Lycatel's phonecards. Not for me.

stephenhj

Did you ever buy a phonecard issued by Lycatel--they come under scores of different card names. I was fool enough to buy a "Euro Tel" card. Never again.

It looked attractive: £3 for £5 face value, and go to Lycatel's online e-shop and you'll think--as you're meant to think--that its cards offer plenty of minutes for your money. Wrong.

What that website (let alone the card itself, though there's space enough if they chose) does not even mention is the daily maintenance charge. Nor yet the connection charge. Nor the "post-call" charge.

Does this website's list of FAQ's mention any of these? No. So click on the site’s button for terms and conditions? Don’t waste your time. You’ll find plenty about privacy, but no mention of these charges there either.

To learn that these charges even exist, let alone any details about them, you'll have to go to Lycatel’s corporate home page. The day I tried, its search facility wasn't functioning, if ever it does. So no way of entering “charges” or any rude word like that. So I tried "terms and conditions".

I’d said I was in the UK. A page turned up--in Italian, aimed at Italy! Try again. I clicked for UK terms and conditions--and found myself being directed toward a page applicable to...France!

Persevering, eventually I discovered that “French charges” actually meant those for the UK, and in English, nay.

If you get that far, you'll learn that:

1. Lycatel’s price-per-minute charging system is so complex you may need a calculator. And don't go mad and use a public phonebox, incurring a massive surcharge.

2. On all the UK cards, there is indeed a daily maintenance charge, typically 20 pence a day. So a £5 Euro Tel card, supposedly valid for 30 days, would be dead after fewer than 25 days from the time you first used it, even if you never touched it meanwhile.

2. There is also a connection charge. And a post-call charge. How much? You must be joking. The only details given for either charge are "up to" maximum figures--and steep these are.

In sum, your "cheap" calls are going to cost you a bomb, unless--maybe-- you use the whole card value in one single call.

I wonder why all these substantial and essential price details are so discreetly tucked away in the small electronic print, and not even available at all on the e-shop site. Can anyone make a guess?

No way would I ever again buy a Lycatel-issued card (even if I thought it would always get me to the number I wanted, as my Euro Tel card didn't on two of the first three occasions I tried it).

Me, I'm going back to "Connect" cards, issued --I think--by a firm called Value-Tel (no, I've no link with that firm or any other in the trade). No daily charge, no connection or post-call charge: when it says a penny a minute (to the EU destinations that interest me), it charges a penny a minute, and that's it. Oh, and it's valid for 365 days. Not easy to find a shop that sells it--I've not tried online--but that seems to be its only drawback.