Free Calls?

[dodgey memory]

I've noticed that many of the villas have free local/national calls. Are there any restrictions on this, like only if you phone between midnight and 6 am! Sounds almost too good to be true. Teresa

[Nostromo]

The villa we stayed in Orange Tree offered free local calls on Clermont's 352 code but calls to Orlando's 407 code and elsewhere were charged. I thought that was the norm everywhere.

[caroline]

We have free local/long distance and International calls at our villa. It is a special package that villa owners can pay for which means that guests can phone over 100 countries as well as long distance and locally, completely free of charge 24/7 you can even call mobiles.
There are quite a few villas now offering this service to guests.

[Nostromo]

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by caroline
We have free local/long distance and International calls at our villa. It is a special package that villa owners can pay for which means that guests can phone over 100 countries as well as long distance and locally, completely free of charge 24/7 you can even call mobiles.
There are quite a few villas now offering this service to guests.
[/quote]

Wow! That's very generous. But will it work out for the owners? I mean, even long distance calls within the USA can be quite expensive sometimes and given the sort of licence on offer, people might misuse it and call all and sundry.

[Carla]

It's a brilliant service, for a flat monthly fee, that doesn't vary, no matter where the guests or owners call to. That's one of the reasons why we can offer it Nostromo, because we know exactly what it will cost us each month. Let's face it guests don't go to Florida to sit on the phone, but with this service when they need to make a local, long distance or international call they can do so, at any time of day or night, without worrying.

I particularly like it because you can also call mobile/cell phones, and when I am staying in my home, that is just about the only way that I can get hold of my kids because they are hardly ever in to answer the landline!!! It used to cost me a fortune in Phone Cards, and now I don't even have to give it a thought.[msnsmile2][msnsmile2]

[markandpam]

I think its a great idea, certainly something to attract someone to your villa. The cost is $35 a month and apparently its easy to set up. I just have to get around to doing it

Pam.

[lgordon6041]

It is very easy to set up. We enquired about it and it was up an running within a few days. Like Carla said, people don't go to Florida to sit on a phone but if the facility is there it will get used. The guests that have been in since the service was introduced loved it and certainly utilised its flexibility!
Also a good selling feature in my opinion.

[Snapper]

Where I think it really scores, as well as offering a guest free calls to almost anywhere in the world, is that it's easy to use. Whoever is in the villa just picks up the phone and dials. Done. Simple.

Some of the other rental phone packages require you to first dial a voice-prompted operator and key in some credit card details. I think that's a big turn-off for a guest as it's lots of faff and hassle that you just don't want when on holiday.

Calling cards are the other way to go, and to be honest you can probably provide a good phone service for a bit less than the free calls package if you wanted to; but again, I see this as somewhat of a faff for a guest when they have to start working out a long string of numbers to dial.

[Nostromo]

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by markandpam
I think its a great idea, certainly something to attract someone to your villa. The cost is $35 a month and apparently its easy to set up. I just have to get around to doing it

Pam.
[/quote]

Well, it will certainly attract us. None of us 'sit' on the phone, but the handy convenience of being able to make calls when needed without constantly reminding oneself of the spiralling bill is a relief.

[Ray&Sarah]

We offer it to our guests too, we used to use phone cards all the time which got quite costly and it was a pain keep having to enter the numbers on the cards into the phone. Much simpler with the package we now have and good to offer to the guests.[msnsmile2]