PennyTalk Review

PennyTalk has relatively clean calling cards compared to some companies, but unfortunately their 49@cent connection fee applies to every call and that's a real killer.

PennyTalk is not a reseller and so it does not not sell lots of different cards. Instead, it sells only 1 calling card with a comprehensive rate plan for all locations it serves. This keeps things simple and we like that.

PennyTalk does a good job of fully disclosing all its rates and fees. The main PennyTalk pricing are: per minute rates, a 49@cent connection fee (applies to every call), a 99@cent monthly maintenance fee, and 90@cent payphone surcharge.

All PennyTalk calls are carried by IDT, their parent company. IDT is a well established global communications provider. We strongly prefer calling card companies that carry their own traffic - it leads to less finger pointing if something goes wrong. It also generally indicates you'll get higher call quality and reliability.

The PennyTalk.com website is well designed and easy to use. Their rate table is pretty nifty - one of the best ways we've seen to show per minute rates. The site also provides fairly complete FAQs and other useful information for consumers.

PennyTalk.com provides prominent links to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use disclosures. Neither document contains anything unusual or troubling. PennyTalk.com use SSL for secure credit card transactions.

PennyTalk.com provides customer support via phone and email. Phone lines are open 12 hrs a day during the work week and 8 hrs a day on weekends. In test calls we've made, their support lines appear to be well manned and service reps are available without long wait times.

In the US, PennyTalk provides a single toll-free access number for the entire country. Unlike many other companies, there are no local access numbers. PennyTalk has an alternative toll-free access number for Spanish speakers in the US. PennyTalk also has access numbers in 30+ countries worldwide -- this is far better than most companies. Most of these numbers are toll-free national numbers. In many cases, you also have the option to dial into PennyTalk's main international access number. There are no extra charges for these calls, but you may want to check with your local provider to make sure your local carrier treats these as free calls, too.

If you go back a year or so (2009), you will find that PennyTalk's parent company, IDT, was cited in a number of legal actions for deceptive calling card marketing and pricing practices. They appear to have since cleaned up their act and become a model citizen since then. In other words, maybe they deserve 'green' here for their current behavior, but the dicey history is recent enough that it makes us cautious.

Because they are an integrated operator, PennyTalk is able to offer very good advanced features - things that many resellers can't offer because they don't 'own' the entire customer relationship. In addition to solid dialing and account management features, PennyTalk also has some good mobile dialing apps for the iPhone and the Blackberry. Nothing for Android yet, as far as we know.

We'd sort of expect a company of PennyTalk's caliber to also have a PC dialing app (aka, 'softphone'), similar to what Pingo offers, but they don't seem to have one. We're not sure why - seems like a no brainer.

PennyTalk's return policy is to refund any remaining balance in your account. This is fairly typical in the industry.

PennyTalk offers a $20 immediate credit for each friend who signs on - this is the highest of any company we know of. They also have a 'Save-o-rites' program that allows you to save 20% when you make calls from any US number you designate for the program. In other words, you add whatever numbers you usually use to make PennyTalk calls and you save 20% when you use them. PennyTalk does not offer anything in the way of first-time customer deals - no special trial offers or the like. To the contrary, they have a $25 minimum purchase, the highest we know of in the industry.

PennyTalk has relatively clean calling cards compared to some companies, but unfortunately their 49@cent connection fee applies to every call and that's a real killer.

PennyTalk is not a reseller and so it does not not sell lots of different cards. Instead, it sells only 1 calling card with a comprehensive rate plan for all locations it serves. This keeps things simple and we like that.

PennyTalk does a good job of fully disclosing all its rates and fees. The main PennyTalk pricing are: per minute rates, a 49@cent connection fee (applies to every call), a 99@cent monthly maintenance fee, and 90@cent payphone surcharge.

All PennyTalk calls are carried by IDT, their parent company. IDT is a well established global communications provider. We strongly prefer calling card companies that carry their own traffic - it leads to less finger pointing if something goes wrong. It also generally indicates you'll get higher call quality and reliability.

The PennyTalk.com website is well designed and easy to use. Their rate table is pretty nifty - one of the best ways we've seen to show per minute rates. The site also provides fairly complete FAQs and other useful information for consumers.

PennyTalk.com provides prominent links to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use disclosures. Neither document contains anything unusual or troubling. PennyTalk.com use SSL for secure credit card transactions.

PennyTalk.com provides customer support via phone and email. Phone lines are open 12 hrs a day during the work week and 8 hrs a day on weekends. In test calls we've made, their support lines appear to be well manned and service reps are available without long wait times.

In the US, PennyTalk provides a single toll-free access number for the entire country. Unlike many other companies, there are no local access numbers. PennyTalk has an alternative toll-free access number for Spanish speakers in the US. PennyTalk also has access numbers in 30+ countries worldwide -- this is far better than most companies. Most of these numbers are toll-free national numbers. In many cases, you also have the option to dial into PennyTalk's main international access number. There are no extra charges for these calls, but you may want to check with your local provider to make sure your local carrier treats these as free calls, too.

If you go back a year or so (2009), you will find that PennyTalk's parent company, IDT, was cited in a number of legal actions for deceptive calling card marketing and pricing practices. They appear to have since cleaned up their act and become a model citizen since then. In other words, maybe they deserve 'green' here for their current behavior, but the dicey history is recent enough that it makes us cautious.

Because they are an integrated operator, PennyTalk is able to offer very good advanced features - things that many resellers can't offer because they don't 'own' the entire customer relationship. In addition to solid dialing and account management features, PennyTalk also has some good mobile dialing apps for the iPhone and the Blackberry. Nothing for Android yet, as far as we know.

We'd sort of expect a company of PennyTalk's caliber to also have a PC dialing app (aka, 'softphone'), similar to what Pingo offers, but they don't seem to have one. We're not sure why - seems like a no brainer.

PennyTalk's return policy is to refund any remaining balance in your account. This is fairly typical in the industry.

PennyTalk offers a $20 immediate credit for each friend who signs on - this is the highest of any company we know of. They also have a 'Save-o-rites' program that allows you to save 20% when you make calls from any US number you designate for the program. In other words, you add whatever numbers you usually use to make PennyTalk calls and you save 20% when you use them. PennyTalk does not offer anything in the way of first-time customer deals - no special trial offers or the like. To the contrary, they have a $25 minimum purchase, the highest we know of in the industry.