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ronin1
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| Joined: | Saturday January 21st, 2006 |
| Location: | S.F. Bay Area, California USA |
| Posts: | 622 |
| Visits: | 7 | | Currently: | married |
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Posted: Saturday February 4th, 2006 11:42 am |
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If you are not a fan of phone cards now, wait until you bring your RW bride home. On the regular long distance rates from domestic carriers, you will be throwing your money away, especially when your RW starts to get homesick. Check into phone card rates for where your Fiance or Wife comes from. Rates can vary, but you can expect to pay between 1 to 8 cents/min, (YMMV).
Ronin
P.S. Get your phone cards soon. It will help keep you safe and sane. Don't go bonkers over your RW calling her friends .Last edited on Friday September 29th, 2006 06:04 am by ronin1
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dwfunk
Member
| Joined: | Tuesday March 21st, 2006 |
| Location: | Houston, Texas USA |
| Posts: | 109 |
| Visits: | 3 | | Currently: | married |
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Posted: Friday April 14th, 2006 04:30 am |
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Calling cards, google them and you will be overwhelmed. I've asked in "other" areas what were the good cards and basically got the google answer. So from my current experience, this is what I've encountered:
All of this discussion relates to calling cards to Moscow.
After being overwhelmed by all the massive numbers of cards out there, I decided that I wanted "pinless" dialing, and no service fees. Some have monthly and weekly service fees and that will eat at your balance. Also, having been in the telecommunications business for over 14 years, I knew the .98 cents, yup, less than a penny a minute, cards were just asking for trouble.
The first card I purchased was Bizon from phonecards.waytorussia.net. 1.2 cents per minute if you call a non 1-800 number. At the time the only non 1-800 number was in California. Using my cell phone only cost airtime, LD was no charge. However, I've dropped Bizon. The connection was consistently poor. Lots of echo, the other end had problems hearing me, and on my end I kept hearing a "chopped" conversation.
I then moved up to a Champion calling card also sold by phonecards.waytorussia.net. The Champion card is 2.0 cents per minute to Moscow, and it has a long list of local calling numbers, and I found one for the north end of Houston. Now I could call from my office as well as by my cell phone.
phonecards.waytorussia.net have an interface that allows you to register the phone number of up to 10 phones that you can call from and the pin is applied automatically. They also have an interface that allows you to transfer balances from one card to another, so when I stopped using the Bizon card, I did not loose the balance still left on it. There is a 50cent charge to transfer.
I currently use the Champion calling card and I get consistently clear, and loud connections. If you already do not have a good card and a good provider that you are happy with, I highly recommend the Champion calling card, and phonecards.waytorussia.net.
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David & Natalia
Republic of Texas/Moscow, Russia
http://www.davidandnataliafunk.org/
http://www.russianwomanwiki.net/
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ielocal
Member
| Joined: | Wednesday February 22nd, 2006 |
| Location: | California USA |
| Posts: | 2 |
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Posted: Wednesday April 19th, 2006 03:30 am |
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One thing that i may add to this discussion if you are considering a visa in the future, is to also consider a plan that produces a monthly statement or summary of the calls made. During my time "romancing" my (now) wife, we didn't write a lot of letters. We maintained long and frequent telephone calls (like every other day). So, when it came time to prove the long term (and on-going) relationship for the visa, the phone bills were very helpful.
We were using WDT (mywdt.com). It cost a little more but I also had better service than any of the other phone cards that I had tried.
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ronin1
Administrator
| Joined: | Saturday January 21st, 2006 |
| Location: | S.F. Bay Area, California USA |
| Posts: | 622 |
| Visits: | 7 | | Currently: | married |
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Posted: Sunday June 4th, 2006 05:47 pm |
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A little more on phone cards...
Cards plan rates can vary widely per very short destination differences. Rates to the Moscow are often cheap, however connections to the nearby outlying areas can be twice as much. This is due to the structure of these card services. The service may have a direct feed (internet) to Moscow (costs nearly nothing). Then they distribute the call through the local Moscow phone companies (again costs nearly nothing). When a connection is to an outlying area, the service has to pay considerably more since it is then being charged Russian non-local phone rates as well.
Connection quality is a great factor. Don't load up on card credits sight-unseen. Buy the lowest demonination card available and give it a through test. Each card and plan has a statistical quality connection levels. It can vary from hour-to-hour and location of the connection. If you're romancing a RW it will not bode well if your connections drops often; echos like crazy; breaks up or is a "I can hear you but you can't hear me" call. If this occurs too often, buy a higher quality (usually more expensive) card or plan until you are statisfied with the average connection quality.
If you want to save money, buy into one of the lower cost cards. Call customer service and ask what times are best to call the destination that you are interested in. Then setup a matching schedule with your RW. This will give you the most bang for the buck. Since connection quality is associated with the available internet bandwidth (all services monitor this closely), the service knows when their utilization is low for any given destination. By knowing and taking advantage of this, you can get the best connections at the lowest rate.
Ronin
Last edited on Sunday June 4th, 2006 05:49 pm by ronin1
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HABurke
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| Joined: | Friday September 8th, 2006 |
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| Posts: | 3 |
| Visits: | | | Currently: | learning about RW |
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Posted: Friday September 8th, 2006 02:20 pm |
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I have just begun using SKYPE to talk with my Russian friend in Chelyabinsk. If the RW has a computer, this is a great way to communicate. SKYPE is similar to an instant messenger chat program, but with the added feature of voice over the net. No charges for the basic service and the connections have been crystal clear. I use a Mac so I did not even have to buy a headset. I highly recommend this.
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