasonable.  It's
going to take a lot more than a mailing telling me I can save some percentage
off of a rate they won't identify to get me to switch.

response 5 of 41:

Jan 13 07:48 UTC 1996

I found the Dial&Save thing today, in the bin below the mailboxes at my
apartment building.  It didn't have an apartment number on it, so it looks
like they sent one for a building with 30 apartments in it.  I wonder if they
bill the same way. ;)

response 9 of 41:

Oct 31 08:18 UTC 1997

I'm looking for a new long distance company.

I've been using Sprint for a long time and have generally been pretty happy
with them.  Their Sprint Sense program, which was 10 cents per minute in the
evenings and 15 cents per minute during the day, was nice.  Then a few months
ago I got a notice that they were upping the daytime rate to 25 cents per
minute.  Now, either they've screwed up my bill, or they've raised the rates
for evening calls too.  This month's phone bill includes calls for a total
of 45 minutes to Swarthmore, pennsylvania.  This comes out to $23.19, or about
31 cents per call.  All of it is night or evening, which according to the TV
commercials are still supposed to be 10 cents per minute.  A few of those are
one minute calls (presumably when I've gotten my brother's voice mail), and
those are billed at $1.66 each, considerably more than the 10 cents they are
supposed to be billed.

In a new long distance company I'm looking for somebody with reasonable and
consistent rates.  I'm also looking for a company that will be my primary long
distance carrier so I don't have to dial a special access code, because I'm
lazy.  Some of the smaller fly by night phone companies I've dealt with at
work are using NT based switching software, which causes their network to have
to go down for a reboot whenever new customers are added.  I don't consider
that acceptable.

What experiences have people had with the various long distance companies?
Who has good residential rates these days?

response 11 of 41:

Nov 1 02:21 UTC 1997

My most recent Sprint bill showed a single call to my parents, in the
evening, and it was exactly 10c per minute (it was something like 73
minutes, if length of call has anything to do with it, which I doubt).
Hopefully they just messed up your bill, scg.  In general, I've been
very pleased with Sprint.  Used to say the same about MCI until they
jerked me around on 'stay with us' discount deals.

response 13 of 41:

Nov 5 05:40 UTC 1997

I haven't moved as recently as the rates went up.  My calls tend to be much
later in the evening than 7.  I still need to find time to call them and see
what's going on.

Going back over old phone bills, I see that they were charging me 10 cents
per minute before.  I was wondering about that, since I wasn't sure if this
was the sort of thing I would normally have noticed or not.  This month, the
Sprint bill coupled with a huge Ameritech local long distance bill (all of
which was work related, so they'll reimburse it) made the total number on the
phone bill look really huge compared to what it normally looks like.

response 15 of 41:

Apr 15 16:21 UTC 1998

This would probably be a bit more appropriate in the Classifieds Conference....

response 17 of 41:

Apr 17 03:57 UTC 1998

AT&T is advertising nine cents per minute, any time, with some minimum amount.
I forget what the minimum amount is.  They're presumably assuming that
residential customers aren't going to make daytime calls much anyway, so
undercutting everybody else's daytime rates won't hurt them much.

It's worth not basing long distance shopping entirely on price.  Some cheap
long distance companies, especially cheap 800 service companies, really cut
corners.  I dealt with one company a while back that was using some Windows
NT system as their phone switch.  Whenever they needed to add new numbers,
they had to reboot and their network went down for 20 minutes.  Even when
their network was up, the quality was pretty bad, and getting modems to stay
connected over it was hard.  If you're having trouble getting through
occasionally with Dial & Save, it sounds like they're either using unreliable
equipment, or are keeping prices down by not having enough capacity, neither
of which is very good.

I'm using Sprint.  They're charging me 10 cents per minute for the times of
day when I tend to make inter-LATA long distance calls from home, and it works
really well.  At some point they were billing me the wrong rate, but they got
it taken care of pretty quickly when I called them about it.

Warren says the service he's selling is a reseller for LCI.  They're a
reputable company, so it should be reliable.

response 19 of 41:

Sep 13 03:16 UTC 1999

What are the best deals for long distance these days?  I'm currently
paying 9.9 cents per minute (rounded up to the nearest whole cent) with
no monthly charges, and I'm wondering if there is any carrier out there
that offers lower rates without any bogosity.

(Note that I don't want to pay a monthly fee, because I only use about
an hour or two of long distance each month.)

response 21 of 41:

Sep 13 15:08 UTC 1999

Qwest drops the rates half a cent every six months.  $4.95/month fee unless
they do a credit card billing.  They messed up my account by apparently not
signing me up the first time I called (they said they had no record of my
calling), then signed me up again after three weeks.  A couple of days ago
they billed me for two accounts for the same phone number, one of them for
zero calls, with a $4.95 fee on each.  One was a bill, one was charged to my
credit card.  (I had requested the credit card option both times).  But
someone friendly and competent, who gave me her name and extension number,
said she fixed all these problems and I would now have one account with no
fee and a credit for the $5.50 (with tax) overcharge.
        It costs $1.50/month to have a long-distance provider on each line.
Not to have any long distance provider costs $1.52 (in Ann Arbor).  (The $1.50
is Qwest's fee, I think, cleverly lower than $1.52).  Ameritech said that
Qwest does not provide local long distance service.  Qwest said they do.  I
am continuing to use the access code for Dial and Save when calling Detroit
until someone can tell me for certain.  Dial and Save managed to sign me up
for local long distance on two out of three lines after I asked for all three,
so I cancelled them and just use the access code now.  (They also neglected
to tell me it was $1/month extra to be signed up instead of using the code).
        The moral is:  read your bills very carefully and ask questions of both
the long distance provider and Ameritech.  Ameritech generally has the correct
information. Also the highest long distance rates, to pay for them hiring
competent people to answer the phone.
        When you sign up for a long distance carrier, call Ameritech to make
sure this goes through properly.  I was not told to do so the first time I
signed up with Qwest, which might have been the cause of the problem.

response 23 of 41:

Sep 17 17:11 UTC 1999

 You might want to try 10-10-220 or 10-10-321 they have bargain rates abroad
and they are a non monthly fee service.

 It depends on what kind of calling card that you have.

1. You can buy a prepaid calling card, which usually has anywhere from 5 mins
to 30 minutes on it, and usually costs $10 or so, depending on the time
involved. It works like this:
  1. You dial a 1-800 number found on the back of the card
  2. Enter your PIN found on the back of the card
  3. Dial your number and talk for as long as you need to.
  4. Hang Up and repeat if additional calls and time permits.

These cards can be recharged by anyone with a credit card.

2. A calling card issued by your LDP (Long Distance Provider) usually
has a PIN on it, and has a PIN and access number on it. The only difference
is that the time is only limited by your credit rating from your LDP. LDP
issued calling cards do not need recharging.