call rates – sixthseal.com

I saw this ad on the floor while walking on the Clayton campus
today. It’s for the regular poster sales they have at the campus
center. Very enigmatic…

Anyway, I just got a call from an Optus representative offering to
upgrade my phone set. It sounded good until he mentioned the 24 month
contract. I told him there’s no way I can do that, coz I’m graduating
in June. Well, he said I’m due for an upgrade (probably part of their
new customer service to reduce churn) and offered me A$11 free call
credits per month for 12 months. There’s a catch though, if I leave
within 12 months, I have to pay A$55 and even my poor math skillz tells
me that’s not good value considering the fact that I’m graduating in
June. Okay, their anti-churn techniques are very sneaky indeed. Oh, and
churn is the industry term for customers switching over to a
competitor’s network. Now, I bargained for a 6 month term of A$22
credits but of course he couldn’t make that happen. Haha! I pushed for
the ‘yes’AnyPhone plan, which I really want to get on coz of the 30
cents for 10 minutes calls to landlines and mobiles. It’s very useful
when using a calling card at night. Unfortunately, that requires me to
change my plan to a A$55 dollar a month one, with A$55 call credits. It
sounded okay at first, but wait, being on that plan will increase my 30
second charges by 6 cents. Of course I declined. Oh yeah, something
funny happened at this point. The rep was looking at my details and he
was wondering how I got on a government plan. Heh! My current plan has
really cheap per minute rates and it’s charged every 30 seconds (more
cost effective) and I need to pay for usage only, so it’s not actually
a plan. He puzzled over it and asked me how I got on this rate which is
meant for loyal customers in the government and large organizations.
Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t know. I stopped pushing for
upgrades after that, none of them sounded appealing to me. I also don’t
want to lose my current rates, although it’s very possible that the
reason I’m getting these rates is due to a mistake on Optus’s part. I’m
already on a loyalty government plan with cheap per minute rates? I
don’t mind at all. 😉

I’ve just discovered this calling card recently after reading a poster
 advertising rates of 6.9 cents a minute to Malaysia. This is the cheapest
 rates I’ve ever seen here. When I first arrived in Melbourne in 2000, the
 cheapest I could get is the Apple calling card at 20c per minute. But soon
 after that, the market was flooded with a deluge of calling cards and the
 lowest price dropped to 18c and then 15c and then 12c and then 9.9c just a
 couple of months ago. Regarding this card, it’s called Indo Calling Card
 and offers 6.9 cents a minute to Malaysian land lines and 9.9c to mobile
 numbers.

There is a green apple logo at the bottom of this calling card, which is
 the logo of the Apple calling card. Sure enough, the familiar and very
 annoying female voice thanked me for selecting Apple communications. Damn,
 that voice is loud and grating. This card also has the Apple calling card
 “feature” where you can’t key in the PIN number until the jingle is over.
 It’s not a short jingle too…so after a while you do get a bit tired of
 having to listen to a loud, grating voice reminding you to enter the
 number of the destination you want to dial “fashioned in double oh double
 one followed by the country code…”. I can’t complain about the prices
 though. 6.9 cents is about as low as you can get.