3D Printing - Additive Manufacturing

A few days ago, I watched an amazing youtube video that demonstrated 3D Printing. The 3D printing blog  3D Printing an Additive Manufacturing discusses this new technology that will revolutionize manufacturing as we know it.  3 D Printers are available that can create three dimensional products out a variety of materials.  The cost is dropping dramatically, and some 3D printers are available for under $15000.

STI Spice Asia phone card

A few days ago I posted an article about the new Spice phone cards from STI.  A number of phone card distributors including Skytelecom and STI have reported that the Asia Spice phone card, the Latina Spice phone card and the Africa Middle East phone card are selling very well.  Blogger was down for the past couple of days, so I could not include the point of sale posters for the Spice phone cards in the original post.

There are included here. 

Spice Asia calling card features cheap prepaid minutes to Pakistan, Philippines, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, South Korea, Nepal, Laos, Fiji Islands, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the rest of Asia.  Service is provided by STI Prepaid.  Stores and Distributors are welcome to contact Phone Card Hotline directly at 800-517-2760 to purchase at wholesale rates.  Advertised rates expire on 5/20/2011. Retail customers may purchase directly from Hello Calling Cards

When you buy your STI prepaid phone cards from Phone Card Hotline, we guarantee the phone cards regardless of what happens to the company that issues the phone cards.  Last year, more than five phone card companies went out of business.  Distributors and stores lost millions of dollars.  Stores who bought their phone cards from Phone Card Hotline all received full credit for exchange toward new phone cards.

Spice Africa Middle East Calling Card from STI Prepaid Issued May 2011

STI Prepaid has issued three new internatioinal calling cards called the STI Spice Pnone Card Series.  The Spice Calling Card comes in three flavors, each covering a diferent region.  These include the following phone cards:

• STI Spice Africa & Middle East phone card
• STI Spice Latina phone card
• STI Spice Asia phone card

Each of the above phone cards feature toll free 800 number access are available wholesale to stores through Phone Card Hotline

STI Prepaid company representative reports that these three new calling cards are already among their best selling international phone cards.  These phone cards have very agressive rates to anywhere in the world.  Here are some examples for featured countires for the $2 Spice phone card:

• Bangladesh 60 minutes Dhaka - 52 minutes Chittagon and Shylet
• Dominican Republic 120 minutes
• Ecuador 24 minutes - Ecuador Cellular 13 minutes
• El Salvador calling card 16 minutes - 22 to El Salvador cell CTE
• Eritrea calling card 9 minutes
• Ethiopia calling card 9 minutes - Addis Ababa 18 minutes
• Guatemala Telgua calling card 38 minutes
• India calling card 44 minutes
• Indonesia 60 minutes home - 72 minutes Indonesia Cell
• Ivory Coast Calling Card 11 minutes
• Jamaica 40 minutes - Jamaica cell 14 minutes
• Jordan calling card 32 minutes - Jordan Cell 26 minutes
• Kenya calling card 34 minutes - Kenya Cellular Safaricom 40 minutes
• Laos calling card 66 minutes
• Liberia Calling Card 12 minutes - Liberia Cellular Cellcom and Comium 16 minutes - Cellular Lonestar 22 minutes
• Nepal 20 minutes
• Pakistan calling card 60 minutes
• Philippines calling card 24 minutes to Manilla and 19 minutes to Philippines cell
• Sierra Leone calling card 6 minutes
• Togo Calling Card 6 minutes
• Vietnam calling card72 minutes to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh - 68 minutes to Vietnam Cell

STI point of sales poster states Advertised minutes are available only if used on the first call.  Advertised minutes expire on May 20, 2011.  We ususally find that the advertised minutes last for up to 90 days on a new phone card from any of the major national brands.  If the value of the phone card is not consumed on the first call, numerous fees apply.

Acceso 800 - Celular & Casa
Los minutos publicados estan solamente disponibles si se usan en la primera llamda.



  

Taylor Rental Children's Table and Chair Rental

Taylor Rental Broadview Party Planning Blog features articles to help make event planning run more smoothly.  Today's article offers tips and advice for Children's Table and Chair Rental to keep them safe and comfortable at grown-up events.

Just for Fun Peanut Butter Cups

The Peanut Butter Cups that the Pnut Butter Cup Company sent over for me to try were fantastic.  I think they will need to send some more for my entire staff.  Perhaps I will use them for gifts to send to my best customers as well. Here is a link to the Pnut Butter Cups Company website PnutButterCups.com and also the Peanut Butter Cups blog for my customers to view.

Winner Africa Phone Card

Winner Africa phone card is a very popular phone card for calling home to Africa. The Winner Africa Calling Card has more minutes to most African countries than the also popular Winner phone card. Winner Africa phone card was issued by Raza Telecom in November 2010.

