Calling Card Review

3D Printing - Additive Manufacturing

2011-07-14T12:14:00.000-04:00

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

2011-05-13T18:07:00.001-04:00

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

2011-05-12T14:03:00.000-04:00

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:

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

2011-05-03T18:16:00.000-04:00

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

2011-05-03T12:08:00.002-04:00

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

2011-04-25T21:32:00.000-04:00

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

2011-04-23T07:25:00.000-04:00

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

2011-02-18T17:05:00.000-05:00

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

2011-02-18T06:22:00.000-05:00

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

2011-02-07T10:41:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-29T15:36:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-26T11:12:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-25T08:28:00.001-05:00

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

2011-01-23T06:15:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-20T16:06:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-19T12:22:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-17T12:36:00.001-05:00

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

2011-01-11T18:44:00.001-05:00

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

2011-01-10T20:52:00.000-05:00

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

2010-12-28T00:59:00.000-05:00

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

2010-08-28T10:40:00.000-04:00

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

2010-08-14T15:37:00.000-04:00

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

2010-08-08T11:23:00.001-04:00

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

2010-08-08T11:05:00.000-04:00

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

2010-08-08T10:43:00.000-04:00

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

2010-08-06T10:44:00.001-04:00

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

2010-08-03T11:58:00.000-04:00

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

2010-07-30T18:45:00.001-04:00

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

2010-07-01T08:57:00.000-04:00

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

2010-06-18T09:13:00.000-04:00

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

2010-06-10T12:47:00.000-04:00

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

2010-04-12T23:58:00.001-04:00

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

2010-04-01T13:17:00.000-04:00

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

2010-02-26T12:42:00.001-05:00

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

POSA - Alternative to physical phone cards

2010-02-17T11:06:00.000-05:00

One of the problems with selling phone cards is that the phone card issuers (the companies that make the phone cards) still largely play the same games. They come out with a new phone card every month or so for each region of the world. When a new phone card is released the issuing company proclaims the new phone card as the best thing since sliced bread.

As soon as a new phone card comes out... they begin to hack the minutes on last month's phone card de jour. This is great for the issuing company, because they only make their profits by cutting back the minutes on the older phone cards, but it ruins the store owner's relationship with their customers because the end customer wants a brand that they can trust.

The POSA (Point of Sale Terminal) terminal is a good alternative. Since the terminal distributor is primarily interested in keeping that terminal in the store, it is loaded with famous national brands including both prepaid cell phone reload pins as well as international calling card pins.

More importantly, the store owner has instant access to 30 or more quality brands without any investment. Theft is eliminated, and the store never needs to worry about running out of product or taking time out of their day to count phone cards.

Phone Card Hotline has taken it a step further by partnering with a leading POSA terminal distributor. Not only does the store owner have immediate access to virtually every prepaid cell phone brand in the country, but we have loaded the terminals with our long established brands including Asian Gold, Eastern Gold, Latino Pearl and the famous "no fee ever" Integrity phone card.

Pins can be accessed directly using your computer and the internet, or from a small POSA terminal that we provide with no up front cost (pictured above).

Phone Card Hotline also offers stores a unique refferal commission program, so that store owners can earn money every month simply by referring us to their friends.

For more information or to start buying pins today, call Bob today at 440-457-7209

The following prepaid mobile brands are included:

Airlink Mobile, Airvoice GSM, Alltel Wireless, Beyond GSM, T-Mobile RTR , Boost Mobile, Call Plus Wireless, AT&T Go Phone, H20 Wireless, Mojo Mobile, Movida Wireless, Net 10 Wireless, Oxygen O2 GSM, Page Plus, Ready Mobile, STI Mobile, TracFone Wireless, Tuyo Mobile, Verizon Wirless, Virgin Mobile, Viva, Xtreme Mobile

Eastern Gold, Africa, Asia, Europe, Mexico, Phone Bank, Call Plus, Asian Gold, latino Pearl, no fee Integrity plus more coming soon.

Phone Card Comments Welcome

2010-02-15T08:37:00.000-05:00

Almost every week I get calls from my vendors telling me about their new phone cards for calling Africa, or their new phone cards for calling mexico or central america, philippines or somewhere in the world. I publish the image of the phone card here and also post the phone card poster.

Most of the major phone cards companies have gotten into trouble over the past few years for advertising minutes that are not real. To get around this, they now print in big type at the bottom of the poster that "rates are effective until March 31, 2010", typically a date no more than 30 days after the phone card first hits the market place.

After that date, the phone card companies reserve the right to change the rates. The reality of this practice is that by the time the new phone card gets into the hands of customers, the rates have changed from what is advertised. The only value of the so called published phone card rates, is that it gives the consumer an idea of which countries or which region of the world the phone card is intended to be good for.

It is really a joke and a tragedy that the Federal Trade Commission spends hundreds of thousands of dollars taking these largest phone card companies to court for deceptive advertising, and only helps them to fine tune a strategy that skirts the law, and continues to decieve the public.

Another example of deceptive advertising among the phone card companies is the practice of adverting Units where consumers expect to see Minutes. The poster has in large type "El Salvador $5 70" - "Guatemala $5 125" - "Honduras and Cell 62". These rates sound pretty good. My customers would be very happy to buy a phone card for Guatemala and be able to talk 125 minutes. Read the fine print in the next paragraph ( I am sorry that I can not give the name of the company, but these guys all have big shot lawyers with no conscience, who will aggresively defend their clients. To be fair, this is not an isolated practice. Virtually every one of the largest phone card companies practice misleading advertising by promoting products whose rates expire within 45 days of being issued.)

Here is the fine print on a phone card issued by a major distributor which is typical of what is on the market. "By using this card, you agree to the following: Rates and fees vary and are subject to change without prior notice. Advertised UNIT are avaialable for a promotional period and which may end before customer purchase. Announced UNI are based on a single initial non payphone call from continintal USA before fees and surcharged are applied. Rates are higher for International cellular and special services termination. Domestic rates apply to calls within the continental USA. Calls billed in 3 UNIT increment. All calls placed from payphones will incur a $1.19 per call surchage. A $.99 weekly maintenance charge applies after fist use. Toll free access is subject to additional 3 cent per unit charge. A post call fee applies 7 cents per UNIT. Hang-up fee of 49 cents applies. The fee and surcharges will have the effect of reducing total UNI available if not used on a single call and subject to applicable fee and charges which will reduce multiple calls. 1 unit = a minimum of .65 minutes. Advertised rates effective until 2/5/10. Poster printed 12/21/2009.

Exotic Africa phone card

2010-02-13T20:52:00.001-05:00

ETP Exotic Africa phone card is finally a phone card for calling home to Africa that has no maintenance fees and no connection fees. You can use the Exotic Africa phone card for multiple phone calls.

This card was just released in February 2010

Don't be fooled by the lower poster minutes. You get more real minutes on this phone card than with most other phone cards, if you try to make two calls. This phone card lets you call home, and if nobody is there, you can still make another.

Phone Card Hotline is happy to have this phone card available for our wholesale customers. Call 440-457-7209 to order - wholesale only.

Blue Nile Africa phone card poster

2010-02-13T20:34:00.000-05:00

Blue Nile Africa phone card has just been released this week as ATI's newest Africa phone card for calling home to all places in Africa. The minutes advertised on the poster for calling home to Africa are guaranteed by ATI until March 10, 2010.

Any phone card distributor or any store located within an African community should get the Blue Nile African phone card while they are fresh. You can get them wholesale at www.phonecardhotline.com by calling 440-457-7209. Maximum discounts are available for customers who purchase at least $2000 wholesale, but stores can purchase any amount over $300 and at Phone Card Hotline you can mix and match.

Ghana 75 minutes
Liberia 20 minutes
Mali 26 minutes
Namibia 60 minutes
Senegal 38 minutes
Somalia 15 minutes
Egypt 60 minutes
Eritrea 26 minutes
Algeria phone card - 70 minutes
Guinea 17 minutes
Ethiopia phone card 40 minutes

Four New phone cards

2010-02-13T13:55:00.000-05:00

We just got in the brand new phone cards from ATI. Most phone cards are best when new. The minutes are guaranteed until the remove poster date, and the sell like hot cakes in your stores.

ATI Blue Nile Africa phone card. (remove poster after march 10, 2010). This is the newest and best ATI Africa phone card.
ATI paraoso phone card for calling Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Belize. Issued in Octobers.
ETP Exotic Africa phone card has no connection fees and no mainentnce fees. Exoctica Africa offers fewer minutes, but they are billed minute to minute. This means if you get cut off, all of your minutes remain.
Ay Papi phone card is good for Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and all of South America.

Call Bob at Phone Card Hotline 440-457-7209 today for wholesale pricing. Posters will be uploaded here later today or tomorrow, or go to www.phonecardhotline.com

Roman Catholic Diocese of Cleveland Church Inventory

2010-01-18T23:19:00.000-05:00

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Cleveland has established the website www.church-inventory.com to promote the respectful sale of sacred and religious items coming in from the merging and closing of Diocese churches. 50 parishes in total will close. Sacred and religious items can only be purchased by other Catholic churches.

Talk To Phone Card Series - Mexico - El Salvador - Guatemala - Honduras

2010-01-13T15:11:00.000-05:00

The brand new Talk To series has also just been released. These include Talk to Mexico, Talk to El Salvador, Talk to Guatemala, and Talk to Honduras.

Crazy minutes to Mexico City and Triangle. Mexico phone card 140 minutes for rest of Mexico.

