If you are on the road traveling or if you are a college student who is studying away from home and you want to keep in touch with your family and your friends back in the village, you certainly have pondered on the possibility of purchasing a prepaid calling card. Calling back home these days has definitely become much easier, but selecting the right card is difficult when you are presented with a plethora of options to choose from. So how does one go about choosing the right prepaid calling card?

There is no such thing as best prepaid calling card; only the right calling card for you. Before picking up your card, you should figure out how many calls will you make, how often do you make them and the destination.

After you have found the Website of a prepaid calling card company which holds an outstanding business reputation, you can choose the destination and see the products available. Each calling card has different rates depending on the features that go along with it. Do not go straight away for the lowest rate, because some fees may be applied. This article enumerates and describes some of the features you should look for before purchasing a prepaid calling card.

The most common feature that many customers tend to neglect is the maintenance fee. This is a monthly or weekly charge deducted from the balance of your card. If you intend to make many long calls in a short period of time, you will probably use up the card before the maintenance fee. In addition, a connection fee can be applied every time you are connected to the number you are calling. The charge is also applied if you get a voicemail, an answering machine or if you are prematurely disconnected. In general however, this fee comes with lower rates per minute so it is a good option if you will be targeting for very long calls.

The talking fee can applied to some cards whenever the call goes beyond a specified amount of time. This duration is usually set at 20 minutes, so it is better to hang up and reconnect again to avoid it or choose a card without such a fee.

Another common feature of prepaid calling cards is the expiration date. This entails a certain period of time beyond which you cannot use your card even if you still have some minutes left on it. The expiration date can vary from 2 weeks to 1 year after the first or last call placed. To make sure the balance on the card will not expire, you must use up the card before the expiration date or buy one with a bigger expiration date.

Billing increments or rounding means that the time you spent on the phone is rounded up to a certain amount of minutes. That means that, with a 5 minute rounding, you will pay the same, even if you talked for just 50 seconds or 4 minutes. If you want to avoid such an inconvenienceand quite an annoying one it isyou should look for a card with a 1 minute rounding or less.

If you will be traveling and you will have to use the calling card from a payphone, you might get taxed by payphone surcharges. These charges are applied per call or per minute to certain calling cards if you use them from such a phone. Some cards also offer lower rates than the one advertised if you use them from a landline or a cell phone.

Earl Juanico
http://www.flatrateonline.net/