Pay per minute or per second

[TimTDP]

Is it more cost effective to have a contract that charges per minute of per second?

 

[PsyWulf]

Second

Ex:

Phone your gf for 3 seconds,billed for 1 minute
Phone her for 1 minute 1 seconds,billed for 2 minutes

They make a killing on all these extra seconds It's like bank charging you to the nearest hundred for all transactions,R99 becomes R100,R101 becomes R200

 

[Voicy]

Second

Ex:

Phone your gf for 3 seconds,billed for 1 minute
Phone her for 1 minute 1 seconds,billed for 2 minutes

They make a killing on all these extra seconds It's like bank charging you to the nearest hundred for all transactions,R99 becomes R100,R101 becomes R200

Not quite...

Billing per second for 1 minute works out a lot more expensive than billing per minute does for 1 minute.

I'm not sure on the rates, but per second is cheaper for anything under 2/3rds of every minute. So if you do a quick call, it's fine, but if you call for 5mins, then per minute billing is cheaper than per second.

It works out the same as renting a car vs buying a car. It's cheaper if you rent it for a day or 3, but if you rent it every day, it's cheaper to just buy it and use it every day.

 

[ginggs]

Second

Ex:

Phone your gf for 3 seconds,billed for 1 minute
Phone her for 1 minute 1 seconds,billed for 2 minutes

They make a killing on all these extra seconds It's like bank charging you to the nearest hundred for all transactions,R99 becomes R100,R101 becomes R200

Except that they charge a higher rate for per second billing than for per minute billing.

It may work out cheaper to talk for 5 minutes and 1 second and be billed for 6 minutes at the per minute rate than to be billed for 5 minutes and 1 second at the per second rate.

 

[TimTDP]

why can't they have simple rates which we can understand?

 

[PsyWulf]

Alright my statement was perhaps more focused on the "short" calls than the long calls precisely for this reason

 

[Voicy]

why can't they have simple rates which can understand?

Because companies profit off giving you an offer you can't understand.

 

[Speedster]

Also bear in mind on per minute packages you're charged per minute for the first 60 seconds, or part thereof, and then in 30 second increments afterwards. I tried to do the math a while back when I was due for an upgrade and figured it really is much of a muchness. Obviously the cellular companies have some clever people working out the details of these packages so that they're pretty much equal either way.

I suppose if you make a lot of short calls, less than 45secs, the per second will be a big advantage but otherwise it's 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.

 

[ajax]

Agree with Speedster.

I'm on per second myself, but use the friends and family discount (Cell C) to make my longer calls to a couple of regular numbers cheaper.

I think just in terms of the loss when calling someone and it goes to voicemail for just a second is enough reason to be on per second.

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

I've moved over to per second and on Vodacom 4 less its not as cheap as what I expected. I use the same amount of airtime per month for the same number of calls. What you save on the short calls, they make up on the longer ones.

 

[a-person]

why can't they have simple rates which we can understand?

Well how're they going to **** you in the arse without vaseline then?

 

[Kgabogk]

Still on the issue of per min or per sec call charges,how does interconnection rates work in the two rates ie,if I make a 5sec from network A to network B,how much is network A supposed to pay network B and vice versa