El Salvador phone card 25 minutes on the $2
Guatemala phone card 47 minutes on the $2
Honduras phone card including cell 23 minutes on the $2

The Talk To phone card is available wholesale at

Phone Card Hotline

www.phonecardhotline.com

440-457-7209

New Phone Cards from Transpac

2010-01-13T11:19:00.000-05:00

Filcom Phone Card for calling Philippines, Cambodia and rest of Asia.

We just received the newest Philipino phone cards from Transpac Telecom.

Filcom Phone Card is for Philippines and Asia. It offers 70 minutes to Philippines land and 60 minutes to Philippines cell. Also has good rates fro Myanmar, vietnam, tonga, India, Camboida, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. Filcom phonte card Poster will be posted shortly.

Philippines phone card 70 minutes Land on $5
Cambodia phone card 120 minutes on $5
Philippines cell phone card 60 minutes on $5
Yeman Arab Republic phone card 36 minutes on $5 including cell
Myanmar (Burma) phone card 24 minutes on the $5
UAE phone card 42 minutes on the $5
Tonga phone card 20 minutes on the $5

Get them at Phone Card Hotline maximum wholesale discount
http://www.phonecardhotline.com/
Call 440-457-7209

New Phone Cards From Cristel Telecom

2010-01-13T11:10:00.000-05:00

We just got in several brand new phone cards from Cristel Telecom. New phone cards generally often more delivered minutes. Cristel has been a big seller. All of these new Cristel phone cards offer toll free access.

For Mexico and Latin America
My Favorite - Mi Favorirta
La Reina de Mexico
La Hispana
We also brought back the popular USA #1

These phone cards are available wholesale at Phone Card Hotline.
www.phonecardhotline.com
440-457-7209

Phone Card Posters and phone card images to follow shortly

Phone Card Consulting - How to suceed in phone card business

2009-12-02T10:36:00.000-05:00

Phone Card Industry Overview
The business of making and distributing phone cards is a facinating multi-billion dollar business. Phone Card distribution has a very low cost of entry. On the surface it is a very simple business. Use some phone cards, buy some phone cards... sell some phone cards... make a profit.

Yes it is a very simple business. Yet to suceed can be overwhelming. Because of its unique attributes, phone cards make and interesting study. Many of the customers have no other way of maintaing contact with loved ones at home. Customers include migrant farm workers from south of the border, and other recent immigrants or temporary workers visiting the USA from Africa, Eastern Europe, the Islands, and Asia.

Phone cards are most popular among customers who have not yet established credit cards, banking accounts, or home ownership. The typical phone card customer has been resident in the USA for less than 10 years. As customers become more established in their new country, they also can consider other alternatives to the phone card as a method of calling home. However, the phone card remains attractive as an easy to package, easy to distribute method for customers to call home.

Ease of Entry
There is very little barrier to entry into the phone card distribution business. Anyone who can put together a few hundred dollars can buy phone cards from a wholesale distributor and sell them to stores or individuals in their community.

This ease of entry attracts immigrants themselves to become phone card distributors. Often the foreign born American has difficulty finding a job in their area of expertise. The first thing the immigrant learns about their new city is the location of ethnic grocery stores where they can buy the kind of food they know and love. The immigrant quickly seeks out a place of worship according to their faith, and he or she seeks out other's who speak their language, understand their culture, and can provide a support network. It is understandable therefore, that this indivual seeks out an opportunty to sell phone cards within their ethnic community. Moreover, this individual tries out every new phone card that avertises good rates to their home country, so he quickly becomes an expert on the various phone card products, connection fees, and which card is good and which is no so good.

Market Opportunities

There are a number of different approaches to the marketplace that the distributor must consider. Sometimes the distributor simply does what comes natural, and sometimes they analyse the demographics and do more traditional market research. Some of the options include:
Direct to Consumer: Sell directly to end users through your personal network
Online website: Sell online via a website
Retail Store - buy cards for sale to existing walk-in customers
Small Distributor -Sell to Retail stores
Large Distributor or Master Distributor - Sells to Retail stores and Smaller Distributors
Partner Distributors - Works with other distributors to build a competitive advantage
Exclusive Distributor - establish relationship with card issuer, whereby you have exclusive distribution rights of a given product in your region(s).
Private Label provider - design and create a phone card with an exclusive rate deck.
Facility based phone card company - create rate decks, issue pins, manage terminations routes, manage origination routes.
Virtual switch based company - same as facility based phone card company, except that you never touch the hardware. All of the management is done via third party company. You negotiate for your own routes, test and implement the routes, and manage rates decks.

Each of the above represents a niche opportunity. A distributor may choose to play in one or more of the above arenas. Often the growth path will take a distributor from one playing field to another limited only by the businessman's resources and skills.

Disaster Opportunites
There are many opportunities for the distributor to loose money in the prepaid calling card distribution business.

Supplier goes out of business - the bigger they are the harder they fall
Customer writes fraudulent check - even certified checks can be fake
Many opportunities for facility based carriers to loose money
Regulatory issues and potential penalties

Questions for your Consultant

Should I consider my own phone card switch or a virtual switch?
How do I create a Private Label product
How do I negotiate the best rate deck for my target country?
What kind of potential does the phone card business have?
How do I differentiate myself from my competition?
How can I get a store to take phone cards from me?
Can you help me negotiate more minutes and better discount to my target countries?
How do I sell PINs online?
How should I handle returns? What kind of guarantee should I offer my cusotmers? Can I trust my supplier's guarantee?
How can I increase traffic to my online phone card website?
How should I price my phone cards?
What kind of accounting system should I use in the phone card business?
How do I take advantage of technology to grow my business and be more competitive?
Should I have a business partner?
How much money can I make as a phone card distributor?
I have a friend with a switch... How can I negotiate a sucessful business venture with him?
I have a network of more than 1000 people from my home country. How can I parle this into phone card profits?
What are the biggest phone card markets?
What other synergistic products can I offer to compliment my phone card business?
How do I find "clean" phone cards?
Who are the best phone card issuers in the industry?
How can I buy good routes for my switch?
How can I become more competitive?
Should I sell consignment?
How can I find the best phone cards for my region?
Can tell me the ethnic makeup for my zip codes? How many foreign born live in my city, and what countries and regions are they from? What other cities do people from my target market live?
Can you help me design and print my own phone cards?
How do I get more retail store customers? How do I keep them as my customer?
What should I expect from my supplier? Can I get usage reports? Can I expect to know my actual rate deck? How often will my rate deck change? Will my supplier tell me the truth?
How do I get in the carrier termination business?
How do I open a call shop?
I have contacts in my home country. How can I set up origination and termination services in my home country?
How do I create a PINless phone card?
How do I create a rechargable phone card?
How do I hire an employee to sell my phone cards? How much should I pay them?
How much inventory do I need? How much cash reserve do I need?
What kind of terms should I expect from my suppliers?
Should I offer consignment to my cusotmers?
Can I add PINless long distance services to cell phones?
How do I sell prepaid cell phones? What prepaid wireless brands are available?
Are there legal issues I need to be concerned with?
Should I be in the prepaid phone card business? Why? Why not?

Consulting Services

To get the answers to these and other questions contact Bob Collett at 440-457-7209. Bob has more than 10 years experience in every aspect of the phone card industry, and more 20 years of telecommunications and consulting experience.

Why should you hire me?

I have owned and operated two phone card switches, I have owned a CLEC, I have owned a switchless reseller business, I have operated a virtual switch, I spent two years buying and selling wholesale international terminaton servcies, I built a local phone card distribution of more than $450,000 per month in less than 6 months, I have owned and operated a sucessful online retail phone card business, and owned and operated a sucessful online wholesale phone card business, I have survived the demise of numerous mega phone card suppliers, I have experienced fraud at various levels, I have developed multiple private label products using various suppliers as well as our own switches.

You deserve to have a "partner" who you can trust, who will represent your interest in the phone card industry. You need someone who knows the industry and will help you negotiate with your potential suppliers, and steer you clear of mistakes.

My normal consulting fee for established companies is $70 per hour. Take advantage our my phone card distributor "incubator" consulting fee of only $35 per hour, based upon an initial 10 hour consultancy spread over multiple sessions. Once you are established and sucessful, your hourly fee may ramp up based upon your ability to pay and your need for additional services.

The first phone call is free.

Felicidad phone card issued by ATI

2009-11-29T08:24:00.000-05:00

ATI has introduced a new Latin America phone card for home to Mexico, Central America and South America. The Felicidad prepaid phone card features 90 minutes to Guatemala land lines, and 65 minutes to Guatemala cell phones for $5. Felicidad phone card is also available in $2 denomination. Call 75 minutes to Honduras land lines, and 50 minutes to Honduras cell phones.

Check the phone card poster and you will see that you can call Mexico up to 800 minutes if you are calling into the Golden Triangle area. Felicidad also advertised minutes to Brazil, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Belize, Chili and El Salvador.

The just released ATI phone card offers rates that will be in effect through December 15, 2009. Service is provided by SCI. I do not know the relationship between ATI and SCI. Like all phone cards issued by major phone card companies, the rates advertised on the posters are only guaranteed for the first 30 days.

All ATI phone cards are available for wholesale distribution to stores and route distributors from Phone Card Hotline and from www.hellocallingcards.com for direct discount sale to consumers.

