No Joke! Free Unlimited Long Distance From Talkster - If you are a real techie and want to spare a penny, you might want to look into “Talkster” for you long-distance and international calling. Talkster’s Free World Dialing service was launched this week. The service, which costs “nothing” to use, does require dialing a lot of numbers, figuring out how to connect very differently, and then listening to a short advertisement. Once all that is done, and assuming you get connected it is absolutely free to use for all calls (including conference calls with up to five participants) in the U.S. and 25 international destinations. It requires no credit card checks and there are no limits on call length. The service can be accessed from a desktop computer, mobile phone, or via SMS text messaging. In all three cases, the caller enters in the number from which they will make the call and the number they will be calling to into Talkster’s website (www.talkster.com). Talkster then assigns a local number to each calling party (which can be saved in phonebooks or in the SMS message Talkster sends for later use). The caller then calls the local Talkster number which rings the call on the phone of the person you are calling (the “recipient” of your call). The recipient then hangs up and calls their own Talkster-assigned local number (which they receive in an SMS message or see in their Caller ID display) back while the original caller holds on the line. When this second call is completed, the calling parties are connected and can talk as long as they want without worrying about long distance fees of any kind. Airtime minutes will apply for wireless calls, however. When we tried it, it took a couple of times for both sides of the call – us and the people we were calling – to get it all straight and finally connect. The called party, who then had to “call back” was the one who had to listen to an advertisement.
This is not the first time “free long distance” has been offered in return for listening to advertisements. And right now, there is also the free Directory Assistance providers such as 1-800-FREE-411 who are also using advertising to support their services. It remains to be seen if this service will survive. We found it fairly complicated to use. Moreover, for domestic calls you would only really want to use it if you are still paying for long distance by the minute, as opposed to through your wireless plan or an unlimited phone company plan
It might be most useful to view Talkster as a competitor to Skype, the only difference being that you need a regular phone hand set; while Skype lets you complete a call from a computer with a headset.
Give it a try and let us know what you think! E-mail your experiences to trac@trac.org.
To learn more about Talkster, click here or visit www.talkster.com.
Survey: Wireless Retail Customer Experience Continues to Decline - Wireless customers looking to acquire a new phone should be braced for a potentially bad experience when they enter a retail store. According to new results from J.D. Power and Associates twice-yearly Wireless Retail Sale Satisfaction Study, overall customer satisfaction with the wireless retail experience has decreased significantly since 2006. The survey noted that undertrained sales staff at big-box retailers (examples: Best Buy and Circuit City) played a large role in the decline. Overall, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile continued their string of industry-leading appearances on customer satisfaction surveys. AT&T Mobility, Alltel, and Sprint Nextel all came in below-average in the survey. Other factors cited in the decline included the proliferation of wireless products and services and the increased number of wireless retail sales channels (company stores, big-box retailers, mall kiosks, etc.). The average wireless retail sales transaction takes approximately 1 hour to complete. Therefore, it is probably inadvisable to try and buy a new wireless phone at a retail outlet while trying to corral young children or when pressed for time. Additionally, due to the generally low grades retail sales staff received, it is doubly important for consumers to do research on their phone plans BEFORE they enter the retail environment. The Internet is the best resource for comparing phones and plans, but there are also many magazines, such as Consumer Reports that do regular cell phone comparison studies. To read more about the J.D. Power Study, click here.
Do AT&T Mobility’s Policy Changes Signal Start of a Trend? - Are the big wireless carriers about to start competing on service and customer satisfaction? Maybe that is what prompted AT&T’s recent announcement that it will begin to replace its $175 early termination with a pro-rated fee. The company also said that it intends to end its practice of requiring that subscribers extend their service contracts when they switch calling plans. These contract extension requirement changes are expected to go into effect in November, and the prorated early-termination fee policy will begin in early 2008. One caveat to the pro-rated early termination fee change is that it will only apply to new and renewing subscribers who sign a one or two-year agreement after the change takes effect. AT&T did not explain how it plans to pro-rate its $175 early termination fees. AT&T’s changes follow closely on the heels of a similar policy shift by Verizon Wireless. Verizon pro-rates its early termination fee at a rate of $5 per month, which means that even if a subscriber cancels their contract one month prior to the end of a two-tear service agreement, they are still liable for a $60 early termination fee. As the cellular marketplace matures (there are now more cell phone lines than landlines in the U.S.), consumers have come to expect more from their carriers in terms of quality of service and customer service. In the past wireless carriers focused more on signing up new customers. Today, they appear to be shifting their resources toward providing better service to existing subscribers and so reducing the number of subscribers switching carriers (known as “churn” in the industry). From a consumer point of view, the changes are welcome ones. To read more about the AT&T policy changes, click here.
INTERESTING LINKS
FCC Main Page: http://www.fcc.gov
FCC Complaint Form - http://svartifoss2.fcc.gov/cib/fcc475.cfm
List of State Regulatory Commissions: http://www.naruc.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=15
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