Hello Calling Cards offers the $5 Winner Africa Phone for sale to anyone wanting to save money calling from USA to anyplace in Africa. Following are sample rates as of the date of issue.
Country - Minutes on $5

Algeria - 120
Ghana - 60
Nigeria - 100
Senegal - 40
Congo - 25

Egypt - 110
Eritrea - 40
Ethiopia - 40
Somalia - 20
South Africa - 170
Sudan - 80
Tanzania - 55
Uganda - 65

Other Africa Calling Cards available at Hello Calling Cards

Mother India Phone Card - Mother India Calling Card

There are hundreds of international calling cards that work from USA to make international phone calls. One advantage of the prepaid phone card is that they are available in $2 denomination and $5 denomination.

Hello Calling Cards now offers several India Calling Cards that are very good for calling home to India. These include:
Mother India Calling Card - Mother India Phone Card
Integrity International Calling Card - Integrity Phone Card
Indo Pak Calling Card - Indo Pak Phone Card

The Indo Pak $2 Phone Card delivers 120 minutes from any phone in the USA to any cell phone in India OR 110 minutes to and landline in India.

Indo Pak $2 calling card is also good for other Asia destinations:

• Pakistan calling card (cell)- 37 minutes




• Pakistan calling card (land line - 72 minutes




• Nepal calling card (cell phone) - 21 minutes




• Nepal calling card (land) - 33 minutes




• Sri Lanka calling card (cell) - 45 minutes




• Sri Lanka calling card (land) - 31 minutes




• Phillipines calling card (cell)- 18 minutes or 45 minutes on $5




• Phillipines calling card (land) 20 minutes or 50 minutes on $5




• Indo Pak phone card is also good for calling Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Burma and Bhutan.

These phone cards can be purchased wholesale at Phone Card Hotline

Unlimited International Calling Plans

We are now offering a number of low cost unlimited calling plans that can be used from any single cell phone or land line to call home to selected countries. This Integrity Plus pinless service is not a phone card. There is no pin to enter. For more information call 440-736-7029

Poland Integrity Plus - Unlimited calls to Poland land line only $25 per month - Poland Cell is $.079 per minute. If you do not want the unlimited plan, then Poland land line is only $.019 per minute.

You can get a Integrity Plus cell phone with unlimited local and domestic long distance starting at $45 per month. International minutes on the Integrity Plus cell phone feature low cost minutes to any country.

Mi Mexico Cell prepaid phone card

Mi Mexico Cell $3 phone card is especially good for calling cell phones in mexico. The Mi Mexico Cell phone card advertises 56 minutes to Mexico Cell in main cities, 78 minutes to Movistar cell phones, 67 minutes to cell phones in Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara.

Mi Mexico is a new phone card issued around the first of the year 2011

Available for wholesale phone card purchase at www.phonecardhotline.com

Wonderful Africa - Raza - RZT

Wonderful Africa - A fast selling prepaid calling card for Africa was released by RZT - Raza Telecom November 2010. Wonderful Africa point of sale poster features minutes for the following countries:

Wonderful Africa phone card is available at www.phonecardhotline.com or by calling 440-736-7029

$5 Wonderful Africa prepaid calling card.

Ivory Coast phone card 40

Eritrea mobile phone card 32

Djibouti phone card 25

Ethipia mobile phone card 33

Gabon phone card 55

Gambia phone card 27

Ghana phone card 65

Guinea phone card 25

kenya prepaid calling card 83

Morocco prepaid calling card 410

Namibia prepaid calling card 115

Niger phone card 63

Nigeria mobile phone card85

Senegal mobile phone card 42

Somalia mobile phone card 21

Zambia mobile phone card 155

Wonderful Africa is also a good Togo phone card with 9 minutes on the $2 Togo calling card and 20 minutes on the $5 Togo calling card

Egypt protest - Call home today

With the internet being shut down in Egypt, and some Egypt calling cards not working very well, many of my customers have called me to find out the best way to call home to Egypt during these troubling times.

First, I want to extend my personal prayers that all of your loved ones back home in Cairo and throughout Egypt are safe, and that your prayers for freedom and democracy in Egypt are answered.

The best product to use for Egypt is the Integrity phone card. The reason it is the best, is that if you can not complete your call back home to Egypt or if you only talk for a few minutes, your remaining balance stays available for your next phone call.

I recommend new customers start with a $2 Integrity phone card just to see how the quality is. The $2 Integrity Egypt calling card advertises and delivers 22 minutes to a Egypt house phone, and 24 minutes to an Egypt cell phone. The $25 Integrity phone card will allow you to talk for 275 minutes to Egypt land line and 310 minutes to Egypt cell phone. The $5 Integrity phone card for calling Egypt is also available at www.hellocallingcards.com.

You will be able to make multiple calls over many days, weeks or even months, until you have used all of your minutes. Some customers have us set up their Integrity $25 card for pinless calling from both your cell phone and your home phone, so you never have to enter your pin. You can also have us automatically add any amount from $25 to $100 on your Integrity pin every month. Call 440-736-7029 for more info.

Remember, to get the full 310 minutes always use one of the local access numbers. Most people here in the USA with a cell phone, can make free calls anywhere in the USA. So even if we do not have a local access number for US city where you live, just use your cell phone with free long distance and use one of the local access numbers. If you must use a tell free number, it will deduct an additional one cent per minutes.

