I was looking at the Money Saving Expert website a moment ago to check the cheapest rates to the US and Australia. Although I haven't used them for some months, Ratebuster used to charge 1p a minute for both, and according to its website still does.

So I'm wondering why Money Saving Expert doesn't list them, as they're cheaper than a number of others that are listed.

Maybe Ratebuster is actually no longer charging these rates (I haven't tried it for a while). Or maybe the Money Saving Expert website price-checking system is not working as it should.

Anyone have any other ideas?

AJR wrote on Oct 13^th, 2006 at 11:10am:

I was looking at the Money Saving Expert website a moment ago to check the cheapest rates to the US and Australia. Although I haven't used them for some months, Ratebuster used to charge 1p a minute for both, and according to its website still does. So I'm wondering why Money Saving Expert doesn't list them, as they're cheaper than a number of others that are listed. Maybe Ratebuster is actually no longer charging these rates (I haven't tried it for a while). Or maybe the Money Saving Expert website price-checking system is not working as it should. Anyone have any other ideas?

If you want cheap rates to Australia there is a number of options available that I personally use/recommend and use often as I am in Australia :)

I have accounts with 2 main providers, www.sipme.com.au offer untimed calls to land lines for 9.9c (AUD), and for short calls I use www.pennytel.com which charge 2c (AUD) per minute and 18.9c (AUD) per minute for mobile calls.

If you want an inbound Australian number, www.oztell.com.au offer 2 DIDs for $6.95/mo (USD) one number can be used for fax to email.

For US calls, I have accounts with nufone.net and voipjet.com although voipjet seems to be having a lot of issues lately, if you were in Australia astratel might be an issue as they offer calls to a bunch of countries for 19c for up to an hour...

Hi AJR,

You may want to email (callchecker@moneysavingexpert.com) MSE's CallChecker and inform them.  It's likely they didn't realise.

I believe that MSE policy will only add new providers if they are actually cheaper to some specific destination, or I read this once quite a while back; dunno if it's still true.

If the providers know this, they can get around it by having fictitious destinations like Antarctica mobile or San Marino mobile (though this latter one is about to appear)

Also worth checking out the www.niftylist.co.uk calltracker as well as mse. They are mentioned on that one.

I thought that they were taken over by Carphone,although domain is still regd with Centrica(Brit Gas) who use to own them via Onetel.