Rebtel calling card review part 2 : Sweden
Continued from part 1
First of all, you have to change your dialing habits to use their services; they are asking to dial a different number to call someone and go through extra work to set up a phone call.
For using their service, you send the phone number of your family or friend in another country, and they give you a local number for them. That means another numbers for remembering. It is not problem for me; I can save the number in my phone's address book. But I know many people, like my parents, do not know or barely know how they use it. Also, they can not use my Rebtel number to reach my other relatives because, for Rebtel, they are personal and cannot be shared.
The other problem about Rebtel for me is - because of my business, and because I like to see new places in holidays- I travel so much and for using rebtel when I travel, I need to buy a SIM card in the country I am visiting, and set it up as my primary number for the service to work as it is intended. Rebtel doesn't handle roaming costs.
Rebtel says that it provide you local numbers for your international contacts but as they said at their website – FAQ section- “if we don’t provide local numbers in your city, we recommend that you ask your network provider how much they’ll charge for the numbers you create to call your friends on.
All countries have different calling plans. Some countries charge their customer for long distance calls even though you’re calling a number that is within your own country.”
You can not be 100% percent sure that it’s a local number that I’m calling. I heard a story about this situation. According to the story of an American gentleman, whose wife is from Russia, he has noticed that all his contacts went from being labeled Russia to Kazakhstan, now his in-laws do not live in Kazakhstan they live in Russia, on of the older cities in Russia. At first he thought well computers are not perfect so maybe it was just a glitch, until his wife made a call and we were charged quadruple (a new rate of 7.9 cents a minute) what they had been on previous calls. He contacted them and asked what happen and why were my in laws being listed as Kazakhstan when they live in Russia. He didn't get an answer to my Kazakhstan question but they politely told him that they are constantly buying time from different vendors and sometimes the rates change, when this happens, it is just too monumental to try and notify every user. The customer service rep also pointed out that the TOS state that rates can change with no advanced warning. He thought they can change any time without advance notice and their TOS state this. But when he look into this a bit further, he find that the advertised rate for Kazakhstan is 4.8 cents a minute and Russia is still listed as 1.9 cents a minute yet my in-laws who are listed as Kazakhstan have a rate of 7.8 cents a minute. If you want to read this story, you can reach it by http://voipguides.blogspot.com/2008/02/rebtel-voip-foul-play.html.
While I was searching this story, I found an interesting calculation made by a gentleman having the opportunity to speak with Greg Spector, Rebtel’s marketing director. He called him from his mobile to Mr. Spector’s Stockholm fixed line. He paid just 0,15 cents, because according to his plan, he just pay a flat rate of 15 cents / call for any call to Europe, US and Canada. According to his calculation if he had called Mr. Spector by using Rebtel:
a) Greg doesn’t hang up: I’d have paid 30 x 0,019 + 0,12 + 30 x 0,02 (sweden) = about 1, 374 € where 0,019 is the cost per minute to call a local number in Italy (one of the cheapest rates), 0,12 the call setup fee (Telecom Italia) and 0,02 (including VAT) is the interconnect cost which Rebtel charges for calling a landline in Sweden.
b) Greg hangs up and calls back: 30 x 0,019 + 0,12 = about 0,69
First of all, you have to change your dialing habits to use their services; they are asking to dial a different number to call someone and go through extra work to set up a phone call.
For using their service, you send the phone number of your family or friend in another country, and they give you a local number for them. That means another numbers for remembering. It is not problem for me; I can save the number in my phone's address book. But I know many people, like my parents, do not know or barely know how they use it. Also, they can not use my Rebtel number to reach my other relatives because, for Rebtel, they are personal and cannot be shared.
The other problem about Rebtel for me is - because of my business, and because I like to see new places in holidays- I travel so much and for using rebtel when I travel, I need to buy a SIM card in the country I am visiting, and set it up as my primary number for the service to work as it is intended. Rebtel doesn't handle roaming costs.
Rebtel says that it provide you local numbers for your international contacts but as they said at their website – FAQ section- “if we don’t provide local numbers in your city, we recommend that you ask your network provider how much they’ll charge for the numbers you create to call your friends on.
All countries have different calling plans. Some countries charge their customer for long distance calls even though you’re calling a number that is within your own country.”
You can not be 100% percent sure that it’s a local number that I’m calling. I heard a story about this situation. According to the story of an American gentleman, whose wife is from Russia, he has noticed that all his contacts went from being labeled Russia to Kazakhstan, now his in-laws do not live in Kazakhstan they live in Russia, on of the older cities in Russia. At first he thought well computers are not perfect so maybe it was just a glitch, until his wife made a call and we were charged quadruple (a new rate of 7.9 cents a minute) what they had been on previous calls. He contacted them and asked what happen and why were my in laws being listed as Kazakhstan when they live in Russia. He didn't get an answer to my Kazakhstan question but they politely told him that they are constantly buying time from different vendors and sometimes the rates change, when this happens, it is just too monumental to try and notify every user. The customer service rep also pointed out that the TOS state that rates can change with no advanced warning. He thought they can change any time without advance notice and their TOS state this. But when he look into this a bit further, he find that the advertised rate for Kazakhstan is 4.8 cents a minute and Russia is still listed as 1.9 cents a minute yet my in-laws who are listed as Kazakhstan have a rate of 7.8 cents a minute. If you want to read this story, you can reach it by http://voipguides.blogspot.com/2008/02/rebtel-voip-foul-play.html.
While I was searching this story, I found an interesting calculation made by a gentleman having the opportunity to speak with Greg Spector, Rebtel’s marketing director. He called him from his mobile to Mr. Spector’s Stockholm fixed line. He paid just 0,15 cents, because according to his plan, he just pay a flat rate of 15 cents / call for any call to Europe, US and Canada. According to his calculation if he had called Mr. Spector by using Rebtel:
a) Greg doesn’t hang up: I’d have paid 30 x 0,019 + 0,12 + 30 x 0,02 (sweden) = about 1, 374 € where 0,019 is the cost per minute to call a local number in Italy (one of the cheapest rates), 0,12 the call setup fee (Telecom Italia) and 0,02 (including VAT) is the interconnect cost which Rebtel charges for calling a landline in Sweden.
b) Greg hangs up and calls back: 30 x 0,019 + 0,12 = about 0,69