Phone cards

[floridageoff]

We bought a phone card to use at a rental villa on Ridgewood Lakes this year (we were staying there whilst buying our villa). We were unable to use it until speaking to the operator and giving her our Credit Card number. We had no intention of putting the calls on our credit card but needed to do this in order to make outgoing calls. However, every time we used the phone card the phone company charged us 75 cents per call for the privilege! This has never happened before as we have just phoned the freephone number on the phone card, entered the access code followed by the number you want to ring. Has there been a change in the phone company rules recently or were we just unlucky?

[fiona]

This was a new system last year which was installed without our knowledge by our old MC. We couldn't even call a free number without giving the credit card number. We had it removed immediately the next day and got the villa set up with all free calls - international included - that we (the owners pay a fixed fee for. As we were in the process of moving premises for our business and the contracts had not been exchanged before our hols we needed to make tons of international calls.

[blott]

It depends on the phone company Floridageoff which has been set up for each individual home. All vacation home phones have call blocking, most with local free numbers and with ours you can use a calling card but don't need your credit card (best value we've found is 7 Eleven).

As has been said already, beware of giving your credit card before being able to make calls.

[zerotone]

We bought a $10 phone card last week at Walgreens used it at public payphones and in villa, had over 6 hrs call time in total, (mixture of local and uk calls)

Jane