Togo Phone Cards - Togo Calling Cards

Togo - The Togolese Repubic is a small country in West Africa of about 22,000 square miles with a population of 7 million. Togo borders Ghana, Benin, and Burkina Faso; so people who buy phone cards for calling Togo may also be likely to call Ghana, Benin and Burkina Faso. Many speak French in Togo so a good Togo calling card will have French prompts as well as English prompts.

Two long popular Togo calling cards are TCI Gold $2 and the Florida Star $5. Stores can buy these cards at http://www.phonecardhotline.com/ or by calling 440-736-7029.

The TCI Gold advertises gives 7 minutes to Togo on $2. Florida Star is from the same company and about the same number of minutes.

Latino Pearl is giving 8 advertising and delivering 8 minutes to Togo on the $2, so Latino Pearl is now our best Togo calling card for stores. Integrity gives 15 minutes on the $5 card and 75 minutes on the $25 pin. This makes Integrity the best Togo phone card, because it has no fees. Every other Togo phone card is only going to work for one call. With Integrity Togo calling card, you can purchase 75 minutes for $25 and use them as you need them. Any unused minutes will remain on the phone card for weeks or even months after you purchase the phone card.

The Integrity $25 pin is only available online at Hellocallingcards.com The Latino Pearl calling card is availble in $2 and $5 increments from http://www.phonecardhotline.com/

Phone card companies go out of business

Every day I get at least one phone call from someone who is looking for a new wholesale phone card distributor to supply of phone cards for their store, or to distribute to their stores. I always start with the same questions.

• What international phone cards are you selling now?
• Which countries are most of your customers from?
• What are your best selling phone cards today?
• Do you sell prepaid cell phone cards such as Page Plus, Boost, or others?
• Are you interested in a point of sale terminal to control inventory?
• How many phone cards do you sell every week?
• Where do you buy your phone cards now?

These questions help me to understand the needs of the store owner, so I can be of better service. Once I have a good understanding of the customer profile, then I can recommend the best international prepaid calling cards.

A lot of store owners these days seem to be shopping for phone cards for calling Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America, and the Islands. We also still get a lot of requests for Eastern Europe, and the Arab world.

When I recommend some phone cards for their country, the store owner usually asks for a better discount. The tell me that they were getting much better discounts when they were buying their phone cards from WCDI, ATI, Allicance Telecom, Cristel Telecom, Allcom or one of the Florida phone card companies. All of these companies went out of business in 2010. Every year a number of phone card companies go out of business. Sometimes, the owners have already started up their next company. The owners of the above companies have all either worked at other phone companies that went out of business, or have started new phone card companies themselves. Sometimes they are very clever, and the owner will leave the company and start up the new company about a year before the first one goes out of business.

I mention Florida phone card companies, because the failure rate for companies in Florida is probably 75%. Often the same employees show up in the next company. For example, Cristel Telecom was sprinkle with people from Siesta Telecom, and another spinoff from Siesta Telecom... all from the Tampa area. The Miami Florida phone card companies are notorious for starting new companies about one year before the previous one goes out of business.

I jokingly tell my prospective customers that I can give excellent discount on the phone cards from companies that went out of business.

It is important to get a good discount on your phone cards if you are reselling them, but it much more important to sell quality phone cards that are from a company that will not go out of business. When the company making the phone cards go out of business, several things happen.

• The retail customer who purchased the phone card from a store, can not make an important phone call back home to thier family. Often, the call is an emergency.
• Many customers will just throw away the phone card out of frustration.
• If the customer takes the phone card back to the store, the store owner is at risk of either loosing the customer, or loosing the money on the bad phone card..
• The store owner calls the distributor and wants to return all of their dead phone cards. Many of the dead phone cards come out of the safe and may be weeks old, or even months old. Sometimes, store owners will want to return phone cards that are more than one year old!
• When tens of thousands of dollars of worthless phone cards come back to the distributor, then the distributor suffers substantial losses, and may go out of business.

Store owners will ask, how can I buy from a company that I know will not go out of business? Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to know which is the next phone card company to fail. I tell people that there are two types of phone card issuers... the ones who have gone out of business, and the ones that will go out of business. There is absolutely no government oversight in the phone card industry. All of the companies that make phone cards, know that they can very easily take millions of dollars out the market and then go out of business.

It is too easy because, when a phone card company prints 100,000 phone cards and sells them for $5 each, they will collect $500,000. By advertising more minutes than their competitor, it is very easy to sell 100,000 phone cards in just a week. However, the phone card issuer does not pay their carrier for 30 days. Many people buy a phone card, and don't use it for weeks. To get better discounts, stores often buy more phone than they will sell in three months.

Even the largest phone card companies go out of business. It would be more accurate to say that the largest phone card companies are a bigger risk than the smaller companies, because when they shut down, you never see it coming.

So if you are a store owner, buy only as many phone cards as you can sell within three weeks. Rotate your stock, so that the older phone cards that you have sell first and do not expire. If you have prepaid phone cards that have not sold in 60 or 90 days, ask your distributor to exchange them for a faster selling product. Any distributor will be happy to do this, if the phonecards are still working.

