Credit Card registration for Villa phones.

[Nostromo]

We knew that we would be making quite a few local, long distance US and (occasionally) international phone calls. I had tried phone cards in the UK to see if my elderly in-laws would be able to use them and found that they had considerable difficulty in getting the number sequence right. Therefore, I decided to use the facility to register my Credit Card and open a temporary account for the duration that we were in the villa to make all calls. This meant that we could use the phone after keying-in a shorter code (than the phonecard) whenever we made non-local calls (local calls were still free). It worked very well and everyone found it convenient. Of course, it was a bit more expensive than using a phonecard, but not as much as I thought it would be. Moreover, there was a facility to cancel the CC account if we had to leave earlier than expected.

Has anyone tried doing this from the villa and if so, what are your impressions?

[chrissb]

Hi Nostromo
I used to have this set up or a very similar one, called home dialing in my villa which was very easy to set up and use. However a lot of my guests complained about how expensive it was when they saw their credit card bills. Since then I have taken advantage of a different telephone package which will provide free local, national and international telephone calls for the guest and this is going down really well with guests who love the idea.[msnsmile2]

[tezz7628]

have used both phone cards and accounts a lot in us

both were the same till last year

the phone card is now chargable in a payphone were it wasnt before

if your talking just about villa use can you not programme the keys on the phone to accept the access and account no,s

at the villa this time i had to pay a starting fee before i could use my cards and accounts i didn't before

my account gave me access back to uk for 8c per min last oct i'd been interested if anybody could better that!

you could also keep an eye on it because the account was linked to the internet

[Nostromo]

Since we had 2 Tri-band mobile phones in the party, we did not bother with pay phones. But as for the cost of using a CC account, you are right in that it was a bit more expensive than phonecards, but not by much. The convenience more tham made up for it.

[tezz7628]

can i just clarify

im not talking about a phone call were you ring the tel no and ask them to charge it to your credit card, i mean something like planet talk account we have in uk

which IMHO (that means in my humble opinion doesn't it?) is certainly cheaper than a credit card or a phone card, and certainly cheaper than a mobile.

8c per min to uk

how much did it cost you on the credit card or phone card?

[ujpest doza]

I did it, but won't do it again. Got stung for £90 worth of phone calls.
Too easy to forget how long you are on the phone, and the charges per minute are extortion. Will buy a phone card in future.

[floridadreamvilla.co.uk]

We tell all our guests never to use credit card facilities on a phone and to use phonecards etc etc as they are the best value by far.

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by ujpest doza
I did it, but won't do it again. Got stung for £90 worth of phone calls.
Too easy to forget how long you are on the phone, and the charges per minute are extortion. Will buy a phone card in future.

[/quote]

[Nostromo]

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by tezz7628
can i just clarify

8c per min to uk

how much did it cost you on the credit card or phone card?
[/quote]

Sorry for not replying earlier, but I had to ask for an itemised bill and work it all out.

Local(ish) calls to Orlando's 407 numbers were very cheap - a few cents for each call lasting 5 to 15 mins. This made up the bulk of the phone calls.

UK calls were charged at just under 13c (about 7p?) per minute irrespective of the time of the day.

Strangely, the only long distance phone call within the US we made (to Danville, Illinois) was charged at 24c a minute. This was in the early evening - probably around 4pm.

[E. Cosgrove]

WE always use a BT chargecard and charge it to our home phone, because we are not using the phone at home whilst we are away we notice very little difference in our quarterly phone bill[msnsmile2]
We do leave the kids behind but they don't tend to run up big bills as like most kids thses days they seem to have lost the art of conversation and text instead!![msnsmile2]
Liz

[hamish]

We set up a fixed term, fixed usage account with at+t wireless, for $19.95.
This was great, but if you run over even by a few cents, you go in to another $19.95.