ATI Eid Mubarak phone card

2009-11-27T19:56:00.000-05:00

ATI Eid Mubark phone card just issued November 25, 2009. Good for calling home. Available from Phone Card Hotline call 440-457-7209 or visit http://www.phonecardhotline.com/ to order.

This new phone card allows you to call India 160 minutes for $5. Good for Baghdad, Iraq 135 minutes, Kenya phone card 200 minutes, Kuwait phone card 79, Mali 50, Morocco 95, Pakistan 100, Lebanon phone card 70, Syria 56, Yemen phone card 45 minutes.

ATI Phone Cards for Africa

2009-11-25T11:52:00.000-05:00

ATI, the California phone card company has issued four new phone cards in the 4th quarter of 2009 for calling home to Africa. These include Africa Tradition phone card, Africa Middle East Demand phone card, African Roots phone card, and African Hearts phone card. The posters for each of the new ATI Africa phone cards are available for viewing at our Phone Card Hotline Flickr location

African Heart

The Africa phone cards are good for calling all of the countries in Africa.

The newest card Africa Tradition also offeres a PINless dialing feature, and a rechargeable feature.

Like all ATI phone cards and most other phone cards as well, these cards deliver the maximum minutes during the first month or two after they have been issued.

To order any of the ATI phone cards, contact www.phonecardhotline.com for wholesale orders. Consumers can order direct at www.hellocallingcards.com . For more information call 440-457-7209 or fax 440-2016340

WCDI

2009-11-06T12:14:00.000-05:00

We continue to recieve phone calls from consumers and stores asking for a refund for WCDI product. http://www.phonecardhotline.com/ and http://www.hellocallingcards.com/ purchased directly from WCDI for a number of years, but after some of their products stopped working, we discontinued offering the WCDI product line. There is not now, nor has there ever been an affiliation between phonecardhotline and WCDI or any of its principles or between hellocallingcards and WCDI or any of its principals.

We have already issued refunds or credits to any customers of phonecardhotline or hellocallingcards who purchased WCDI product from us.

If you have WCDI product that is not working, I suggest you contact the store or distributor where you purchased the phone cards. If you purchased directly from WCDI, you will need to contact them directly. They are a California company. West Coast Distributor Inc.

This continues to be very confusing, because we have heard that WCDI went out of business, but people continue to report that they have recently bought their product from them directly.

I welcome any input you might have. Perhaps some WCDI staff can enlighten us.

Page Plus Talk n Text 1200

2009-10-27T17:04:00.001-04:00

Page Plus has announced their new "Talk n Text 1200" plan on October 9, 2009. The Talk n Text prepaid wireless plan includes 1200 domestic voice minutes, 1200 domestic test messages (SMS) or Multimedia messagin Service (MMS) and 50 megabytes of data.

The price for the above Talk n Text 1200 plan is $29.95 per month.

This follows the highly sucessful Page Plus $39.95 per month unlimited plan.

Page Plus rides on top of the Verizon Network.

The $39.95 Page Plus cards are available wholesale to retail stores from Phone Card Hotline for as low as $33.50 per card.

http://www.phonecardhotline.com

For more information contact me at collett@phonecardhotline.com or call 440-457-7209.

Pinoy Power phone card for Philippines and Asia issued by TCI Total Call International

2009-10-19T11:51:00.000-04:00

Pinoy Power phone card is a new prepaid phone card for calling Philippines, and other countries in Asia. The minutes are provided by Total Call.

Advertised minutes for Philippines land is 54 minutes on the $5 phone cad and 44 minutes to call Philippine cellular numbers.

Pinoy Power advertises 24 minutes to Myanmar - Burma.

To purchase Pinoy Power contact

http://www.phonecardhotline.com

Cape Haze Resort Vacation Rental by Owner

2009-10-03T10:13:00.001-04:00

We have just purchased a new luxury vacation rental condominium in beautiful Cape Haze Florida a Cape Haze Resorts on Placida Highway. Cape Haze is located 30 minutes south of Sarasota Florida on Lemon Bay. Cape Haze Resort is about 3 miles from Boca Grande and right next to Don Pedro State Park. This area offers some of the best fishing anywhere. We offer special discounts to customers of Phone Card Hotline or Hellocallingcards.com. Call 440-457-7209 for visit our website for details.

Cape Haze Resort Vacation Rental

2009-09-21T23:20:00.000-04:00

We have just recently acquired a luxury vacation condominium located in Cape Haze Florida on Placida Highway. Our Cape Haze Resort condominium is offered for rent to all of our friends and customers. You can save big during the fall and spring. Relax, enjoy the pool, walk the nearby beachs, shoot a round of golf, and enjoy some of the best tarpon and snook fishing in all of Florida.

IDT buys Union Telecard from Carlos Gomes

2009-07-29T18:30:00.000-04:00

IDT announced today that it was buying the remaining 49% of Union Telecard. Union Telecard (UTA) was founded in May 2003 to distribute the phone cards issued by IDT. According to the terms that were announced, Carlos Gomez Trust walks away with $6.9 million from the deal.

The UTA brands have not been selling nearly as well in the northeastern Ohio market as they have in the past. At one point UTA was about 20% of our sales, but they frequently changed policies over the past few years and made it difficult for us to support their product line. Hopefully this move will bring on new changes that will give us reason to promote their product line.

Fil-AM Rising phone card - local access numbers

2009-07-28T13:37:00.000-04:00

Fil Am Rising phone card issued by Transpac.
click here for poster

Click on image to see larger numbers.

Fil-Am phone card is targeted for calling home to Philippines with 55 minutes advertised on the $5 phone card for land lines, and 45 minutes to Philippines cellular. Issue May 2009 by Transpac. Network service is provided by LLD. Also features Fiji Islands 30 - Cambodia 130 Indonesia 325 to Jarkarta - Myanmar 20 minutes - Laos 130 minutes - Tonga 30 minutes - thailand 600 minutes - Vietnam Saigon & Hanoi 190 minutes - Mongolia 95 minutes cellular 85.

Here is the card back with the local access numbers;

MTC le monde Africa local access numbers

2009-07-27T16:15:00.001-04:00

Always use a local access number to get the maximum minutes from any phone card. Here is the front and the back of le monde Africa. Search here for local access numbers for your favorite phone card.

I have also included a higher resolution of the card back. Please let me know if I should add more local access numbers via card back images.

Two dollar phone card - $2 phone card

2009-07-27T08:45:00.000-04:00

Market demand for the $2 phone card continues to increase. Here is the good and the bad of this trend. All of the major phone card companies charge significant fees immediately after completion of the first phone call, or at midnight after the first phone call. Consumers have learned the hard way, that if they want to get the maximum value out of their favorite phone card, it usually pays to purchase the lowest denomination possible.
(The exception is that phone cards such as the Integrity phone card that have no maintenance fees or surcharges over multiple calls originating from a land line or from a cell phone when using a local access number. If there are no fees, then there is no need to purchase the $2 version of the phone card.)
Unfortunately, very few online websites offer the $2 phone card. The reason for this is that credit card service fees charged by the merchant service providers make it cost prohibitive to offfer a $2 transaction online. Hellocallingcards.com is one of the few websites that continues to offer the $2 calling card. To defray part of the cost of the merchant service fee, hellocallingcards.com apply a small premium to any transaction less than $10. However, customers who have a favorite national brand $2 calling card, can purchase 5 of them to avoid any purchase premium.

Easy phone card

2009-07-24T19:13:00.000-04:00

Yesterday somebody asked me for the Easy phone card. I never heard of this phone card, but they are asking for it because somebody used it and referred a customer to this phone card. Now soome stores want it, and they are calling me.

A new phone card comes out every day. I will try to find the good ones and bring them to you. Here is what I need to know.

1.) What is the name of the phone card
2.) Who is the issuer. This is usually printed on the front of the phone card.
3.) Who is the service provider. This is usually printed in small type on the bottom of the back of the phone card. If it is not clear who the network service provider is, then they are probably trying to conceal their identity.
4.) Who is the distributor. Sometimes, but not always, a phone number is given to locate the nearest distributor.
5.) What country is the phone card good for. This is the most important thing to know. How many minutes does it advertise to that country and how many minutes does it delivery.
6.) Is there a fee. Forget the fine print. Make a phone call today. Talk for a few minutes, then try again to make another call tomorrow. Keep track of what the card announces each time and how long you actually talk.
7.) Scan the front of the card and the back of the card and send it to me.

I will let you know what I find. Most of the comments I get are from schills (distributors pretending to be customers) telling me about some great phone card or a great website.

CTA 1010 phone card

2009-07-24T15:45:00.000-04:00

CTA - Clifton Telecard has introduced a new phone card called 1010 phone card. The published rates are for based upon one call. Traditionally, CTA offers maximum minutes on their newest phone cards. CTA is no longer providing posters for the 1010 phone card.

Country	Minutes on $5
Brazil phne card	227
Brazil Mobile	62
Mexico phone card	90
Mexico Mobile	70
Guatemala phone card	55
El Salvador phone card	40
El Salvador 40	40
Colombia phone card	200
Colombia mobile	96
Costa Rica phone card	119
Costa Rica mobile	106
Ecuador phone card	50
Ecuador mobile	40
Egypt phone card	70
Egypt mobile	70
Ethiopia phoen card	27
Haiti phone card	40
Haiti mobile phone card	35
Honduras phone card	80
Honduras mobile phone card	42
India	250
India mobile	357
Jordan phone card	285
Jordan mobile phone card	100
Kenya phone card	65
Kenya mobile phone card	60
Lebanon phone card	75
Lebanon mobile	50
Liberia phone card	25
Morocco phone card	75
Morocco mobile	22
Nigeria phone card	60
Philippines phone card	50
Syria phone card	47
Syria mobile	37

ATI International California phone card

2009-07-24T08:57:00.000-04:00

ATI International California phone card was introduced in June 2009 by Alliance Telecom in California. Network Service is provided by Sunycell, Inc. Advertused minutes are based upon a single call originating from a local access number.