Most importantly, try to get the best discount that you can get from your distributor, but understand that if you shop around until you find a distributor willing to work on only 1% profit, he is not going to be there when your cards stop working.

And in fairness, if you send international phone cards back to your distributor and they give you a credit, understand that they are working on a very small profit margin. Show them so loyalty, because many distributors simply dissapear when their supplier goes out of business.

It is not unreasonable for the distributor to want spread the credit over several purchases. Remember, if you return one dead phone card to a distributor, he typically must sell 50 more to make up the loss. If your distributor gives you a credit on dead prepaid calling cards of $500, he might need to sell $25,000 to make up the loss.

Phone Card Printing - print 10000 cards only $.039 each

Distributors who sell phone cards to stores, increasingly find that the national brand phone cards are commodity items. After introducing a new international phone card to a store, one of two things can happen. Either customers like the phone card because it delivers high quality minutes to their favorite international destinations, or customers do not like the phone card because the quality is not good or because it does not deliver the promised minutes.

When the customers like the phone card, many times the store owner will call all the local distributors and try to get a better price. There is always at least one distributor who will cut the price to take a store customer away from their competitor, so in most major cities across the country the gross profit to the distributors works itself down to only one or two percent gross profit.

This practice of price cutting is common in any industry where the products are commodities. In the long run, the only distributors who survive are those who find a way to add value to their product, provide excellent customer service, or have large volume and thus get better discounts.

Phone card distributors now have even more competition from the card issuers themselves. The companies that make the phone cards are now sending employees out into the market place to sell directly to store owners. And more often than not, the makers of the phone cards are willing to sell directly to the stores and ship the cards via Fedex.

One solution that the store owner has is to create their own phone card. The advantages of having your own private label phone card include the following:

• You control the amount of fees of the phone card. When you create a phone card, you can dictate to the carrier whether you want a phone card with fees or one with no fees (clean).
• You decide which countries you want to target. Each market has a different mix of ethnic populations. You can create a phone card that targets specific countries that are in your local marketplace and not bother with the countries that will not increase sales.
• You decide whether you want a high discount card, or a low discount card. You can deliver more real minutes on a low discount card.
• You can also sell your private label phone card in other cities to increase your sales.
• Once you place your phone card in a store, if the customers like the phone card, they have no choice but to purchase the phone card from you. A store will carry a phone card if even one regular customer comes in regularly as asks for that specific brand.

Designing your own phone card is not as difficult as you might think. You can start by selecting a quality product that already sells well. You can order pins for this prepaid calling card, and then have your own phone cards printed. Once you have a sucessful product, then you can go back to the network service provider and ask them to modify the rate deck. Add more minutes to one country, reduce the minutes delievered to other countries, change the back end fees, change the discount level, etc.

To make your own phone card, you will need to take the following steps:

• Market Research - Study your local market so you know which countries are the most important and also to decide whether a low fee clean phone card is best for your market. Decide what discount you need to get in order to be competitive in your market area.
• Network Service Provider - Select a phone card service provider, and negotiate the deal. Once you have a sucessful product, you can negotiate changes to the rate deck that will increase sales which are benificial to both the distributor and the network service provider
• Card Design - You will need a profession designer to create your phone card. You can tell the designer what you want the phone card to look like, and then have the designer create the image in the format that your printer requires. The designer must have experience creating phone card designs
• Print the phone card. You will need to order 10,000 cards to get a good price on printing. You can print as few as 5000 cards, but they will cost almost twice as much.
• Design and print a poster. Without a poster it is impossible to market the product
• Activate and pay for your pins as you need them, usually in lots of 500 pins. Sometimes you can do activations in lots as small as 100 pins.

Phone Card Hotline can help with this entire process. We have a number of very sucessful rate decks to get you started. Regardless of where you get your pins, we can print 10,000 phone cards for only $.039 per card, plus a setup fee of $100 each time you print or reprint. You can get a card designed for $250.

We can give you fast turn around of one week.

Call 440-457-7209

Groove Phone Card for making international calls from Alaska and Hawaii

Groove phone card issued by Total Call is especially good for making international phone calls from Alaska to Philippines, from Hawaii to Philippines and when calling from Alaska or Hawaii to anywhere else in the world.

The Groove calling card image includes the back of the phone card which lists all of the local access numbers in Alaska, Hawaii as well as local access numbers in the lower 48 states.

Always use a local access number to get the maximum minutes.

The Groove phone cards can be purchased directly at www.hellocallingcards.com by individuals. Hellocallingcards often offers this product below the $5 retail price.

The Groove phone card can be purchased by stores and distributors at www.phonecardhotline.com.

Point Africa - Africa Calling Card - CTA

Point Africa is a new phone card issued January 2011 by Clifton Telecard Allicance - CTA and is available for immediate distribution to stores and distributors from Phone Card Hotline. Point Africa is availabe in $2 and $5 denominations directly to consumers at Hello Calling Cards.

