HelloCard is the Best International Prepaid Phone Card in Chile
I found a phone card for calls from from Chile to the United States that charges about 5 cents a minute. This international prepaid phone card is called HelloCard, and I highly recommend it.
I got a free phone card to try out and review. I made it clear that it would be an honest review. But honestly, I have no complaints. (Will update if that changes).
I conducted an interview over the phone from my landline in Santiago to a person in the United States. The interview lasted nearly an hour. I still have 15 minutes left. Total prepaid value of the phone card? 2,000 Chilean pesos (about 4 dollars).
Why so cheap? This international phone card is Chile's first to use VoIP (voice over internet protocol) technology. That's why it actually is, to date, the cheapest international phone card being offered in Chile. Don't know anything about VoIP? Don't worry. All you have to do is pick up a phone and place your call. No headset, no internet connection, no credit card, no problem ;-)
I know it's old fashioned, but in many ways not having to deal with the Internet or electronic equipment is a convenience, especially in Santiago, Chile. You can call from a landline, a payphone or a cellular phone.
Do note that when making a call from a payphone with this phone card, you're gonna get charged extra. It's unavoidable, it's Telefónica. EVEN SO, it's still a great deal. Calls from Chile to the United States will cost about 10 cents a minute, rather than 5 cents a minute. Again, among phone cards from Chile to the United States, HelloCard is the cheapest.
I haven't tried it with a cell phone, but I understand it's the same rate as calling from a landline.
Callers to the US get the best rates, a whopping 70 minutes of talk time. But many other countries aren't that bad either. People calling any European country -- Spain, England, Germany, Portugal, Italy and the rest of the European Union -- get 55 minutes talk time when calling from Chile using the HelloCard phone card.
Calling Brazil from Chile gets you 30 minutes talk time. Argentina 60 minutes. Calling cell phones in Chile with this phone card gets you 15 minutes, but that, again, is unavoidable because the cell phone companies are sinister and corrupt, like Telefónica. Check out HelloCard's phone card rates tarifas for other countries.
Phone cards in Santiago, Chile are typically sold at kiosks, corner stores and Internet Cafés. HelloCard is currently being sold at various locations in the Providencia neighborhood of Santiago, Chile. The card is extremely new, and so is their website. According to them, it's just a matter 1-2 weeks before they have all the specific locations puntos de venta listed on their website, telling you where you can go to buy these phone cards in Santiago.
Update: I got some puntos de venta here for ya!
Ricardo Lyon (frente al 62)
Providencia 1912 ( frente al banco de chile)
Providencia 1740
Providencia 1590 ( frente a la Biblioteca Providencia )
Ahumada 366 - A
Vecinal con Apoquindo Vereda Sur
Providencia 1053
Holanda 2502
Apoquindo con el bosque (frente banco Bice #2880)
Luis Tayer Ojeda (frente al 0180)
Apoquindo 2705 (frente al BCI)
Salida Metro Tobalaba (frente mcdonalds)
Suecia #03
Providencia 2277-79 (esquina Suecia)
Providencia frente al 2181
Carlos Antunez (frente a notaria Riveros)
Frente 2348 (esquina Bucarest)
Providencia 266
I got a free phone card to try out and review. I made it clear that it would be an honest review. But honestly, I have no complaints. (Will update if that changes).
I conducted an interview over the phone from my landline in Santiago to a person in the United States. The interview lasted nearly an hour. I still have 15 minutes left. Total prepaid value of the phone card? 2,000 Chilean pesos (about 4 dollars).
Why so cheap? This international phone card is Chile's first to use VoIP (voice over internet protocol) technology. That's why it actually is, to date, the cheapest international phone card being offered in Chile. Don't know anything about VoIP? Don't worry. All you have to do is pick up a phone and place your call. No headset, no internet connection, no credit card, no problem ;-)
I know it's old fashioned, but in many ways not having to deal with the Internet or electronic equipment is a convenience, especially in Santiago, Chile. You can call from a landline, a payphone or a cellular phone.
Do note that when making a call from a payphone with this phone card, you're gonna get charged extra. It's unavoidable, it's Telefónica. EVEN SO, it's still a great deal. Calls from Chile to the United States will cost about 10 cents a minute, rather than 5 cents a minute. Again, among phone cards from Chile to the United States, HelloCard is the cheapest.
I haven't tried it with a cell phone, but I understand it's the same rate as calling from a landline.
Callers to the US get the best rates, a whopping 70 minutes of talk time. But many other countries aren't that bad either. People calling any European country -- Spain, England, Germany, Portugal, Italy and the rest of the European Union -- get 55 minutes talk time when calling from Chile using the HelloCard phone card.
Calling Brazil from Chile gets you 30 minutes talk time. Argentina 60 minutes. Calling cell phones in Chile with this phone card gets you 15 minutes, but that, again, is unavoidable because the cell phone companies are sinister and corrupt, like Telefónica. Check out HelloCard's phone card rates tarifas for other countries.
Phone cards in Santiago, Chile are typically sold at kiosks, corner stores and Internet Cafés. HelloCard is currently being sold at various locations in the Providencia neighborhood of Santiago, Chile. The card is extremely new, and so is their website. According to them, it's just a matter 1-2 weeks before they have all the specific locations puntos de venta listed on their website, telling you where you can go to buy these phone cards in Santiago.
Update: I got some puntos de venta here for ya!
Ricardo Lyon (frente al 62)
Providencia 1912 ( frente al banco de chile)
Providencia 1740
Providencia 1590 ( frente a la Biblioteca Providencia )
Ahumada 366 - A
Vecinal con Apoquindo Vereda Sur
Providencia 1053
Holanda 2502
Apoquindo con el bosque (frente banco Bice #2880)
Luis Tayer Ojeda (frente al 0180)
Apoquindo 2705 (frente al BCI)
Salida Metro Tobalaba (frente mcdonalds)
Suecia #03
Providencia 2277-79 (esquina Suecia)
Providencia frente al 2181
Carlos Antunez (frente a notaria Riveros)
Frente 2348 (esquina Bucarest)
Providencia 266
posted by Chileno @ 1:46 PM
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3 Comments:
That’s great! I do a lot of development for companies who sell these types of prepaid cards, so I use them all the time. One of the other things I've found with Voip is that I'm able to port a Chilean telephone number to my home here in the US. This allows my family in Chile to call a local number and have it ring my home phone in the US.
Yeah, VoIP can be a dazzling maverick in that sense. I got a similar thing with Skype: I have a 415 (San Francisco) area code and my family or clients or whoever can call me from the US as if it were a local call.
Problem is I usually just check my messages then have to figure out a better way to call them back or route the conversation into email. But I understand that poor Skype quality in Santiago, Chile is a unique problem to Telefónica's cables which are overstrained. Still it's worth having a Skype account for the US number.
It looks like I might be on VTR pretty soon, I've heard they're better...
But be wary of VTR as well... I remember a friend of mine sending an email to France to apply for a project there. The recipient had a "@wanadoo.fr" address. Now, Wanadoo is one of France's biggest internet providers, a major player in the market in Europe.
The thing is, the email didn't get through, because VTR uses their own DNS tables and don't keep them as updated as they should.
She called VTR to complain only to be told that "if the message was that important she should have phoned instead."
This kind of customer support is quite common in Chile, especially from companies which operate call centers with staff who often don't really understand the product their selling.
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