Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Beware! 99-Cent Phone Cards

99 cents for 99 minutes sounds great.  Calling Japan for 5.9 cents a minute is pretty good, too.  Even if the price might go up a little without notice, it wouldn't shoot up sky high.  That was my thought.

A friend of mine sent me a card.  In the meantime, I bought five cards.  It doesn't work.  The local number the company claims for my number  is not the same area code as mine.  The friend sent three cards for her mother out of state.  It doesn't work.

Does the company want to argue about the concept of what "local numbers" are?  Consumers are not all linguists.  The ads says "Call anywehre" but please include "But not from anywhere." 
I guess that is how they make money.  Is it ethical? 

No!

2 comments:

kristieinbc said...

I am sorry you got cheated. Could you let someone like the Better Business Bureau know about these cards?

keiko amano said...

Kristie,

Thank you. I think someone must have reported because when I went to buy a few phone cards at my local dollar tree, the cashier could not process my transaction and said she could not sell the card anymore, and she needed to retrieve all the cards from the store. Then I went to one of 99 cent store in nearby town, they didn't have it. At the time, I was unaware of the problem, but now I think back, someone must have reported. I don't know what is happening now. But in the past, there were other gimmicks. Right now I have Magic Jack and it works, but that has caused me technical/people related problems. I say to people I use it for calling out only, but they ignore and call me there and claim they have called. And it takes long to boot up just to make a phone call. The phone card I buy from Walmart is not cheap, but I guess that's the only alternative for me.In the meantime, I make less and less phone calls.