Happy Holidays from all of us at Phone Card Buyer’s Guide!

And of course it was my duty to provide with them the information for the best phone card companies for calling Italy.

So far I’ve been recommending to reliable phone card companies for the past few months and for good reason. The first company has the best rates for calling a land line in Italy at 1.2¢ per minute with absolutely no fees.

Click here for more information from Speedy Pin

Speedy Pin sells a lot of phone cards to call Italy but their Clear Connections phone card has the lowest rates at 1.2¢ per minute. Another good thing about Speedy Pin is that they’re the only phone card company that offers a 100% guarantee.

But the only problem with this phone card is if you use it to call a mobile number in Italy it will cost you 17.9¢ per minutes.

Which is why I’m recommending this second phone card from Nobelcom. The card rates below are specifically for calling mobile numbers in Italy.

Click here for more information from Nobelcom

As you can see there are 4 different cards. Each of these cards have a different maintenance fee which you can see on Noblecom’s Website. Now you might be saying “Don’t you always recommend people to never buy phone cards with fees?” Yes I do. But in this instance I’m going to show you how to avoid the maintenance fee.

The first card on your left “Hello Italy Cellular” has a 11.9¢ call per minute rate. That’s cheap for calling a mobile number in Italy. But there is a .99¢ weekly maintenance fee. To avoid getting hit with that fee what you should do is finish up that card within the week. That’s it.  Here are the maintenance fees for the other phone cards in respective order, .69¢ per week, .49¢ per month and the last phone card has no maintenance fees. So you should choose whichever one is appropriate for you.

Nobelcom is another reliable company I choose and never have a problem recommending to anyone.

Calling card companies agree to pay up

The division investigated the companies’ business practices concerning consumers getting the full amount of calling time for which they paid.

IDT Corp. in Newark; Locus Telecommunications Inc. in Englewood Cliffs; CVT Prepaid Solutions Inc. in Great Neck, N.Y.; Dollar Phone Enterprises Inc. in Brooklyn, N.Y.; Epana Networks Inc. in New York; STi PhoneCard Inc. in Flushing, N.Y.; and Total Call International Inc. in Los Angeles all settled with the state.

Each company will pay $5,000 to DCA for the costs of the investigation. Six of the companies will pay an additional $5,000 annually for the next three years to cover the costs of state monitoring of their businesses. CVT will not pay the additional fees, as the company no longer sells prepaid calling cards.

“These settlements ensure that the terms governing the use of calling cards are clearly and plainly disclosed to consumers,” Attorney General Anne Milgram said in a statement.

The companies must also adhere to state regulations that include disclosing all fees on the calling card packaging and advertising. The companies must also clearly disclose policies for rounding off phone time for billing purposes.

Not to my surprise Speedy Pin has the lowest rates for calling a land line in France and Nobelcom has the best rates for calling a mobile number in France.

For more information about this card click here.

This Clear Connections phone card is only offered through Speedy Pin. If you check their website you will see that it only cost 1.3¢ per minute. That’s cheap. But best thing of all, there are absolutely no fees. I have no problem recommending them at all since they have a 100% guarantee on all of their products. But if you look at the call per minute rate for calling a mobile number you can see it’s kind of high at 15.5¢.

Which is why I recommend Nobelcom’s phone cards for calling a mobile number in France.

Click here for more information.

Above is a screen shot take from Nobelcom’s website. As you can see there are 4 cards to choose from with different rates. Each of these cards have different maintenance fees. Now I always recommend people to buy phone cards without fees. In this I don’t mind maintenance fees because their is a way to avoid paying them.

For example the first card on the left “Hello France Cellular” has a maintenance fee of .99¢ per week. Now maintenance fees are deducted on the following week of the first day you used it. Now if you used that card and you finished all of your minutes within the week than you have successfully taken advantage of the low 8.4¢ per minute rate and avoided the .99¢ weekly maintenance fees. And that’s a good deal.

