Another way I have seen this done is to sell units, not pounds and pence credit
eg a £2 calling card has 160 units (ratio of 80 units to the pound). If you were to charge 8p per min you make that 8 units per min. This gives you a 20% increase which might help if your on per second billing to your upstream carrier. otherwise you need to make changes to your rating engine with a " /60*58 " to re-rate all calls back to a second ( /60) and move the minuite charge to be a 58 second minuit (*58) how that is achived needs you to give specific information on which calling card platform you are using. You may have a problem in defining the rates as "per minuite" if they are not a widely understood minuite legally - it depends on the laws of your country (in the UK the Trades Descriptions Act would apply and you'd be hit hard) David On 16/06/05, Race Vanderdecken <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Your customers are not going to like this. > > You have to change the way you bill for calls. > > For $1 your customer gets 60 seconds worth of phone time. However you > have to also charge, like the Bells used to, for setup and teardown > time. Remember the operator used to say " Deposit $1.85 for the first > three minutes" and then it would be 30 cents per minute after that. > > Buy a phone card from a competitor and look at the fine print on the > card. > > You charge buy seconds they are connected to your system, not for the > time they are actually talking to the remote party. > > Example: > > To set up the call you charge 10 seconds, and to stop the call you > charge 5 seconds. So the customer only gets 45 seconds of call time. You > get a 15 second cushion. > > Does not seem fair does it. But if they buy an hour 3600 seconds worth > of calls the missing 15 seconds won't be noticed. > > You can go further. > > Say they buy a 3600 second card. When they call to check their time the > first time on the card you tell them they have 60 minutes, but you > charge them 30 seconds for asking. Set up the code so that every time > they call you have too fields to track call time. The time they think > they have and the time you know they have. > > You tell them they have 45 minutes, but the other field knows they only > have 30 minutes. If they ask then your script says "45 minutes left" but > you cut them off when the use 30. > > Then you chip away each time the call. 10 seconds for making a call, and > 5 seconds when they hang up. This way you are always in credit and can > cut them off without loosing money. > > Some card vendors go even further. They sell 3600 seconds, but each time > a call is made they whack a random percentage of the time. > > Worse yet their card system will randomly or systematically hang up on > callers. This will cause the user to redial the call and get hit with > connection charges that vary. > > Customers eventually figure out which cards do this type of chicanery > and they stop buying them, but only if there is a competitor for the > route they want to call. > > Such is the world of unregulated phone calls. Not pretty is it. > > Charging time for each call is part of the business. If you don't want > to charge time to setup and teardown then you have to charge more per > minute. Your customers get all the time the pay for down to the second, > but you are going to have to charge more per minute or you will be in > the boat you are in now. > > Race "the tyrant" Vanderdecken > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Darren > Wiebe > Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 1:06 AM > To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion > Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Bill seconds > > I've done a little thinking on this one.... If you are using ASTCC, it > would be fairly straightforward to edit it and have it make a 2 second > adjustment. If your using another solution it probably would be fairly > easy also... > > Darren Wiebe > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Americo Sanchez C. wrote: > > > > > Hi all, > > > > We've installed Asterisk on a rural development project and we're > > testing a prepaid phone service. As far as now we're having terrific > > service results but there's a problem with the calls billing at our > > local telecom. For instance, a farmer buys a 1 dollar phone card and > use > > it to dial a USA number, the call should lasts for 60 seconds. > Asterisk > > is doing a great job finishing the call exactly at 60 seconds. The > > problem is that the telecom company billing system adds a two second > > delay for each call, so the bill is not for 1 but 2 minutes (they > round > > fractions up). > > > > We're loosing money and the local telecom doesn't seem to have a > > solution for this matter. > > > > Have you experienced something similar? Do you have any idea of how > can > > we solve this? Is it possible to configure Asterisk so that the system > > thinks that a minute has 58 seconds instead of 60? > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > > MSN Amor: busca tu ½ naranja http://latam.msn.com/amor/ > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Asterisk-Users mailing list > > Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com > > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users > > To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: > > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users > > > > _______________________________________________ > Asterisk-Users mailing list > Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users > To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users > > _______________________________________________ > Asterisk-Users mailing list > Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users > To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users > _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users