• The Point Africa calling card features 21 African countries and offers additional minutes to a number of breakouts in Africa on the $5 phone card including:
• Ethiopia Calling Card 37 minutes $5
• Eritrea calling card 30 minutets $5
• Kenya calling card 75 minutes $5
• Senegal calling card 35 minutes $5
• Mali calling card 45 minutes $5
• Ivory Coast calling card 37 minutes $5
• Somalia calling card 17 minutes $5
• Liberia calling card 25 minutes $5
• Sierra Leone calling card 22 minutes $5
• Cameroon calling card 55 minutes $5
• Morocco calling card 225 minutes $5
• Egypt calling card 90 minutes $5

For more information call PCH 440-736-7029

Mother India phone card - Simple 2 Call

We are pleased to add Mother India phone card to our portfolio of international prepaid calling cards for calling home to India. Many of my friends and store owners from India, only use the Mother India phone card for their personal use. I am told it is also good for all of South Asia including Pakistan and Nepal where you can talk for 18 minutes on the $2 pin.

Call India 100 minutes on the $2 pin

Now available wholesale at Mother India Calling Card

Stores can purchase Simple 2 Connect Mother India phone card at Phone Card Hotline.

African Magic Middle East Phone Card

African Magic was released in December 2010 by PCTL. The African Magic phone card is good for all of Africa and Middle East with the following countires featured on the poster:
Ethiopia 30 minutes on $5
Eritrea 24
Lebanon 94
Ghana 40
Jordan 97
Jordan Mobile 80
Nigeria 82
Mali 38
Somalia 13
Senegal 28
Yemen 57 minutes

The African Magic is available in $2 and $5 for wholesale (stores and distributors) purchases at Phone Card Hotline and for individual online purchases at Hello Calling Cards home of the $2 phone card. At Phone Card Hotline, stores will receive discount depending upon the size of the total order. Phone Cards can be mixed and matched. There is a wide variety of African phone cards at Phone Card Hotline available for shipping nationwide. Call 440-736-7029 for info.

hellocallingcards back online

It has been a long couple of months. After operating www.hellocallingcards.com for more than 10 years without any serious technical issues, all of sudden the hard drive on our server crashed. Unfortuantely, several critical files had not been backed up, and we were not able to bring our website back online for some time.

Now, finally, www.hellocallingcards.com is back. We are the home of the Integrity phone card which has no fees and is available in $2, $5, and $25 format. Customers like the Integrity phone card for making international calls because there are no fees even if they use the phone card over many days, weeks or months.

This really is a true bargin. For example the $25 Integrity phone card can be used to call India for 1250 minutes. The user could make as many as 20 hour long phone calls over several weeks or months, and they will not loose the minutes. The Integrity rates are published at www.hellocallingcards.com

This product is especially popular with institutional buyers such as oil rigs, Universities, and Corporations. Integrity phone card is the most popular phone card at Ballad Air Base in Iraq. Many of those working for the US Goverenment in Iraq want to call home to Bangladesh, India, Uganda, Egypt, Pakistan, Philippines and elsewhere around the world.

Protocol Technology Inc - PTI

I recently met with a representative of Protocol Technology Inc., the maker of a number of prepaid calling cards that carry the PTi brand. We reviewed all of their international prepaid calling cards. They specialize in phone cards for the Arab World, including several products for countries in Africa and the Middle East. The following PTi international calling cards are all available at Phone Card Hotline:
U-Call Ecuador
U-Call Guatemala
U-Call Mexico
My Country Lebanon
My Country Iraq
My Country Yemen
Mega 5 issued March 2010
Hola Guatemala issued March 2010
Para Siempre issued August 2009
Papaya issued August 2009
Latino Star issued April 30 2010
Mi Casa issued November 2010
Digame issued November 2010
Africa Star issued July 2010
Arabest issued September 2010
Farah issued September 2010
CallEZ issued August 2009
Asia Star issued May 2010

The posters will be available for viewing at www.phonecardhotline.com or call 440-457-7209 to order

Taylor Rental Broadview Heights

I have begun and SEO review for Taylor Rental located in Broadview Heights, Ohio. Taylor Rental Broadview offers construction equipment rental for homeowners, professionals and do-it-yourselfers. The Taylor Rental Broadview Party Plus offers event rentals from table rentals to tent rentals including everything that goes on them or in them.

Philippines Phone Cards - Grabe - Clarito - Groove

The Philippines is still the most popular calling destination for people purchasing international phone cards online. When selecting a Philippines phone card you will want to select a phone card based upon your specific calling need. Hellocallingcards.com has more than a dozen different Philippines calling cards.

Some phone cards such as Integrity phone card have no fees. The no fee phone cards offer less advertised minutes (45 minutes on the $5 Integrity phone card to Philippines land lines and 40 minutes on Integrity to Philippines cell phones on the $5 Integrity phone card), but you get 100% of the advertised minutes. Other phone cards advertise more minutes, but deduct fees after each use.

If you are making a number of short calls over several days or weeks, or if the person you wish to talk to might not be home, then the Integrity phone card for Philippines is a great choice.

