A2Z www.a2zcountries.com Review

Overall Rating

Gives more minutes than "Lycatel" cards.

Extremely unreliable, vague "Instruction For Use", premium line for Customer Services.

The card I am reviewing is the £5 "A2Z Countires" International Calling Card. On the back, it says "A Product of BANGLA Calling Card". First, you dial the access number to use the card. But accessing to the pre-recorded message alone is COMPLETE "hit and miss". In fact, it IS 90% MISS! That's, you have to dial and redial about 10 times just to get this far!
And when you finally get there, the line goes dead right after announcing how much credit left in the card. And there IS no further instructions of what to do next eg dial your destination number, hang up etc. In addition, dialing and connecting to your destinations takes even longer. In fact, it's about 10 times more difficult than dialing an access number. Once you are finally connected to your destination number, the line is a little bit noisy.
The recepient sounds weak and faint as if though they have something in their throat and are unable to speak clearly or louder. They seem talking from a far away planet too! But there are few disconnections compared to Lycatel cards. There are daily charges of 20p, 13p, 10p (I do not know why it varies or how) per day once the card is used. Card companies etc refer this charge to as daily "maintenance" charge/fee. I do not know what is being maintained here since it is about the plastic card that you have purchased and it does NOT need any looking after! Also there is a connection charge for each call you make and it is sometimes a hefty 50p! Which is a lot of money especially if you make several calls or attemps (as you will). In addition, you do NOT really get all those "advertised" minutes. For instance, I started with 40 minutes. But after 05:26 mins of talking, my credit went down by 95p and time left was 33 minutes! I mean, 40 - 5.5 or 40-6 is not equal to 33! So the amount of minutes you get is not really equal to the EXACT minutes announced. But it is closer than Lycatel, Voki/Nome etc. What's more, there is ALWAYS a final disconnection while you still have some credit left in the card! For instance, 50p, 30p, 28p etc enough for further few minuts worth of calls! This credit is lost in the card forever. It cannot be used for another call. In the middle of your call an announcement says "not enough credit to connect/continue" or something similar. This leftover credit will disappear in the following day/days due to that daily charge! I do not understand what is happening here another rip off maybe? Reccommended to other people? TOUGH question! I would say: 1) It is better than some other cards especially Lycate, Voki/Nomi etc since it gives more minutes for the same amount of money. 2) Sometimes, it does not actually charge you when your destination number is busy etc - unlike Lycatel etc. But this varies depending on destination, type of number dialled etc. So if you don't mind dialing and redialing before you get access to your credit in the card and then having to dial and redial even more to get connected to your destination, then this is a good card. In fact, this is the best card I have found so far. Nevertheless I am still looking for even better ones. I tried MANY Lycatel "brand" cards eg Africa Tel, EuroTel. And they are the worst in the market to my experience. I also used "T-Africa" phone card from Mr Phone Card, "Voki international phonecard" £5 from Nomi-call and many others. I usually call Africa when using these cards. But as this one claims "A2Z" countries I assume the same/similar applies to other places as well. But, please, check it first if your destination is covered in this A2Z countries or not! TIP: There is one thing you can try before you even buy this card. Dial one of the access numbers and check how long it takes to get the the pre-recorded message "...ease Enter Your Pin Code". Yes, it is quick and computer generated so that it actually misses the first part of "Please". Anyway, if after dialing one of the access numbers you find that you get the message fairly qucikly eg after 2-3 tries. Then, dialing your actual destination takes a bit longer. So take your reference from here, as well as, your decision of whether to go ahead and buy the card or not. Also bear in mind, the Customer Services for this card use a premium line!