Product Review: Use Pingo.com to Call India from US!

Most of us Indian immigrants in the US use some phone card/service or the other to call home. And we call home a LOT!! I had started with MCI and AT&T when I came here first.. but my experiences were soo bad that now the only way MCI, AT&T and Sprint can have me as a customer is when they open a Grocery store!! Then maybe I will buy some potatoes from them!!

Most of us heaved a sigh of relief when the Reliance Infocomm started its Reliance India Call service – they were such a great improvement over the myriad of calling cards that I got hooked onto them.. but in these last two years I have had a few issues with them..

One, when you dial a number wrong – you need to start all over again! The basic thing of dialing another number that most of the phone services provide in the US is absent. Wonder why the technical minds there never thought of this basic thing!!?

Two, this service is ONLY for India. If I need to dial a US or European number I need another service. For me that service was Pingo.com. They offered very good rates for US and other countries although their India rates were a bit higher than Reliance’s.

But now the Pingo.com has reduced their India rates tremendously and are competitive with RelianceIndiaCall. The rates to all over India – mobile or otherwise are 11.5 cents and if you use the toll free number (which is what I use) then they add 1 cent extra.. which takes the total to 12.5 cents – Reliance’s is 12.9 cents all over India.

Pingo also has great rates to other countries too.. so I have now switched to Pingo for the future.

RelianceIndiaCall also had another good thing – that you could see the details of your calls when you logged into your account to make sure you were charged correctly.. same tool is also available with Pingo!

I started using Pingo two years back – around the time I started with Reliance. They offered some great deals.. We could call any number free for a certain time.. they have come out with a similar promotion for the Father’s Day … so I would go for it if I had to start new!! So sign up and get a free $10 coupon free – thats 80 minutes of free calling to India!!!