If you are interested in making one long call, then a standard phone card such as Asian Gold, Grabe phone card, Groove phone card, Winner Phone Card, STI Clarito phone card, or Pacific phone card might be a good choice. Most phone cards offer all of the advertised minutes when a single call is made from a local access number when the phone card is first issued, but after a few months the number of delivered minutes are diminished. For this reason, it is often helpful to check when the phone card was first released. Asian Gold Philippines phone card is an exception to the rule, because it continues to deliver all of the advertised minutes over a single call even though it has been in the market for years.

Another consideration is where you are calling. Most phone cards will deliver different minutes based upon where in the country you are calling. You will often find one rate for calling home to Manilla Philippines, a different rate for the rest of the country, and still a different rate for calling cell phones. In the Philippines, you may find one rate for calling Globe cell phones, and another rate for calling Smart cell phones.

Finally it makes a difference where you are calling from. In almost every case, you will get more delivered minutes if you use a local access number rather than a toll free number. This is so, because all phone card companies pay more for toll free 800 service, and they must pass this cost along. The difference is usually about one cent per minute. Always find out if a local access number is available when using a phone card to call home to Philippines or anywhere else. Also, it does not matter which local access number you use. For example, if you live in New Mexico and can not find a local access number for New Mexico, but you do have a Chicago local access number, then go ahead and use it... so long as you get free domestic long distance.

Tip: Most cell phone providers in the United States offer free domestic long distance, so it is a good idea to make your international calls using your cell phone to call a local access number for your phone card. If you do not have unlimited minutes on your cell phone, then be sure to make the call after hours or on weekends when your cell phone minutes are cheaper or free.

If you are calling from Alaska or Hawaii or Canada, be sure to select a phone card that has either Alaska or Hawaii local access or toll free numbers.

Often you have to try several phone cards to find the one that fits your application. If you are concerned about fees, try a $2 phone card.

Phone Card Hotline at 440-457-7209 specializes in Philippines phone cards for wholesale distributors and stores, but even if you are an indivual, you can visit the phone card hotline website to see the latest Philippines phone card posters

Free international phone cards for ATI Phone Cards customers

Since the ATI phone cards stopped working in July, we have received hundreds of phone calls from individuals, store owners and large distributors as well; all wanting to know what to do with their dead ATI phone cards. ATI (Alliance Telecom Inc), a California company issued new phone cards almost monthly for calling home to Africa. These phone cards were famous in the market because the when issued, the African phone cards delivered more minutes than their competition, and also offered the distributor a much higher discount than their competition. We are hopeful that ATI will find a way to turn their phone cards on, but my industry contacts say it is unlikely.

The phone card industry has long been an equal playing field. Small companies can purchase minutes for the same price as the largest companies. The industry is highly competitive. So their are only a few ways that one phone card issuers can offer more minutes and a larger discount than their competition over an extended period of time.

One way is to advertise more minutes, but drastically reduce the delivered minutes after a few weeks. Another way is to sell at a loss, and then pay for the loss with a dramatic and consistant increase in sales each week. This of course eventually results in failure, the minute sales stops growing. Finally, a company can run up a large carrier phone bill and then simply not pay.

ATI phone cards include the following: ATI Africa, Blue Nile phone card, Mosaic phone card, Mr Africa phone card, Afro Green phone card, DJ Africa phone card, My Africa phone card, ATI California phone card, More Africa phone card, Jumbo Africa, Hip Hop phone card; and many others. We have attempted to contact ATI but they do not return calls.

If you recently purchased an ATI phone card at a retail establishment, I suggest you take it back to the store where you purchased it and request a replacemnet. If the store owner refuses, suggest to him that in the future you might purchase your phone cards online at a company that guarantees their product such as Hello Calling Cards .

Hello Calling Cards is now running a trial promotion where they will give a free phone card to retail consumers who purchased any ATI phone card in a retail establishment and are unable to get a refund from the store. This offer is limited to retail consumers who purchase at least one phone card per week, and have a credit card and verifyable address. For information email rfcollett@yahoo.com LIMITED Availability.

Clifton Telecard Alliance - CTA - Ramadan phone card - 7 Africa

Clifton Telecard has added two new phone cards to their lineup. These are Ramadan phone card which is designed to appeal to those calling home to the Arab World including Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Palestine, Libya, Algeria, Iran, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, UAI, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sudan, Somalia, Liberia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea.

The second CTA phone card just issued is 7 Africa. The 7 Africa phone card has the same underlying rate deck as Ramadan, but the poster lists a different array of countries including Sierra Leone, Mali, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria, Kenya, Ivory Cost, Burkina Faso, Benin, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, Namibia, Somalia, Gambia, Togo, Algeria, Morocco as well as several other countries such as Nepal, Cambodia, Angola and Laos.

The poster on both Ramadan phone card and 7 Africa are set to expire August 15, 2010.

These two newest phone cards from CTA join the sucessful lineup that included African Dream, Java, African Bus, African Beast, African Beauty, CTA Arica, Africa Line, Radio Gold, the famous Original Gold, Great, 1010 phone card, and many others.

