rinseout said:
I know there was much ado about Skype and credit card charges made earlier this year. I recently purchased some SkypeOut credit with my VISA and it seems to have gone through smoothly without any trouble. I'll admit to being worried when I put the transaction through, but I got my credit and have used some of it. I'm still waiting for my credit card statement to make sure I didn't get hosed. Anyway, on the face of it, it seems like they've ironed out whatever the trouble was.
I'm interested to know your experience with SkypeIn, since that's the next thing I'll be doing.
Yeah, I don't blame you for being a bit concerned. I usually just use the PayPal service because I feel it's secure and after the problems that Mastercard has been having recently, I really don't want to risk a Skype card problem as well.
I think the SkypeOut works pretty well, though there are still a few things about it that need to be resolved (particularly with echo and degrading call quality).
The transaction for SkypeIn went very smoothly. I PayPaled my payment and within minutes (despite it saying it would take 30!) I had my shiny new American phone number
Pretty nice stuff.
I had called my mum before getting it to make sure that the number I got is in her call package (she pays a certain amount each month for unlimited calls in her local area--i.e., this Skype thing is going to save A LOT of money).
We could only try out the service for a few minutes just in case my new number isn't in her package. It worked really nicely on the first go. I was expecting some unreasonable problem, but it just didn't happen. I got her call just fine, was able to hear her well and, in fact, she said that the echo she usually receives when I use SkypeOut was even less of a problem on the SkypeIn.
I'll put it to more extensive use in the upcoming week to make sure that it doesn't have any hugely compromising problem for longer calls, but all in all, I'm really quite pleased with the results so far. It's nice to be making my PB into this ultimate, unstoppable, centre of focus in my room. It's become my notebook, my television, my vcr, my dvd player and now my telephone!
I've yet to try to voicemail feature. That will most likely be tested out tomorrow. This Skype stuff is great though. It used to cost me £5.00 for 152 minutes, then £7.50 for close to 10 hours and now it may turn out to be even cheaper. The price can't be beaten really as long as your caller is willing to put up with a slight echo.
For reference, I use a BlueTrek bluetooth headset for my Skype and connect to the internet via Airport Express. I've found that so far, with the resources available to me, this offers the best quality connection. Using the internal microphone and a computer speaker seemed to offer the worst connection quality.
