SkypeOut pricing and voice quality - Part 4 (getting tired of waiting for Skype's reply)

Tony Austin
Tuesday, 28 October 2008 08:05

Opinion and Analysis

I suggested that an extremely simple improvement (which would involve minimal content management effort) would be to amend the Australian section of the SkypeOut pricing table to something like the following:

What has happened since then?

I just took a peek at the SkypeOut call rates page again, and it's a sad fact that the Australian section has not changed one iota since then.

Sad, because (as a practising webmaster and content manager in my own right) I know that the above suggested table amendments would be quite trivial to implement. It looks like change occurs at a glacial pace over there, wherever that might be.

Another necessity is for Skype to list pricing for other cases, such as Australian "premium" numbers (those with "1900" prefix, and so on), which typically cost AU 4 or 5 dollars per call.

In fact, the SkypeOut call rates page should give explicit pricing for every type of call  that can be placed in each country, together with the metering mechanism for each (rate per minute, per 30 seconds, flat rate, or whatever).

So far, doing this comprehensively and with commercial agility seems to have proved beyond Skype's capabilities.

Once again, my conclusion is that Skype provides an excellent product but — for Australia (and perhaps other countries) — inexcusably persists with inaccurate and incomplete pricing information.

I heartily invite a Skype representative to call me directly, and soon, to explain the above mysteries. I'm very easy to reach, my contact details are near the top of the home page of my web site: asiapac.com.au or notestracker.com