All CTA phone cards are available at Phone Card Hotline where you can see all of the CTA phone card posters, and mix and match your CTA phone cards with products from other leading phone card issuers such as IDT, STI, Transpac, Allcom, Dollar Phone, Raza and others.

Raza Telecom - RZT

Phone Card Hotline has recently began carrying the line of international prepaid phone cards offered from Raza. These include the following:

• Winner phone card - our best seller which is an a-z international phone card
• Mighty Africa - newly released for Africa
• Black & White phone card for Africa issued may 2010
• A plus phone card series, including A plus Nationwide, A Plus Africa, A Plus Mexico, A Plus Latino, A Plus Honduras, A Plus Guatemala
• Tiger Tarjetas Prepagadas for Mexico, Central America and South America
• Big Time Asia
• Chopin Karta Telefoniczna for Poland.

So far, we have been pleased with the results with the Raza phone cards quickly becoming 20% of our total sales, and doing especially good for Africa.

To see all of the posters, or place wholesale order for any Raza phone card, please go to Phone Card Hotline. Once advantage of ordering your Raza phone cards directly from Phone Card Hotline, is that you can get an overall lower shipping cost. Because the profit margins in the wholesale phone card business is so small, the cost of shipping can consume 25% of your gross profit or more.

Phone Card Hotline will allow you to mix and match your order including phone cards from other national companies such as Clifton Telecard Alliance (CTA), Dollar Phone who is the carrier for Phone Card Hotline branded products Asian Gold, Eastern Gold, Latino Pearl and Integrity with no fees ever; STI, TCI, Allcom, Transpac and other well established companies

One way to remain strong is to diversify your phone card product mix.

Pi Telecom - Orange Africa

A client of mine asked me to get him the Orange Africa phone which carries the logo Pi. I purchased some from a local distributor, but was unable to find any reference to the company online.

When I call the customer service number 1-800-884-1680 for Pi Telecom which is printed on the back of the phone card, the agent was unwilling to tell me where Pi Telecom is located. They were also unwilling to tell me where they (the customer service center) were located. I spoke with a supervisor, who also was not authorized to give any information about Pi Telecom, or about their own company.

I have since learned that Pi Telecom is a brand name of TCC Phone Cards in Elmhurst, IL. The Orange Africa phone card continues to be very poplular.

MTC Phone Cards - Picha Africa - Waka Waka Afrika

Millenium Telecard - MTC has introduced several new phone cards including two new Africa phone cards. The promotional poster for Waka Waka Africa emphasises Cape Verde, Egypt, Kenya, Liberia, Ghana and Nigeria. The MTC poster also has breakout boxes for Algeria, Cameroon, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, malawi, mauritania, mali, Mauritius, Moroccco, Senegal Sierra Leone and Somalia.

MTC offers local access numbers for its products. The Waka Waka Africa phone has a poster date of August 1, 2010 and local access numbers for Illinois, Wisconsis, Ohio, Kentucky, Minnesota, Virginia, Indiana, Michigan, Tennesee, and Georgia.

Pitcha Afrika poster features Cape Verde, (40 minutes on $5) Nigeria(76) and Ghana (50), with smaller breakout boxes for Kenya (200), Morocco (333), Ethiopia (37 to Addis Ababa) and Senegal (40). The poster date for MTC Picha Africa phone card is August 14th, 2010.

Other MTC phone cards include Hello World and Hello My Asia both with poster date of August 1, 2010. The "MTC Hello" series all have the same rates, with different posters to appeal to specific target markets.

For maximum discounts call 440-457-7209

ATI Phone Cards stop working

On Monday July 26th, 2010 all of the phone cards issued by ATI - Alliance Telecommunications Inc. stopped working. The company has some guy answering the phone. He says the owners will be back in one half hour. I have called 20 times and never been able to talk with anyone whom I recognize. The ATI answering service says "we are having technical problems" and claims that everything will be fixed shortly. This has been the same message for four days.

I have received hundreds of phone calls for stores and individuals who paid cash for for ATI phone cards within the past weeks and months. Some of the popular brands include Mr Africa phone card, Africa Green phone card, Hip Hop, ATI Bongo Africa, Jumbo Africa phone card, ATI Africa, Pilipinas Strong, Africa King and ATI California. For a number of years, this company had the best selling phone cards for calling Africa.

I have been selling phone cards for more than ten years, and have seen many companies have their phone cards stop working. Unfortunately, I have never seen a phone card company come back and take care of their problems, once the service is out for three or four days. The most recent phone card company to crash before ATI was Cristel Telecom.

If you purchased your ATI phone cards from Phone Card Hotline within the past 21 days, we will replace them with other good working phone cards. If you purchased more than 21 days ago from Phone Card Hotline, we will issue a credit memo, and apply the credit memo to future purchases a little bit at a time. All of the Phone Card Hotline customers who purchased ATI phone cards will get back 100% of their purchases and not loose any money.

If you purchased ATI phone cards elsewhere, leave me your name, phone number, email address, the amount of ATI dead inventory you expect to have, and where you purchased your ATI phone cards. I will help if I can.

