In a recent development the major VoIP service provider known for its international calling service over home phone plan has entered the international calling cards business. This new venture was announced on Vonage’s blog on 25th of October and it is named Vonage Digital Calling Card. We have been keeping an eye on customer reaction and it seems no one understands why Vonage is embracing a business model from previous decade. We are sure the economist working for Vonage, wait let us rephrase that — We are sure the people working for Vonage have thought through this and found this to be a good candidate to augment their already semi successful calling service.
The details of calling card business
This product enjoys the benefits of the Vonage brand name. However, you do not have to be a user of their existing services to get a calling card. You can sign up for the digital calling card (that’s the name of their new venture) and buy your card right away.
In order to start using your card, you need to sign up and register one phone number with their system. You can register any number but you can only register one phone number at this time. You will get a call from them to verify that you own that number and then you can start making calls.
Call rates are not that bad either for most of the destinations. However, they are not the cheapes in the industry either. We tried their digital calling card and we found that the call quality is pretty good. If you are looking for pricing, then here is a brief summary ofVonage calling card rates to a few of the destinations:
India: 2.4 cents per minute
Mexico: 4.6 cents per minute (2.1 cents per minute for Guadalajara, Mexico city, and Monterrey)
United Kingdom: 1.4 cents per minute landlines and 10.8 cents per minute for cell phones.
You can find a comprehensive list at their digital calling card website.
Bonus credit on every recharge
Call it stupid or call it smart, Vonage gives you a bonus when you make a purchase of $15 or $25. The bonus for $15 purchase is $5 and for $25 purchase it is $10. This means for every $15 spent you will get $20 worth of talk time and for every $25 spent you will get $35 worth of talk time. There is no time limit as to how long is this active, it seems this is an ongoing offer.
It seems the person who wanted to make this decision said “This is what we gonna do. We will keep our prices high but we will award bonus credit to our users for making a purchase in the amount of $15 or $25. To make the matters interesting, we will advertise the rates based on the final price that a user gets when he purchases $25 worth of credit from us.” See the rates advertised by them on their website:
Yes, the last part is where you see the corporate evil in their business practice. We hate this practice and if Vonage is listening to us they should know that this strategy did not help Airtel call home. They kept advertising cheaper rates than they were actually offering and consequently failed to keep their lights on. However, we want you to understand the following:
The highlighted prices are conditional. You will only get those prices when you purchase $25 worth of credit.
Vonage calling card comes with an inactivity fee
Although Vonage calling card website boldly highlights that there are no hidden fees or gimmicks, they have a fine print where they detail the inactivity fee. If you look at this image from Vonage digital calling card website you will see that they claim nice things while they do not practice what they claim.
The inactivity fee is a $2 penalty if you do not use your credit for 6 months. That is likely not going to happen but it does not make sense to advertise that there are no hidden fees.
The customer reaction to the calling card launch
We were reading some posts on Internet and it seems people are having fun with the launch of new product that Vonage has kept low-profile for now. Here are some of the best comments we could salvage from Internet:
By iShakher on gigaom blog
ahh, was so excited to see this service.But , only one registered phone ?! Comm’n now Vonage . Can’t believe they restricted a simple & yet most common feature of a calling card.Who wants 4 calling cards to be used in a family of four. Deal breaker for me, right there
This is not bad right? This comment proves that there is a customer base that will appreciate this service. However, read this next comment by James on the same post:
2001 called, wants its VoIP products back.
That is hilarious mostly because it tells the bitter truth.
Final Words on Vonage Calling Card Service
Let us divide into pros and cons. The pros of this service could be listed as:
- Backed by Vonage network
- Online account management compared to traditional calling cards
- Auto recharge so that you never run out of balance
- No need to run to a store to buy next calling card
- No connection fee per call
The cons on the other hand would be listed as
- Backed by Vonage network
- Expensive than other calling cards
- No additional discount for existing Vonage users
thank you for posting international calling cards information