ATI is known for delivering more minutes to Africa than any other phone cards. Recent Africa phone cards include ATI Africa phone card, Mr Africa phone card, More Africa phone card, My Africa phone card, and Bongo Africa.

With a new African phone card released every month or so, it is reasonable to assume that each rate deck is a little different and each features more minutes to some African countries and less minutes to other African countries. It is also safe to assume that when the new African phone card is issued, the older ones begin to deliver less minutes.

ATI joins the rest of the major companies in the industry by disclosing that the rates advertised on the printed poster are only good until the expiration date on the poster. In the case of the ATI International California phone card, the poster includes a notice to store owners: "Please remove poster after 6-30-09

Here are some of the rates:.

Country	Minutes on $5
Algeria phone card	75
Algeria cell phone card	50
Burundi phone card	80
Cameroon phone card	54
Douala phone card	56
Chad phone card	65
Comoros phone card	24
Congo phone card	53
Djibouti phone card	25
DR Congo - Zair	36
Kinshasa phone card	24
Egypt phone card	68
Equatoria Guinea	32
Eritrea phone card	35
Ethiopia phone card	40
Gabon phone card	60
Gambia phone card	26
Ghana phone card	100
Guinea phone card	38
Ivory Coast phone card	34
Kenya phone card	72
Liberia phone card	28
Libya Phone Card	35
Madagascar phone card	35
Mali phone card	48
Mauriania phone card	40
Morocco phone card	52
nigeria phone card	70
Senegal phone card	58
Sierra Leone phone card	26
Somalia phone card	16
South Africa phone card	100
Johannesburg phone card	120
Sudan phone card	68
Swaziland phone card	63
Tanzania phone card	60
Togo phone card	25
Tunisia phone card	23
Uganda phone card	60
Zambia phone card	120
Zimbabwe phone card	80

Integrity Phone Card - new rates - no fees

2009-07-23T08:41:00.000-04:00

Integrity Phone Card is issued by Phone Card Hotline with network service provided by Dollar Phone has announced new lower rates to many international destinations. This phone card has taken a novel approach to the phone card market by delivering 100% of the avertised minutes over multiple calls and it does not expire until 6 months after its last use.

The Integrity phone card has no connection fees, no surcharges, no maintenance fees, and no other hidden fees. When using a local access number Integrity no fee phone card delivers 100% of the advertised minutes. When accessing the phone card using a toll free 800 number, the Integrity no fee phone card announces minutes that reflects that added cost of toll free access. The actual additional cost of toll free access is approximately one cent per minute. When accessing the Integrity phone card via pay phone, there is a payphone surcharge between $.75 and $.99 which reflects the additional cost imposed by the pay phone provider.

In summary, as long as the consumer accesses the Integrity phone card using a local access number from a land line or from a cell phone, there are no fees whatsoever. Since most cell phones today offer free domestic long distance, it is easy to avoid the higher toll free 800 surcharge. Also, local access numbers are offered from more than 100 major metropolitan areas across the USA.

We know of no other international phone card brands being sold in the stores today that has no fees and delivers 100% of the minutes advertised on the poster. Most phone card companies posters now disclose that the rates advertised on the poster are good for only 30 days from the date of issue!

Integrity is good for calling both domestic and international, and especially good when calling cell phones or to land lines that frequently drop calls because there are no fees.

The Integrity phone card was originally designed to sell to workers from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Uganda, and other countries who work for the US military at Balad Air Base in Iraq. This is why it has no fees. Additioanlly, the State Reseach Foundation of NY, buys only the Integrity phone card and gives them away as part of their migrant farm worker program, because they wanted an honest prepaid phone card with no fees.

Also, stores who sell the Integrity phone card may also have the option to sell recharge minutes to be added to the card, and call history is available as needed.

Following are some of the current rates for Integrity including the minutes on a $5 phone card.

Name	Rate	$5.00
Afghanistan	0.288	17
Albania	0.069	72
Albania Cell	0.265	19
Albania Tirana	0.058	87
Azerbaijan	0.128	39
Azerbaijan Baku	0.088	57
Azerbaijan Cell	0.164	30
Bahrain	0.082	61
Bangladesh	0.040	125
Bosnia	0.144	35
Bosnia Cell	0.288	17
Canada	0.012	435
Croatia	0.038	130
Croatia Cell	0.192	26
Cyprus	0.019	261
Cyprus Cell	0.058	87
Czech Republic	0.019	261
Egypt	0.091	55
Egypt Cell	0.063	80
France	0.013	391
France Cell	0.144	35
Germany	0.013	391
Germany Cell	0.144	35
India	0.028	180
Iran	0.077	65
Iraq	0.072	70
Iraq Baghdad	0.038	130
Iraq Cell	0.144	35
Israel	0.008	600
Israel Cell	0.071	70
Israel Palestine	0.167	35
Israel Palestine Cell	0.200	25
Jordan	0.011	450
Jordan Cell	0.050	100
Kazakhstan	0.077	65
Kazakhstan Cell	0.144	35
Kuwait	0.050	100
Kuwait Cell	0.083	60
Kyrgyzstan	0.088	57
Lebanon	0.077	65
Lebanon Cell	0.156	32
Libya	0.288	17
Macedonia	0.115	43
Macedonia Cell	0.288	17
Oman	0.192	26
Pakistan	0.127	39
Pakistan Cell	0.127	39
Palestine	0.164	35
Poland	0.016	304
Poland Cell	0.116	43
Qatar	0.230	22
Romania	0.048	104
Romania Bucharest	0.041	122
Romania Cell	0.192	26
Russia	0.033	152
Russia Cell	0.069	72
Russia Moscow	0.008	609
Russia St. Petersburg	0.012	435
Saudi Arabia	0.063	80
Saudi Arabia Cell	0.125	40
Saudi Arabia Riyadh	0.022	225
Serbia	0.077	65
Serbia Cell	0.230	22
Slovenia	0.036	139
Slovenia Cell	0.288	17
Sudan	0.144	35
Sudan Cell	0.164	31
Syria	0.125	40
Tajikistan	0.096	52
Togo	0.203	25
Turkey	0.014	350
Turkey Cell	0.100	50
Turkmenistan	0.128	39
United Arab Emirates	0.125	40
United Arab Emirates Cell	0.135	37
USA	0.012	435
Uzbekistan	0.092	54
Uzbekistan Tashkent	0.072	70
Yemen Arab Republic	0.125	40
India Mobile	0.028	180
Jamaica	0.088	57
Jordan Amman	0.011	450
Mexico City	0.012	435
Namibia	0.096	52
Nicaragua	0.144	35
Peru	0.033	150
Peru Lima	0.016	304
Philippines	0.144	35
Philippines Cell	0.164	30
Rwanda	0.128	39
Slovakia	0.038	130
Slovakia Cell	0.192	26
Syria Cell	0.152	33
Togo Cell	0.289	17
Uganda	0.115	43
United Kingdom	0.010	478
Uruguay	0.077	65
Vietnam	0.105	48

Click here to see all of the advertised Integrity rates

Cheers Phone Card Series

2009-07-23T08:09:00.000-04:00

Cheers Asia Africa & Middle East phone card

Total Call International has issued the Cheers phone card with numerous faces all featuring the same rate deck. For calling Latin America the brand includes Cheers Mexico phone card, Cheers Ecuador phone card, Cheers El Salvador phone card, Cheers Guatemala phone card, Cheers Honduras phone card and Cheers Nicaragua phone card with 62 minutes on the $5 calling card.

Cheers Mexico phone card advertises 1688 minutes to Guadalajara, Mexico City and Monterrey. To the Pricipal Ciudades Cheers advertises 588 minutes, to the rest of Mexico they advertise 120 minutes. Mexico cell phone is advertised as 76 minutes.

There is also a card face Cheers Asia Afrca and Middle East phone card with the following countries featured: Algeria 100 minutes, Bangladesh 150 minutes, Cambodia 154 minutes, Myanmar 20 minutes, Palestine 30 minutes, Hanoi Vietnam 240 minutes, Nairobi Kenya 400 minutes, Addis Abab 39 minutes, Philippines 56 minutes, Karachi Pakistan 250 minutes.

Cheers Mexico phone card

The poster for the Cheers phone card was printed by TCI - Total Call International on June 22, 2009 and announces that the advertised minutes are for a single call made before the expiration date of July 17, 2009. This means that by the time the phone card gets put on the shelves, the advertised minutes are no longer accurate. This is the "approved" disclosure method that most phone card companies are using today.

The disclosure continues... After the applicable expiration date, rate changes will reduce advertised minutes up to 50% and by more if costs to TCI change substantially. Rates and fees are subject to change without notice. For current pricing call 1-888-569-9653. Cheers also includes a toll free access surchage of up to $.05 per minute.

La Vida Mas Loca phone card

2009-07-22T22:47:00.000-04:00

Cristel Telecom has released two new phone cards. Today's Special phone card is promoted as being good for Philippines, and Philippines cell. Meg at Cristel Telecom says the Today's Special phone card is very good because it offers the same minutes for cell phone termination to many destinations to be the same as for land lines. This card advertises many regions around the world rather than just one region.

