1. What are phone cards?
2. How do these phone cards work?
3. Why should I use phone cards?
4. Why should I order phone cards from PIN4U.com?
5. Is it safe to use my credit card on PIN4U.com?
6. What are types of hidden charges in phone cards?
7. How about celluar phone rates?
8. How long can I keep using those phone cards?
9. What are general guide lines to choose phone cards?
10. Can I use your phone cards in other countries besides USA and Canada?
11. I am living in offshore states, i.e., Alaska, Hawaii etc. Can I use your phone cards?
12. How will the phone card be delivered to me?

1. What are phone cards?

Phone cards are a prepaid method of making a long distance (domestic or international) call. In using a phone card you save money on your long distance phone bill.
There are no monthly bills, and no detailed statements. Rather, you simply pay for the calling time in advance and reduce the prepaid balance as you make calls.

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2. How do these phone cards works?

• Dial the 800 access number provided in the instruction
• Enter your phone card pin number
• Destination phone number

It is same as using your regular phone card. You can use your Instant Phonecard from your home or office.

3. Why should I use phone cards?

There are many reasons why you should use phone cards. Here are a few:

• Save more than 30% on your residential long distance phone bill for both domestic and international phone call.
• They are cheaper than your local phone company.
• They are cheaper than collect calls and operator assisted calls
• You can budget your long distance calling costs.
• You can bypass hotel and educational institution systems with the resultant savings. (Dialing phone card toll free access numbers allows you to bypass the system.)
• There are no monthly bills, and no detailed statements. Rather, you simply pay for the calling time in advance and reduce the prepaid balance as you make calls.
• No need to switch your long distance carrier.

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4. Why should I order phone cards from PIN4U.com?

Phone cards are usually distributed through very fragmented channels. You can find hundreds or thousands of them from local store as well as hundreds of websites. Just Phone Cards has been trying to distinguish ourselves from other stores by offering the best selection of phone cards and the best customer service.

If your phone card stop working, has rate updates, short of minutes, has bad voice quality, you usually can't do much if you order from most of the local or online stores. However, if you order phone cards from us, your order will be garanteed, and we will take care of such problems.

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5. Is it safe to use my credit card on PIN4U.com?

When shopping at PIN4U.com the safety of your credit card information is our first priority. You can rest assure that your online shopping experience at PIN4U.com will be a secure one. When you submit any personal information to PIN4U.com, the secure server software (SSL) encrypts it before sending it to us, protecting it against unauthorized access. Our servers at PIN4U.com are secured to protect all information including credit card numbers, personal address and order information.

If you still worry about your credit card's security, you can choose to pay by money order or faxing/mailing your credit information to us. Those are optional during checkout. You just follow instructions indicated on the checkout page.

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6. What are types of hidden charges in phone cards?

• Connection Fee: Also called first-minute surcharge. It's charged when a telephone call is connected. It varies between 25 cents to as high as $3. The easiest way to evaluate whether a cheaper phone card with connection fee is worthwhile or not is to estimate the average time for your phone calls. If you make 10 mins calls, a card for 5 cents/min with $0.50 connection fee is actually more expensive than a card for 9 cents/min with no connection fee. It's better to use a phone card without connection fee if you are not sure the person you are calling is there, and the phone call may trigger an answer machine. Phone cards with high connection fee is good for the case when you know your party is there and you intend to talk for a long time.
• Tax: Believe it or not, some prepaid phone cards charge a monthly tax or one-time tax, and it can be as high as $1.50. Try to avoid it by checking the information for your phone card carefully.
• Maintenance Fee : Maintenance fee will be deducted from your phone card if there is still enough balance. It won't be charged on your credit card. Some phone cards will start to charge a maintenance fee either when the first phone call is connected or after the first phone call is finished. It could be as high as $1.50, so check it out, too. The maintenance fee can be charged every month, every two weeks, or every week. Maintenance fee is also called sweet fee by certain phone card companies.
• Minutes Rounding: This is the basic unit to record the length of your phone calls. Industry standard is one minute rounding, as in the case of your residential telephone services. Prepaid phone cards can be rounded to one, two, or even three minutes. If it rounded to 3 minutes, your 30 seconds phone call will be considered as 3-mins phone call and your 4 mins phone call will be considered as 6 mins phone call. Statistically, on average, for 2 mins rounding, you will be charged for one more minutes for each phone call, and for 3 mins rounding, you will be charged for one and half more minutes for each phone call. So try to avoid using phone cards with more than one minutes rounding.
• Pay-Phone Surcharge: Prepaid phone cards provide the most convenience when you want to make cheap phone calls anywhere, but there is usually a surcharge between $0.30 up to $0.75 associated when you use a public pay-phone. Payment for the use of a public pay-phone is required by FCC. However, from the variation of this surcharge, it's obvious that some phone card companies use it as a way to profit.
• Communication Fee: Some phone cards that look pretty cheap can turn out to be not cheap at all. Certain phone cards are advertised with an attractive total minutes in the card. But that number was calculated based on a single call per card. Certain phone cards charge a communication fee up to 25% of the phone call's cost. This makes the rates to be 25% more expensive in reality. The advertised total minutes looks more attractive because this fee is usually applied after the call is finished.

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7. How about celluar phone rates?

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8. How long can I keeping using those phone cards?

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9. What are general guide lines to choose phone cards?

• Rates: Every one wishes rates as low as possible. However, any phone card has its own cost. In general, too low rate means low qulaity. In order to calculate the actual rates, you also need include cost of surcharges like connection fee and monthly surcharge to face rates shown up on phone cards rates table if those charges are indicated.
• Quality: Quality is always the major concern to purchase phone cards.
• Surcharges: Some phone cards indicate Connection fee, Weekly fee and Monthly fee, etc. The rate tables the phone card company given generally don't include those charges. Those charges will indeed increase the actual rates of those phone cards.
• Round minutes: Rounding minutes is the time unit used by the manufacture to round up your talk time. Usually, rounding minutes is one minute. For example, if you have talk 23 minutes and 28 seconds, manufacture will count for 24 minutes. If the unit of round minutes is high, it actually increases rates somehow.
• Connection speed: Some phone cards may not easily get connected even if you try several times. You should avoid buying those cards.
• Payphone surcharge: Most phone cards will have additional charge if you use them on pay phone because of additional charge from pay phone companies. If possible, do not use phone cards on pay phones.
• Expiration day: Every phone cards has its expiration day. It is generally from one month to six months. You should choose right one based on your own situation.
• Customer service: Good phone cards generally have good customer service. Those manufactures will help you solve the difficulties you experienced using their phone cards.

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10. Can I use your phone cards in other countries besides USA and Canada?

No. Currently, Our phone cards can be used only in USA and Canada. We will extend our service to other countries soon. Please come back and check out agian. For those customers from Canada, please note only Global Key has 1-800 access in Canada.

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11. I am living in offshore states, i.e., Alaska, Hawaii etc. Can I use your instant phonecards?

Some of our phonecards have no services in offshore states. Others have no problem. However, the rate info may not apply to those states or areas. For customers who live in those area, the best way is to call the customer service 1800#s listed in our website and make sure it works for you and the rate is what you expect before purchase.

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12. How will the phone card be delivered to me?

Currently we only offer email delivery. You won't receive any regular mail from us.

Email delivery makes the phone cards available for you to use right away. So no more driving across the town; no more waiting for phone cards to arrive in the mail.

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