Freespeech - 10 mins free calls a day

fatherdougalmag

After the Blueface shenanigans of late I eventually upgraded my freespeech to 'full access' so we could make outbound calls. Seems like a good enough deal. Top up denomination is €20 and let's say avg call is 2c a minute that works out at 1000 mins which is comparable with the Blueface €19.99 for 1000 mins product. At least the freespeech balance isn't per month. With Blueface I find we have some mins (or hours) left over at the end of the month and these get wiped/lost with each renewal. If I was with freespeech it auto-tops up when the balance hits 0. In real terms €20 could probably keep us going for 6 weeks.

Anyway, bit of an aside there. I noticed that freespeech also mention that there was 10 mins of calls a day/300 mins of calls a month to selected destinations (Ireland local/national, US, Oz, etc.). Wonderful I thought. Then I noticed that after 5mins and 12 secs I was being charged. Then I noticed the small print:

The free minutes are measured and decremented in whole minutes
example: if you make a 1 min 30 sec call it counts as two 'free' minutes used.

I don't know about you but that's pushing it a bit. To avail of the 10 free mins a day/300 free mins a month you need to make a 10 minute long call.

Something else I think might be a bit disturbing is that you might be charged as soon as the remote phone starts ringing as opposed to it being connected. I need to confirm that but I made a couple of test calls this morning and just let the other phone ring. When I looked at the call history online it docked time off the "10 free mins". I need to confirm that behaviour though before committing to it.

Just in case some people might be on the look out for a new VOIP provider.

snaps

im using freespeech with an 091 number for incomming calls and voipdiscount for outgoing calls.