Today's Special phone card is a good compliment to a phone card portfolio that needs an all around phone card especially good for Philippines, Asia and Central America.

La Vida Mas Loca phone card by Cristel Telecom is being promoted for calling home to all of Mexico, Central America and South America. Meg says this one is very good for Mexico cell phone termination.

Cristel Telecom has issued two phone new phone cards. One is La Vida Mas Loca and the other is Today's Special.

MTC Millenium Telecard le monde Africa phone card

2009-07-21T09:42:00.000-04:00

Calling Card Review - Millenium Telecard - Le monde Africa
I have recently begun offering the Millenium Telecard MTC product line. So far my experience has been good. Le monde Africa is offered by MTC offers and is available at phonecardhotline.com

Following is a list of other MTC phone cards issued by Millenium Telecard. Call for maximum wholesale discounts or advice. Call 440-457-7209

The newest product is Le Mondee Africa which features Yemen at 60 minutes, Tunisia 50, Liberia 33, Ghana 142, Cape Verde 50, Togo 25, Liberia 25, Egypt 90.
Here are some of the other MTC phone cards we can offer. Let me know if you have any interest:
MTC Paleta phone card network provided by Locus
MTC City prepaid phone card
Miss Ecuador
MTC One phone card
MTC African Jungle phone card by Locus Telecommunications
MTC Golden Dollar phone card service by SCI good for Mexico and Central America
MTC Millenium Telecard Samba Novo
MTC Bacanisimo prepaid phone card
MTC Miss Guatemala phone card
MTC Vivelo el Salvador
MTC Tel Asia issued November 2008
MTC Xce;;emt [jpme card servoce [rpvoded bu TCN issued Jan 2008
MTC hola Corazon tarjeta prepagada issued July 2009 for calling Central America, Mexico and South America.
MTC Comcel phone card issued June 2009 for calling Jamaica, Colombia Comcel and Guatemal Comcel
SkyTell calling card issued by Max Telecom Ireland Ltd.
MTC Life La Vida prepaid phone card issued March 2009 services by TCI
MTC African prepaid phone card issued May 2009

ATI United Africa - My Africa - Mr Africa - Karina

2009-02-14T09:59:00.000-05:00

Get the best price on all ATI phone cards when you buy 500 or more Mr Africa or other popular fast selling ATI phone cards. When you buy any combination of ATI phone cards in lots of 100, you can get the best prices from a reputable master distributor.

ATI's $5 Africa phone cards are offered at a 28% discount ($3.60 on the $5 Mr Africa phone card. Plus if your total of all purchases for the month is $10,000 for the month, you receive a 1% bonus rebate for the entire month's purchases (posted the following month). 440-526-9946

The following ATI Phone Cards are available at Phone Card Hotline wholesale division:

ATI My Africa phone card
ATI Mr Africa & Middle East phone card
ATI More Africa phone card
ATI United Africa & Middle East phone card - new February 2009 with local access numbers throughout the USA
ATI Karina phone card - Local access numbers for Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota
ATI Middle East No Lies phone card - advertising 100% delivery of prompt minutes
ATI Bongo phone card - an older ATI calling card... still selling well
ATI Philippines No Lies phone card - 100% prompt minutes with local access numbers in California, and Hawaii
ATI King of Cards phone card with local access numbers in Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware,Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, New Jersey,Colorado, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virvinia.
ATI Africa No Lies phone card
ATI El Salvador No Mentiras
ATI Guatemala No Mentiras
ATI Honduras No Mentiras
ATI Always Africa phone card
ATI Mi Hogar phone card - Califonia local access numbers

Asian Gold Phone Card

2009-02-14T09:46:00.000-05:00

It seems like the a favorite passtime for Cambodian ladies here in the states, is calling home to Cambodia. Even more, they like selling a quality phone card to their friends and family.

The A$2 Asian Gold phone card is very popular for calling home to Cambodia and Laos.

We origianlly designed Asian Gold calling card to be competitive in the Philippines phone card market. Aside from selling the Asian Gold to stores, we also have a number of Filipino women working in hospitality, at hospitals, and in home care who enjoy making some side money selling 50 or 100 of the $5 Asian Gold phone cards each week to their friends.

For more information on Asian Gold you can contact me at 440-526-9946

Eastern Gold Phone Card

2009-02-13T22:50:00.001-05:00

Eastern Gold is still the #1 selling Ukraine calling card selling in Cleveland Ohio. Stores occasionally try another phone card such as Power Minutes... but they always come back to Dollar Phone's Eastern Gold phone card, with local access numbers throughout the country.

Excellent for Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Hungary, all of Western Europe.

Eastern Gold is available in $2 and $5 denominations. We will also make the rate deck available for private label with a minimum printing of 10,000 cards. You will typically sell 2 of the $2 for every $5 Eastern Gold phone card. Printing cost runs about $.05 per card.

Phone Card Companies will not update posters

2009-02-13T08:56:00.000-05:00

While there is a trend in the phone card industry to provide better phone cards with fewer fees, the existence of a phone card with no fees is still a rarity. There were a number of lawsuits in 2008 claiming that phone card companies were misleading customers with point of sale posters that advertised more minutes than were being delivered.

The result is absurd. Today the major phone card companies issue a new card, and print point of sale phone card posters advertising that their phone card delivers "100% of the advertised minutes if used on a single call" The catch is that the advertised rates are only for 14 days after the phone card is issued. After the 14 days, they go back to "rates are subject to change"

Phone cards such as the Integrity Phone Card which sells very well at the Ballad Air Base over in Iraq, has no fees... but can not offer the crazy minutes advertised on typical phone card posters. Even so, the rates to most places save the customer a lot of money over alternative call methods. For example, you can call 120 minutes to Bangladesh or India. The customer can make one long call or can make 120 one minute calls.

When buying a phone card, look for one with local access numbers. Local Acess numbers cost the phone card company less than toll free 800 numbers. Therefore they can deliver more real minutes. Remember, if you have a cell phone with free domestic long distance... you can use your cell phone to dial any local access number printed on the back of your prepaid calling card. This trick works very well for those living in Alaska where toll free access either does not work, or it imposes a hefty surcharge.

ATI Phone Cards - Mr Africa phone cards

2009-02-12T21:38:00.000-05:00

I have been away for a while. Now we are selling a lot of ATI phone cards. The parent company is called California Alliance Telecommunications - CAT. They tell me they have been around for about 15 years. But I have only been using their products for a few years. I have used a number of their products under both the ATI brand as well as the CAT brand.

Over the past year, the ATI Mr Africa Middle East phone card has easily become our best selling phone card for our wholesale (store) African customers around the country... even surpassing the very popular CTA brands such as African Dream, CTA Africa, and African Beauty.

I recently had a problem when the major distributor in Florida had all of their ATI phone cards shut down as a result of a dispute with ATI. I will not go into the details of the dispute, because I really have no way of knowing which party breached their agreement. Nonetheless, all of my ATI phone cards went dead. I contacted the folks at CAT and they were very helpful getting all of my cards that were already in the market re-activated within 8 hours!

It is very rare that a company will work with a distributor in this manner. Rather than having to collect all of the dead cards and send them back to the Florida distributor where I bought them, I was able to have them turned back on within about 8 hours. This means that my ATI customers who buy Mr AFrica, My Africa, More AFrica, the No Lies Philippines, Mi Hogar, No Lies AFrica, No Lies Middle East and the No Mentires Guatemala and all of the other ATI branded products... were able to continue using the cards after just a short delay.

I always tell my phone card vendors, if a technical problem occurs all they need to do is be honest with their distributors... and get the problem fixed within 3 days. If they do this, the customer will thank them and become even more loyal.

Problem is... most of the so called technical problems are not technical problems at all, but really matters where somebody did not pay their bill.

In the case of my ATI cards... I paid the Florida distributor where I bought the cards, and also paid ATI directly so that I could have my pins turned back on. I must say that I am very impressed with the professionalism at ATI as well as their competence.

My Florida distributor has promised to re-imburse me as well, and they are also a well respected company.

At Phone Card Hotline, we are pleased to be working directly with CAT - ATI and will be very agressive in our pricing to become their largest distributor in Alaska and the Midwest.

Integrity Phone Card

2008-06-15T09:40:00.000-04:00

Since I first entered the phone card business more than 10 years ago I advocated no fee phone cards. In my opinion, the only fees that are justified, include the following:
1.) A payphone surcharge to offset the charge levied by pay phone companies when dialing an 800 number from a pay phone.
2.) A nominal admininstrative maintenance fee to cover the cost of maintaining a large database of unused pins. For example, a one time maintenance fee of $.25 would certainly cover the cost of creating pins and maintaining them in the database for a year. Once year after first use, the pins could then expire and be deleted.
3.) A connection fee. Phone card companies encur an expense on all uncompleted calls, but there is no proper way to charge for uncompleted calls. Therefore it is reasonable to apply a connection fee to completed calls sufficient to cover the cost of uncompleted calls. The percentage of incomplete calls can be quite high to countries with poor infrastructure. Therefore connection fee as high as $.25 per call is reasonable to some destinations.

Unfortunately, the industry went in a different direction and began to rely on undisclosed fees as a source of profits. The standard in the industry, especially among the largest and most "reputable" companies is to talk in terms of announced minutes and delivered minutes. In most cases the difference is about 20% on the first call. Over multiple calls the difference between advertised minutes and delivered minutes over multiple calls is so great that the consumer has come to believe that a phone card is good for only one phone call.

