20/20 Plus Added to Inventory

Our previous post entitled "Is your vision 20/20" mentioned the vast differences between two calling cards: 20/20 and 20/20 Plus. That post can be summarized as follows:

Good: Bad: Ugly*:

*Ian Dowie, Manager of Charlton was given a 10/10 on the "ugly-o-meter" at uglyfootballers.com

Callingcardreviews.org rated 20/20 as follows:

"This card (20/20) is an absolute MESS. It reminds me of a certain cousin who always gets drunk at family reunions. In both cases, I want to scream “TAKE IT EASY”!"

Phone Card Depot agrees with Calling Card Reviews and have removed 20/20 from our inventory and replaced it with 20/20 Plus, yes "Plus". This card is a completely different product with great rates, no hidden fees and very good call quality.

20/20 Plus is not positioned as a good calling card from the United States (there is a large 8 cents/minute premium for doing so. From Canada there is no premium, no hidden fees and the card works very well.


Regards,



Phone Card Depot: Prepaid Phone Card Blog
Written by: Tavis McKenzie

Tags: 20/20 calling card, 20/20 plus, good calling card from the united states, ugly soccer player

Don't Listen to the Convenience Store Guy

What turned out as an inventory addition expedition for Phone Card Depot ended up as a "Don't Listen to the Convenience Store Guy" lesson.

The moral of this story: There are more resources available for calling card purchases on-line than in-store. More resources lead to more informed buying decisions and a better calling card purchase.

Today we sent one of our purchasing reps out to look for some of the most popular prepaid phone cards on the market being used to call China from Canada. Phone Card Depot selected two of Toronto's largest Asian malls to conduct our study: Pacific Mall and First Markham Place.

First Markham Place
Posing as a customer, our rep asked the variety stand operator at First Markham Place, "which is your best calling card to from Toronto to China", to which he responded "they are all the best". Confused, we then asked which of the calling card has no hidden fees? The stand owner told our rep that all of the cards had no hidden fees. Yet, they carried 20/20 calling card (see "is your vision 20/20" to see the large amount of hidden fees on this card).

Rep: "What about this one?"

Store Clerk: "See, it says here...no connection fee"
Rep: "This card has many other hidden fees"
Store Clerk: "no...no hidden fees"
Rep: "Okay, Great!"

Pacific Mall
Our Phone Card Depot rep then moved on to the Great Mall of China: Pacific Mall in Markham, Ontario. Of the calling cards offered by this store, our rep knew that CiCi offered the best rates and no-fee pricing structure to China of all calling cards at this booth. The store rep was very anti-CiCi trying to push us towards the 20/20 card again. The push to this card is because the profit margin on 20/20 is double that of the CiCi card.

In summary, don't listen to the convenience store guy. Do your research online, before you purchase a calling card. If you are reluctant to purchase online, perhaps our Safe Holiday Shopping Guide will help.


Regards,

Phone Card Depot
"Your Path of Least Resistance to Long Distance"

Tags: calling card online, buy calling card online, online, call china, first markham place, pacific mall, convenience store, variety store, phone card, 20/20 calling card

Is your vision 20/20?

Is your vision 20/20? ... Maybe not. On September 15, 2006, 20/20 calling card by Group of Goldline was removed from Phone Card Depot's prepaid phone card inventory after it was added only a month earlier (Phone Card Depot adds 20/20 calling card to inventory). This card was removed because of an abundance of hidden fees.





Callingcardreviews.org reviews 20/20 as follows:
"This card is an absolute MESS. It reminds me of a certain cousin who always gets drunk at family reunions. In both cases, I want to scream “TAKE IT EASY”! All cards exist for a purpose, though, so if you can find extremely low rates to your fav. destinations and the fees work out for you, cautiously give this a try…"


So, why do people buy 20/20? I will get to this in the next paragraph, but please see the fees below. Even the most novice phone card user can tell that this card may have some surprises up it's sleeve. You will see that most charges kick in only after the 4th minute, so maybe this card is good for calls less than 4 minutes long like "come and pick me up". Not so fast, after the first minute, the card rounds up 3 minutes and pushes you over the 4th minute threshold.

20/20 Calling Card Fees

1. Maintenance Fee: 30 cents / day
2. Service Charge: 39 cents to $1.29 after the fourth minute of each call
3. Admin Charge: 30% after fourth minute of each call

Why do People buy 20/20?
People buy 20/20 because they think the card is the same as a similarly named card "20/20 Plus" yes, "Plus". 20/20 Plus is a very good card with no hidden fees and great low rates.


Regards,

Tavis McKenzie
Phone Card Depot

Tags: 20/20 calling card, 20/20 calling card