To find out each of Nobelcom’s phone cards to call France check out their website at Nobelcom.

I’ve checked through a lot of different phone card companies and so far these two have the best rates and are highly reliable.

And it’s a positive change too now as the Verizon World Traveler Card on average has rates that is 60% lower. And that’s a big deal. Which makes me wonder why Verizon, a well established phone company took so long to get into the phone card game.

Anyways the immediate good news is Verizon is getting rid of the old $12.50 MCI phone card inventory and replacing it with the $10.00 Verizon phone card. So now the $12.50 MCI phone card is being sold for $10.00. However, you won’t be receiving the lower rates as the newer Verizon phone cards. But all in all it’s still a sweet deal.

So take advantage of this deal, check out Speedy Pin MCI phone card.

Cloncom’s rates are pretty good and their service is not bad either. Here’s my Cloncom Phone Card Review for more information. Or to take a look at their website yourself visit Cloncom.com

For making my phone calls to Brazil I use prepaid phone card by Nobelcom. No surprise there right? After all they are a very reliable phone card company with the best prices. Here is a screen shot of the cards I use from Nobelcom:

Click here for more information at Nobelcom.com

As you can see there are 4 choices of phone cards with differing call per minute rates. Each card has a different maintenance fee except “1 Second Sao Paulo” which has none. I listed the maintenance fee below for each card:

• Hello Sao Paulo - .99¢ per week
• Talk Sao Paulo - .69¢ per week
• Call Sao Paulo - .49¢ per month
• 1 Second Sao Paulo - No maintenance fee

Notice the lower the call per minute rate is, the higher the maintenance fee. This detail can be found on each of these phone card’s detail on Nobelcom’s website. Most of you may have read that I frequently recommend purchasing phone cards with no fees. Maintenance fees are acceptable since there are ways around it. Which I’ll show you. The only fees you shouldn’t pay are connection fees and carrier surcharges, which Nobelcom’s phone cards do not have.

Now, the way you choose a Nobelcom phone card is by first planning on how often you will be making your calls. So say for example you know you will be making a lot of calls during a 1 week period and you’re sure you can finish off a phone card in 1 week. The best card for you to choose is the “Hello Sao Paulo”. By finishing off this card in 1 week you will have taken advantage of the low call per minute rate of 1.3¢ per minute and avoided the .99¢ weekly maintenance fee.

Maintenance fees will continue to drain the remaining value of your card regardless whether you use it or not. One note, maintenance fees only get deducted after the following week of the first time of usage. So if you bought a card from Nobelcom with a maintenance fee and never used it, then the maintenance fee will not go into effect. And most phone cards from Nobelcom have 1 year expiration dates.

Now keep in mind that all phone cards have different rates for calling a mobile number. The rates are shown below:

Click here for more information from Nobelcom

Choosing a phone card here is the same as choosing a phone card above for calling a land line in Sao Paulo Brazil.

One final note, here are some starting rates for calling other major cities in Brazil:

• Rio De Janeiro - 1.2¢ per minute
• Belo Horizonte - 1.3¢ per minute

To take a look at these phone cards for yourself or try out a Free 15 Minute Trial offer please visit Nobelcom.

Click here to try out Nobelcom for yourself

Here’s a way for you to find out for yourself the quality of their calls. Nobelcom offers Free 15 Minutes as a trial to most countries. Some countries you’ll only get 10 or 5 minutes. But that’s still adequate time to test the call quality and connection for yourself.

There is absolutely no obligations for the free minutes. All you need is a valid email address and a phone number.

The phone number you supply is important because a Nobelcom customer representative will give you a call to confirm your email address.

They’ll usually call you in about 5 minutes after you’ve submited your request.

After your information is confirmed you’ll get an email with dialing instructions. That’s it, it’s that easy and straight forward.

So go ahead and take advantage of these free minutes and give your family or friends overseas a call by visiting Nobelcom.