This is why, most phone cards sold are $2 phone cards. The market knows all. And the market has learned that any value left after completing the first call will be consumed by fees.

So now, the phone card industry is crying the blues. Sales are shrinking as people find alternative ways to make phone calls. The FTC is finally going after companies that prey on misleading their customers by announcing more minutes but delivering less. To get around the lawsuits major phone card companies now print posters advertising minutes with a disclosure that states the advertised minutes are "promotional" for only about 30 days from the date the poster is printed. Other major companies no longer offer posters at all!

Some of the phone card companies are issuing phone cards that deliver 100% of the announced minutes on the first call.

Still, there are very few phone cards that deliver 100% of the announced minutes over multiple phone calls with no fees whatsover.

I have always offered the no fee phone card, but until recently, the consumer would not buy it. If I advertise and deliver 40 minutes to Philippines over multiple phone calls, it is very difficult for the consumer to differentiate from the all the other companies that advertise 65 minutes but deliver less than 40 minutes over multiple calls.

The Integrity Phone Card is issued by Dollar Phone Enterprises and delivers 100% of the advertised minutes over multiple phone calls. There are no fees on the Integrity international prepaid calling card, except for the pay phone surcharge. When I gave Dollar Phone the required specifications for the Integrity phone card, they thought it was a great idea whose time had come, and were quick to respond. Today, the Integrity no fee phone card is one of the fastest growing phone cards in the marketplace.

Because there are no fees associated with the Integrity Phone Card available only at www.hellocallingcards.com, consumers can start out and try a $2 Integrity phone card. Once they try it and learn that the quality is great, and they get all of the advertised minutes, the consumer moves to the $5 Integrity phone card. These same consumers are not buying the $10 version of the Integrity phone card, because they can use it over and over without losing any minutes to fees or surcharges.

Soon Dollar Phone will issue a $20, and $50 and even a $100 version, and the consumer gains confidence in the Integrity Phone Card brand.

The Integrity phone card delivers 100% of the advertised minutes over multiple calls to Philippines, Ukraine, Russia, India, Dominican Republic and every other country. The traffic reports show that customers are calling home to Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, Central America, South America, Mexico, Canada, the USA, all of the Arab world, Austrailia and the Pacific Islands, and Western Europe.

Philippines phone card
Russia phone card
Ukraine phone card
India phone card
Dominican Republic phone card
Honduras phone card
Mexico phone card
Poland phone card
Guatemala phone card
Jordan phone card
Africa phone card
Asia phone card
Eastern Europe phone card

We are presently negotiating with Allcompass to issue a similar no fee phone card to compliment the Integrity phone card.

Eastern Europeans in Cleveland get more minutes

2008-05-16T18:11:00.000-04:00

More than 20,000 foreign born Americans from Eastern Europe now call the Cleveland area home. We have more than 7,000 foreign born Ukrainians living in the Parma area. Our other large foreign born Eastern Europe populations in Greater Clevland include families from Poland, Russia, Bosnia, Serbia, Albania, Lithuania, Uzbekistan, Romania, Slovakia, as well as some from all of the other Eastern Europe and Western European countries.

There have been many phone cards introduced in the Cleveland area for calling Ukraine, Poland, Russia, and Lithuania but none has been on the market longer than the Eastern Gold phone card. Eastern Gold has just announced more minutes to the following countries:

Country - Minutes on $5 Eastern Gold Phone Card
Latvia - 150
Riga - 155
Romania - 200
Romania cell - 45
Slovakia - 175
Uzbekistan - 75

Remember when using a phone card, always use a local access number if one is available. The Eastern Gold phone card is also available in $2 with 40% of the minutes that the $5 version allows. To obtain an Eastern Gold phone card you can contact any Ukrainian, Russian or Polish market in the Cleveland area or you can purchase one at the official Eastern Gold Website

Use local access number to save big even if its not local to where you live.

2008-05-06T06:52:00.000-04:00

Phone Cards are still a popular way for foreign born Americans to call home. Even with all the fees and hidden surcharges, a phone card will typically give more than twice as many minutes to an international destination as a traditional phone call made from your home or business phone using your long distance company.

Tip #1 - Use the local access number even if it is not local to where you live.

Phone card companies compete intensely to deliver the maximum number of minutes to their target destinations. For example, if the Target market is Filipinos calling home to the Philippines, then every minute counts. There are two types of minutes: The advertised minutes and the delivered minutes. While it would be nice if the advertised minutes were the same as the delivered minutes, they almost never are.

If the phone card issuer delivers 50 minutes when using a local access number, it will typically deliver only 42 minutes when using a toll free 800 number. This differential is true for almost any phone card and for good reason. The reason is that all phone card companies pay between 1.0 cents per minute and 3.0 cents per minute or more for every toll free 800 call coming into their switch. They pay only 1/10 to 1/4 of a cent or less for local access numbers coming into their switch.

The access numbers for the phone card are printed on the back of the phone card. A toll free number starts with 1-800 or 1-888 or 1-877 or 1-866. A local access number starts with a normal area code such as 1-212 for New Your City, or 1-714 for Orange County California, or 1-216 for Cleveland Ohio.

When you dial a local access number to make your phone call, the phone card company is happy to pass along most of the savings, which means more minutes. (as in example of 50 minutes vs. 42 minutes). When calling destinations such as Western Europe where the minutes on a $5 phone card are advertised at 250 minutes or more, the difference between using a local access number or a toll free number can be even more dramatic with a local access number delivering twice the minutes given that would be delivered if the 800 number were used.

Unfortunately, there is simply not enough real estate on the back of a phone card to list a local access number for every local calling area, but in most cases it simply does not matter.

Here is why. Most people today have a cell phone with free nights and weekend minutes after hours, including free long distance minutes to anywhere in the USA. Likewise, most local telephone companies now offer a plan that includes free domestic long distance as part of the package. Because of time zone differences, it is common to make international calls when the cell phone's nights and weekend rates are in effect.

All of this means that if you make frequent international phone calls using a phone card make sure you have a free domestic long distance calling, then dial any local access number printed on the back of your phone card. If you live in Small Town Nebraska, you can dial a local access number beginning with 1-212 for free, and get more minutes from any phone card offering "local access".

Bob Collett sells phone cards online to consumers at http://www.hellocallingcards.com/ and to retail stores at http://www.phonecardhotline.com/

New Phone Card Disclosures a Joke

2008-05-05T08:28:00.001-04:00

There is a new trend in disclosures being presented by the phone card companies. The trend is to give more accurate, but meaningless disclosures. Many companies are now using the technique of dating a poster and disclaimer to expire almost immediately upon release.

The new large type banner appears across the top of the poster for Africa Sky prepaid phone card issued by CTA (Clifton Telecard Alliance). The banner for a poster issued about the first of May, 2008 reads:

"100% advertised minutes until 5/15/08 if used for a single call placed using local access numbers to landlines."

The company accurately and prominently announces all of the fees and advertised minutes in effect at the time of printing, but the disclosure is essentially null and void by the time any consumer actually sees the poster.

It seems that many of the large multi-million dollar phone card companies with national distribution channels have adopted this approach. I first noticed the soon to be expired posters coming from Total Call International.

I received a stack of these CTA Africa Sky posters on May 1, 2008. Assuming that I give these new posters to my distributors as soon as possible, and my distributors take them out to the convenience stores they service, and the retail outlets display the posters someplace in their stores; the earliest that these posters would likely get displayed would be about the 15th of May. The same date that the rates are good until.

Consider that the Africa Sky phone card is sold as a $2 phone card or a $5 phone card. Now check out the actual details of the phone card disclosure:

"All of the following fees will reduce the number of available minutes and the value of the card. Use of a toll free number from a pay phone will incur a $.99 per call fee. Per minute rate will be $0.02 higher for calls placed using toll free access number. Call time for multiple calls is calculated by rounding the last minute up to the closest multiple of 3 and then adding 1 minute.* except that if the call lasts less than 1 minute you will be charged only for a minute.

If available minutes are not all used up on hte first call the following fees will apply:
1.) The multiple call rate will be 40% higher and will apply to all calls (see chart below)**
2.) A fee of $.59 will apply to each call
3.) On midnight after the first call a fee of $.69 will be decuted and then weekly thereafter.

Card expires 3 months after first use. Cards are not returnable or exchangeable and have no cash value. Rates and fees are introductory and are subject to change at any time after 5/15/08. For current rates and fees, please call customer service. Calls to destinations where telecommunications networks are not technologically advanced may result in calls getting cut off or rated incorrectly. If this occurs please call customer service at 1-877-780-xxxx to recieve a refund of minujtes."

Keep in mind that all of the above "Fees and Conditions" are promotional which means that after the 15th they may not be so good! The irony in this is that the CTA brand is one of the best selling phone card brands in the marketplace. Of all the phone cards I sell, this brand is one that has consistently been requested by stores over a period of years. In other words, customers vote with their wallets and ask for the CTA branded phone cards. Why would consumers come back and buy again and again if they were not generally satisfied with the brand?