Mighty Africa phone card

Might Africa phone card recently issued phone card offered July 2010. This low discount phone card features high quality minutes to all of Africa. Available from Phone Card Hotline.

New phone cards offer more minutes

Phone Card issuers continue to offer more promotional minutes on their international phone cards to targeted countries. Most new phone cards are issued with a disclaimer that tells the retailer to remove the poster after 45 days. Phone Card Hotline has added 5 new phone cards over the past few weeks. http://www.phonecardhotline.com/ . The best selling new Africa phone card is Great Africa prepaid phone card.

Great Africa is offering approximately 85% of the advertised minutes. Service provided by Nitel. The poster expires 7/20/2010. The issuing company reports selling more than 20,000 of the $5 cards within the past 30 days, for calling Ethiopia and other parts of Africa; and company spokesman says he is getting good repeat orders.

Many people feel that if you want to increase phone card sales at your store, you need to bring in the new phone cards for your target countries as soon as they are released.

Here are some samples of the rates advertised on the poster:
Ethiopia 45 minutes
Ethiopia cell 38 minutes
Angola 50 minutes
Eritrea 30 minutes
Morocco 275 minutes
Morocco cell 26 minutes
Senegal 45 minutes
Senegal cell 40 minutes
Bamako Mali 42 minutes
Uganda 65 minutes
Togo 21 minutes
Egypt 75 minutes

Other recently released phone cards include Hip Hop Latino poster date 7/15/2010; and Afro DJ phone card poster date 7/15/2010

Stores and distributors: To order call 440-457-7209

New Africa phone cards

3 New Phone Cards for calling home to Africa from three different suppliers; AFRO Green phone card, Winner phone card, Great Africa.

I have brought in a number of new phone cards from the issuers that specialize in Africa. These new cards just arrived in June 2010 and are already selling very well. Remember that new phone cards always have more minutes and less fees because the phone card issuers want to entice the customers to buy their card.

We have added a number of phone cards for calling Africa that are selling very well. These include ATC Afro DJ & Middle East, ATI Afro Green, Great Afica, and A plus Africa, and Winner. If you sell a lot of phone cards to Ethiopia, Nigeria, Liberia, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and other countries in Africa, get these cards while the service provider is still giving maximum minutes.

Contact Phone Card Hotline 440-457-7209 for wholesale discounts.

Afro Green and DJ Africa are as low as $3.55 per card

http://www.phonecardhotline.com/

new vacation rental website

I have recently started the new blog http://blog.mycapehaze.com where we discuss vacation rental condos in Cape Haze Peninsula.

More Vacation Rental Properties

We have expanded our luxury Florida vacation rental business. We now have 14 units available for rent within the communities of Cape Haze, Palm Island, Boca Vista Harbor, Siesta Key and Longboat key. Visit our website My Cape Haze for more details

Phoenix 2010 phone card test

I have just tested the newest "Unit Based "phone card from Transpac Telecom. The name of the calling card is Phoenix 2010 and it is issued by LLD. The poster was printed on Jan 29, 2010 and retailers are instructed to remove the poster after February 28, 2010.

A Transpac representative tells me that Phoenix 2010 is a hot selling phone card and is delivering about 90% of the advertised minutes.

I find these unit phone cards a little bit frustrating. The poster advertises a number next to each country. The assumption is that these numbers would be minutes. For example, the advertised units to Honduras is 46 unites on the $5 phone card and 18 units on the $2 phone card. This equates to $.11 per minutes. I called customer service at 1-800-678-4138 where they confirmed several times that the card delivers 46 MINUTES to Honduras for $5.

I made three test calls on a $2 Phoenix 2010 phone card:

The first call was a 4 minute call to Honduras. After dialing the US embassy in Honduras, I was promted 18 minutes (units) for the call. I spoke for just under 4 minutes, then hung up. When I attempted my second call, I was informed that I had just $1.02 remaining. This implies that my cost per minute for the first call was actually $.25 1/2 cents per minute. I spoke with customer service, and they advised me that there is a call completion fee at the end of each call equal to 35% of the minutes used on the call. This disconnect fee accounts for less than half of the difference between the advertised rate, and the rate I actually received. The same customer service representative advised me that I spoke for 6 1/2 minutes, which was rounded up to 7 minutes. In reality, I spoke for just under 4 minutes, during which I used a stop watch to time my call.

Next I made a call to USA for 4 minutes, and then finally made another call to Honduras. After talking to Honduras for 2 minutes, the switch disconnected me. Customer service advised me that the call was disconnected at my end, even though the switch dropped the call and promted "please enter the number you wish to dial"

In summary, over three calls, the Phoenix 2010 phone card delivered approximately half the advertised minutes over three calls during a span of less than one hour. The customer service advised me that this card would deliver 100% of the advertised minutes if used on a single call.

Based upon my test of only a single pin, the Phoenix phone card performs similarly to the typical phone card being marketed today. This card is available for purchase at Phone Card Hotline and Hello Calling Cards