Cloncom - Using Cloncom to Decrease Phone Charges
Before I go on to discuss Cloncom, let me tell you what started my quest. If you are like me and have to travel frequently around the world on business, or perhaps you are a professional tourist then I am sure you know the expense involved with making International phone calls. I remember a couple of years ago whilst on a business trip to Switzerland I arrived home to a mobile phone bill totaling the equivalent of $3450 and I was only there for two weeks! I decided there and then to do something about it.
After doing plenty of research online to finding cheaper options for making international calls I zoned in on a company called Cloncom. They are basically a business that offer a number of different telephony services to their customers, the main one being selling calling cards.
The service works by entering in the country you are dialing from followed by the country you are trying to dial. It will then return several of the cheapest calling cards available to make international calls. It lists out for each calling card, the local access and toll free access price per minute plus gives you any other details like whether there is a connection fee or not. You then choose based on the criteria returned and you then get emailed the pin, access numbers and all dialing instructions. Overall it is a very simple system to setup and use.
When you get to use the service you first dial the access number you are given which may or may not be a toll free number. You then get prompted to enter the pin number you have been given followed by the number you wish to dial. You are then connected at the cheap rate quoted and that is basically that.
So the big question is how much did using the Cloncom system save me overall. Well, I purchased a euro saver calling card recently on a trip to Germany and made an hours worth of calls. If that was my mobile phone I had been using it would have cost me approximately £26 ($52 US). Using the Euro saver I spent a total of just under £15 ($30 US). That is a total saving of just over 40% on my mobile charges. It isn’t near the advertised "up to" 95% savings but it is still pretty good and I have been using the service frequently since then.