Here is a partial list of CTA products:
CTA Original Gold
CTA African Dream
CTA Africa Sky
CTA Africa
CTA Africa Night prepaid phone card
CTA Ocho
CPT Perfect
CTA Top Line
CTA Noches de Mexico
Linea Uno
Radio Gold
Golden Dream phone card
Caribbean Hit prepaid phone card
African Line Phone Card
African Beauty no connection fee Calling CArd
CTA Great Tarjeta Telefonica
Java Tarjeta Prpagada Calling Card
Globo Prepaid Phone Card
Gorro Mexico No Connection Fee Prepaid Phone Card

bag tags for less

2008-03-20T09:31:00.000-04:00

I have started a new blog called Bag Tags to talk about bag tag ideas. Bag Tags For Less offers sports bag tags for every sports team, and for every sport from little league to pro... from basketball bag tags to swim team bag tags.

soccer bag tags

2008-02-28T18:46:00.000-05:00

Please check out http://www.bagtagsforless.com/soccer-bag-tags.htm for bag tags for your soccer team or other sports team.

Union Telecard Alliance phone card sale UTA

2007-12-21T00:34:00.001-05:00

All Union Telecard Alliance phone cards are on sale at phone card hotline 440-526-9946 ; this includes Super Quick phone card, Ole! Ohio phone card, Latino Americana phone card, NS Midwest phone card, NS Africa, and Entrix Africa.

These are all active phone cards, but since the Oblio Telecom meltdown, we want to lighten up our inventory. Phone Card Hotline will BEAT any price on the above phone cards or any other UTA product in inventory.

Call 440-526-9946

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2007-12-15T08:28:00.000-05:00

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2007-12-12T20:58:00.000-05:00

Music school lowers price of lessons

2007-12-12T13:53:00.002-05:00

Independence School of Music is pleased to offer 3 months of weekly private music lessons on any instrument for only $59/month.

Phone Card Test - International Calling Card Test

2007-12-07T09:46:00.001-05:00

My last post gave me the idea to use this blog to collect some raw data on calling cards. If you want to participate in this test, next time you purchase a phone card, please keep track of the following, and post it here:

Name of the phone card
Denomination ($2, $5, $10, etc)
800 access number or local access number of the phone card
Issuer of the phone card
Service Provider (in fine print at the bottom)
Destination Country
Destination City
Were you calling land line or cell phone
Dialed country and city code
Where you calling from a home phone, cell phone, or pay phone.
How many minutes were announced?
How many actual minutes did you talk (use a watch)?
Did you consume the entire phone card
Is this the first call made using this phone card?
When finished with the call, how many minutes were left (to get this, attempt a second call and hang up after the available minutes is announced)

The most important items are in bold

Que Pasa Calling Card

2007-12-07T09:38:00.000-05:00

Que Pasa calling card from STI is brand new and a big seller for STI nationally. They released the phone card without posters and consumers still bought the card in large numbers. Now that the posters have been printed, we are seeing a lot of interest in the new STI Que Pasa.

New phone cards from the big national companies such as STI, always deliver great minutes as soon as they are released. I am curious to learn from people who use the card, how many minutes you actually get when you place a call. Next time you make a call, keep track of the announced minutes for your destination, and the actual minutes of conversation that you got on the initial call. As soon as you hang up, attempt to make a second call, and see how many minutes are announced. (Hang up after the announcment to avoid completing the second call).

Let me know the results.

The $2 phone card - two dollar phone card - less fees

2007-12-07T09:16:00.001-05:00

Consider this... Most phone card companies... correction: Every phone card company makes their money on the back end fees, and surcharges tacked on to every phone card. Finally competitive pressures, together with some belated scrutiny by a few state attorney general offices in Florida and elsewhere are getting the phone cards to make some adjustments.

However, the fees are not going away, as much as they are being tacked onto the back of the phone card. So if a $5 phone card announces 65 minutes to Philippines, there is a good chance that you will get 65 minutes if you make one continuous call. As soon as you hang up, the fees are tacked on. These fees can consume 30% or more of the original value of the phone card.

Be assured that fees on phone cards is not the practice of one or two phone card companies but the practice of EVERY phone card company.

One solution to the problem is for the consumer is to purchase lower denomination phone cards. A few years ago, the $10 phone card was very popular, and $20 phone cards were common. Over time, consumers learned that the higher denomination cards gave the card issuers more opportunity to collect fees.

So the $10 and $20 phone cards have disapeared from the market.

Consumers who purchase $2 phone cards, will often find that using all of the available minutes on one call is more practicle than it is on a $5 phone card. So if you purchase a $2 phone (two dollar phone card) and use it up on one call, you will not see the disconnect fee, and the over night fee that is normally associated with a $5 phone card.

Hellocallingcards.com has begun adding the $2 phone card to the portfolio of calling cards available for online purchase. It may be better value to purchase 5 of the $2 phone cards, rather than 2 of the $5 phone cards. You can use one $2 phone card each day. If you opened a $5 phone card by making a phone call, there would usually be no time left on the card after a few days because of fees.

New International Calling Cards

2007-12-01T10:01:00.000-05:00

The big phone card companies are issueing phone cards at a dizzy pace. Of course this is discouraging. The reason phone card companies continue to introduce new international calling cards every week, is because their customers know that the phone cards that were created several months ago are no longer delivering the minutes as advertised.

I deal with many of the major phone card companies including Union Telecard (UTA, IDT), Clifton Telecard (CTA, ITG), Cristel Telecom, Oblio Telecom, Total Call, Exchange (Radiant, Reliable, INTC), STI, STX, and many other phone card issuers. Every one of them introduces phone cards which are very attractive for a number of months, and then become undesirable in terms of delivered minutes. Very few of their phone cards remain competitive for more than one year.

The good news for the consumer, is that these phone card companies introduce new phone cards as loss leaders to attract the consumer for country specific calling. If the consumer tries the new cards that advertise for a specific country, then the consumer will generally be very happy with the result.

Today, the best new phone cards for calling Africa are African King phone card from STI. For calling Latin America, try Que Pasa phone card from STI. For Philippines try Seven Seas (7 Seas) from Cristel. Cristel also has revamped their USA 1 phone card to be now good for calling USA, Mexico, and many international destinations. Clifton Telecard Alliance (CTA)has several new phone cards including Perfect phone card which is a good Philippines calling card also good for many international calling card destinatons. CTA has also introduced Rubi, and Africa Beast.

Best New STI phone cards

2007-11-30T10:32:00.000-05:00

STI has reported to me that their best selling new phone cards are STI African King phone card, STI Muchacho phone card, and STI Que Pasa phone card. These new phone cards are available for retail purchase at www.hellocallingcards.com and for wholesale purchase at www.phonecardhotline.com.

Que Pasa targets itself as a Mexico calling card and a Central America calling card. African King is an African calling card. These new phone cards deliver all of the advertised minutes on a single call.

sheet music

2007-11-15T19:40:00.000-05:00

I have opened an ebay store to sell music books. Please visit my store. Independence-sheet-music-books . The music book store sells music books for teachers, students and musicians.

Seven Seas Phone Card - Philippines calling card

2007-11-12T23:40:00.001-05:00

Cristel Telecom has introduced a new phone card called Seven Seas phone card. Cristel company representative reports that Seven Seas phone card is good for all of Asia and especially a good Philippines calling card.

Made In Africa phone card

2007-11-11T21:44:00.000-05:00

Made in Africa is a screaming deal. The carrier has told me that the Made in Africa phone card will give the advertised minutes for about two months from November 2007. People are standing in line to buy this phone card. If you want to call Africa this is one to try.

New Phone Cards from STI

2007-11-11T21:36:00.000-05:00

STI has issued or revamped a number of phone cards. The STI Card also known as STI 800 phone card is now designated as the STI flagship product. STI Card is good for calling India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Vietnam, Poland, Kenya, Sudan, Jamaica and a number of other countries. STI Card give all of the minutes advertised on a single call.

Muchacho phone card from STI is exclusively for calling Mexico. You can call most cities in Mexico for 500 minutes. Mexico city and triange give 519 minutes, and 23 minutes to Mexico Celluar.

The other hot phone cards today for STI include African King which is now their best phone card for Africa, and STI Pollo Loco and STI Te Quiero Mexico, which are the two best STI cards for Latin America.

Ultra Africa phone card - GCD

2007-11-11T21:24:00.000-05:00

The Ultra phone card features Ghana, Nigeria and Somalia. The Ultra Africa is a long term calling card that should have good quality and good minutes for about four months, until around March of 2007.

New phone cards

2007-11-02T17:42:00.000-04:00

The companies creating phone cards are going crazy. I am going to guess that there are at least 100 new phone cards to hit the street every week. I would really like to create a comprehensive list of every phone card as soon as it becomes available. If you are a distrbutor or an issuer, send me your list. Here are a few new phone cards that I have not published previously. If you want to see the phone card posters, let me know and I will post them online.

All of the phone card posters below are from calling card companies that have asked me to sell these calling cards.

Sueno Dorado Mexico - CTA
Rubi - CPT Telecom
Africa Beast - CTA
AFrica Sky - CTA
Mabuhay Hawaii - Pactifi Telecard & Wireless
Oblio Tel Middle East - Africa
Yada Yada Yada - Oblio Telecom
El Tiburon phone card - Total Call
New Jackpot - DSA - Union Telecard
IDT Platinum Africa - Union Telecard
Royal Middle East - NTI (I dont know who these guys are)
Africa Kingdom

music lessons & music instruction articles

2007-10-11T00:08:00.000-04:00

Independence Music is a great place for music lessons in Cleveland Ohio. Independence School of Music has the lowest prices for 9 month rentals on high quality school band and school orchestra musical instrument rentals. http://independendencemusicschool.com/articles.htm - featuring piano lessons, guitar lessons, snare drum lessons & violine lessons are the four most popular musical instruments to learn. Many students also study voice, flute, saxophone, clarinet, trumpet and trombone.

