Call Other Countries for as Low as $0.02 A Minute with Pennytalk

Calling to other countries can become expensive regardless if you use a home or cell phone. On a quest to find a phone card that allows calling to Mexico at a reasonable rate, I came across the PennyTalk Global Calling Card. PennyTalk allows you to call anywhere from France, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Japan and more for less than $0.10 a minute. You must have a touch tone phone for the phone card to work.

There is currently a $0.49 connection fee per call placed and a $0.99 monthly fee. Granted if the phone card is completely used before a month is up, there is no charge. If calling from a payphone there is a $0.90 surcharge fee. The phone card is rechargeable and there's no contract or commitment. The card can be brought online at their website or by calling 1-888-624-9714. The convenience store 7-11 allows the card to be brought in the amounts of $5/$10/$25. Plus whatever the local state tax is.

Using the phone card is simple. Dial the 1-800 number on the back and wait for the greeting. There's also a 1-800 number in Espanol. When prompted, enter the amount number and pin. Next is to dial the phone number and wait to hear how many minutes you have. All minutes are rounded up to the next full minute.

Pennytalk claimed to have over 4 hours of talk time to a landline phone in Mexico. The first time using the phone card the result was amazing! It was a good connection and lasted for more than 3 hours. And after hanging up there was still a balance left on the phone card. Now the next time was a different story. Using a new PennyTalk phone card and the same phone, the conversation would become broken up. The other person on the line could hear but hearing the other person became at times difficult. Sometimes only half of the word could be heard and it sounded as if the call had been lost. Assuming that's what had happened, the phone was hung up and tried again.

There will be another charge for calling the same number around the same time of $0.49 even if the phone connection having problems isn't your fault. Before hanging up and re dialing, wait about 5-10 seconds to see if the phone connection is okay. This has happened more than once. It will sound dead but then come back again. This has become frustrating to continually be interrupted. Not to mention repeating over and over will result in using more minutes to make up for the loss connection time.

The phone rates are good, being able to buy it not only online but in a 7-11 makes it convenient. But until the poor phone connection on many calls is fixed, I'll be continuing with other phone cards. To view PennyTalk's rates and other information, log onto: http://www.pennytalk.com