FTC preparing lawsuit against IDT

2007-10-04T18:26:00.000-04:00

notice: the following article was sent to clients of commlawgroup.com - and is not original content authored by calling-card-review.blogspot.com

Subject: Fwd: CLIENT ADVISORY - Prepaid Services Clients
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Jonathan S. Marashlian" <jsm@commlawgroup.com>Date: September 28, 2007 2:26:50 PM EDTTo: <mail@commlawgroup.com>Subject: CLIENT ADVISORY - Prepaid Services Clients
To Firm Prepaid Services Clients:

Our office recently learned that the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) is preparing to file a lawsuit against IDT Telecom (“IDT”) in federal court. We believe the lawsuit will allege that IDT engaged in deceptive practices in connection with the company’s marketing and advertising of prepaid calling cards. Details of the lawsuit have not been made public yet, but we expect the complaint to be filed in federal court shortly. Our office is closely monitoring this proceeding and will advise clients once details are publicly available.

The anticipated FTC lawsuit comes on the heels of pending Congressional legislation (HR 3402) that would regulate marketing and other prepaid industry practices, investigations by the Attorney General of the State of Florida, an IDT lawsuit against several of its competitors, and a variety of class action lawsuits in several states. Our office recently published an article in The Prepaid Press detailing the history of these proceedings, and the possible effect they have on the future of the industry. Clients are invited to read this article at: http://www.prepaid-press.com/news_detail.php?t=paper&id=1919.

In addition, our office has prepared the attached summary of the existing state laws and regulations affecting a prepaid calling card service provider’s advertising and disclosure requirements. This document is intended to provide a brief overview of the existing state laws and regulations governing the marketing and other business practices of prepaid calling card service providers operating in the respective states.
If you would like to receive further updates regarding the FTC lawsuit, have further questions about the applicability of the list of state statutes/regulations to your company, or require assistance with related matters, please contact Jonathan Marashlian at 703-714-1313 or by e-mail: jsm@commlawgroup.com.

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2007-10-04T18:10:00.000-04:00

A new blog for voip termination

2007-10-03T09:12:00.000-04:00

voip-routes.blogspot.com

http://voip-routes.blogspot.com

indepenendence School of Music

2007-09-26T13:35:00.001-04:00

Independence School of Music http://independencemusicschool.com/ offers lessons, school instrument rental, musical instrument repair, music accesories and music books. Independence School of music is centrally located in Independence Ohio to serve Independence Ohio, Brecksville, Broadview Heights, Parma, Seven Hills, Cuyahoga Heights, Valley View, Bedford, Maple Heights, Walton Hills, Brooklyn Heights, and the surrounding commuities.

Phone cards with local access numbers

2007-09-21T11:31:00.000-04:00

Send me your phone card image, front and back, and also a poster, and we will publish it here. I am especially interested in any phone cards with local access numbers, as our readers come here to find local access numbers that are available in their home area. Let me know the top 3 to 5 countries that your phone card is best for and why. Let me know any special features, and the advertised, announced, and delivered minutes to your top 3 - 5 destinations. Let me know how your phone card performs over a single call and over multiple calls in terms of announced and delivered minutes. It is best if you itemize all of the fees. Let me know who makes the phone card, the names of the priciple owners of your phone card company, the network service provider, when it was first issued, where the phone card is available, the wholesale phone card discounts if applicable, and the online website name for retail phone card customers. Please use your real name, no anonomous posters will be accomodated. Honesty is the best policy. Placing your new calling card information here will give it national exposure of the best kind.

groove phone card local access numbers

2007-09-21T11:25:00.000-04:00

Here is the back of the Groove phone card showing local access numbers, groove calling card disclaimers, and other information for phone card users.

Africa Plus Phone Card Local Access Numbers

2007-09-20T12:46:00.000-04:00

Africa Plus Phone Card Local Access Numbers
Here is the actual card back for the Africa + Plus phone card. The local access numbers are visible when you click on the image. All phone cards give more actual minutes when you use one of the local access numbers.

We have also included the scan of the poster for this Africa Plus.

method music books

2007-09-18T07:29:00.000-04:00

Method Music Books - Independence School of Music the online store for Independence School of Music has just added more than 50,000 Hal Leonard titles of our best selling print music books including popular music books as well as method music books. Sheet Music and books are now being shipped all over the world but any domestic purchase that includes two or more print books shipped anywhere in the USA for only $1.99. Larger purchases ship free. Aside from hundreds of thousands of music book titles, customers can also purchase their music accessories such as Rico reeds, Vic Furth drum sticks, Curt Mangen guitar strings, mouthpieces, and all music store accesories at a discount and get the same free shipping. All items are discounted by a minimum of 10%. Method Music Books not only ships anywhere in the world, but also has a growing portfolio of international print music.

Local Access Numbers for phone cards - international calling cards

2007-09-16T11:20:00.001-04:00

Any company who issues phone cards for international calling to places like Philippines, India, Russia, and all over the world has three basic cost components. One of these cost is the cost of the incoming leg of the phone call. This incoming portion of the call is provided by an 800 number or a local access number or perhaps less commonly via voip access directly from someones' desktop computer.

The next component of the call, thinking of it sequentially is the switching cost itself. The switch is the computer or router or telephone system that authenticates the caller by using a pin number. It also does the accounting to debit the stored value of the pin. This is accomplished with an expensive telephone switching system, the cost of which is spread out over millions of phone calls. Alternatively the company will use a virtual switch and pay for it by paying a fraction of a cent ($.002) for example for each minute that terminates through the system.

The third component of a call is the terminating portion of the calling card minute. The phone card issuer already has a legacy network in the case of the telecom giants such as MCI, or ATT or Sprint. Thousands of smaller companies and most of the calling card companies use voip termination that is purchased from a network of thousands of small carriers operating in each country and city around the world. These terminating voip minutes vary in qualtity based upon the internet connection that the carrier uses, the telecommunications factility that the carrier used to access the local telephone network in the terminating country, the technology behind the physical equipment being used, and the expertise of the carrier.

There are of course other costs associated with the calling card business, but these three are the essential elements of the single completed or incompleted calls. Incidently, the cost is almost the same for an incompleted call as it is for a completed call.

The point of this article is to discuss the cost savings when using a local access number. Every telephone company must buy 800 access from a carrier, and all of the carriers must use and pay for some portion of the public network that keeps track of 800 numbers. Thus far there is no way around this. But local access numbers are a bit different. Since there is typically no cost accrued to the incoming owner of a phone line when a call comes in (unless the line is a cellular phone) , the calling card company does not incurs only a very small cost (compared to 800 number access) when the caller uses a local access number.

The differential between the cost of 800 number access verses local access numbers is typically about one cent to one and one half cents per minute. This may not sound like much, but one cent a minute can be 1/3 to 1/2 of the total cost of an international phone call that is using voip termination to a developed country.

This all translates to savings to the consumer because calling card companies work on only a few percentage points of profit, and will typically pass on savings to the consumer in the name of more delivered minutes. Unfortunately, most phone cards will announce the same minutes whether the calling is using 800 access or local access. Notwithstanding this fact, the switches are usually programmed to deliver more minutes when the caller is using a local access number.

Bookmark this blog because I am going to start posting local access numbers for all of the popular national branded phone cards. Since there are typically hundreds of local access numbers for every phone card, this translates into hundreds of thousands of available local access phone numbers. Phone card companies can also email me or post the backs of their phone card images here. Make sure to include details about the phone card such as the name of the phone card, the name of the issuer, and what countries the phone card is good for.

Home of the $2 phone card

2007-09-14T09:40:00.000-04:00

I have found very few phone card websites that sell the $2.00 phone card even though many of the best selling phone cards are issued in the $2 denomination. There are a few reasons why websites seldom offer the $2 phone card. One reason is that the credit card merchant processors charge about $.50 per transaction. So as soon as an international long distance customer were to buy a low cost $2 phone card, 25% of the sale price would be eaten up in credit card fees. Most online calling card companies would loose money!

The other reason why we dont see too many online websites offering $2 or $3 phone cards is that it takes the same amount of time to enter in a $2 PIN as it does to enter a $5 or a $10 calling card PIN for an online purchase. The cost of having someone manually enter a PIN is about $.05 per PIN.

The advantage of the $2 phone card is that connection fees or disconnect fees, taxes, or whatever the phone card issuer is calling the hidden charges; tend to eat up the remainder of the phone card after the first call. So if the investment is only $2., then you can make one call and use up the minutes more easily. Usually the $2 phone card represents the best overall value.

I decided to add some of the $2 phone cards to http://www.hellocallingcards.com/ .

We are starting with Eastern Gold $2 phone card. Eastern gold is excellent for calling Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, USA, Canada, France, Germany and all of western europe and eastern europe.

African Beauty $2 phone card is issued by Clifton Telecard Alliance, CTA. African Beaty phone card is good for calling home to all of Africa.

TCI Gold $2 phone card is one of the longest and best selling phone card for calling Egypt.

Since Hello Calling Cards does not charge a surcharge for orders $10 or more, the $2 phone card is may be a great deal for you, especially if you like to make short calls.

You can see the other countries that these phone cards are good for, by going to http://www.phonecardhotline.com/ and going to the poster page.