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Bug Communications Technology

Skype Billing Gone Haywire For Some Users 154

Posted by timothy from the looks-fine-from-here dept.
Cousin Scuzzy writes "This morning I awoke to 26 e-mail messages from Skype and PayPal notifying me of multiple payments for my Skype account that had been charged to my credit card and subsequently refunded. At first I suspected that this was a new wave of spam that had slipped through my defenses, but it quickly became apparent that they were legitimate messages. I then began to worry that my Skype account had been compromised. The first message from Skype thanked me for setting up their "Auto-Recharge" service which automatically purchases Skype credit when the balance falls below a certain amount. This was very suspicious, as I had never requested this service. Based on posts to Skype's forum, it now appears that there have been serious billing problems at Skype relating to Auto-Recharge for over a month. Although I believe that all unauthorized charges to my credit card have been refunded, it is worrisome that Skype, or anyone, would charge my account erroneously. Skype, for their part, has not yet e-mailed me an explanation or posted one online. This problem reinforces my aversion to automatic bill payment services that give companies the authority to draw money from my bank account at their discretion." For all the Skype users out there, have you experienced this? For what it's worth, the company's own response on the linked forum thread says that the problem is now solved.
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Skype Billing Gone Haywire For Some Users More

Skype Billing Gone Haywire For Some Users

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  • No (Score:3, Informative)

    by Smivs ( 1197859 ) <smivs@smivsonline.co.uk> on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @10:44AM (#28011699) Homepage Journal

    For all the Skype users out there, have you experienced this?

    Nope!

    • Something similar happened to me over a month ago. Two legit Skype charges on the credit card I have used with them. Identical, for a small amount. I hadn't made any purchases and was concerned about fraud. (Though I wondered why someone who had gotten my card info would spend it on $20 of Skype credit.)

      I talked with the Skype support people, who were understanding and responsive, but not informative. I canceled my card, changed passwords, etc. Skype reversed the charges without my having to get MasterCard

  • Skype isn't known for being forthcoming... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mister_playboy ( 1474163 ) on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @10:47AM (#28011747)

    I'm sure they will explain this situation right around the time they make a 64bit release for Linux... or release a version for Linux and Mac OS X that isn't horribly outdated in comparison to the Windows version.

    I hate Skype in many ways, but the plain fact is that Ekiga on Windows is worse than Skype on Linux, and I never managed to get one successful call to my girlfriend or family via Ekiga.

    If anyone knows of a cross-platform VOIP/webcam program that is better than Skype, I'd love to hear about it.

    • I second this. Does anyone knows a good crossplatform VOIP with webcam and open source if possible?

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Have you tried Gizmo5?
      http://gizmo5.com

      • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Awesome you were modded "interesting"... except, you're not.

        Gizmo5 only supports webcam on its windows client.
        The OS X client is from 2008.
        The linux client from 2007.
        Neither support webcam. Awesome.

    • /. Genius Bar (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mpapet ( 761907 )

      This should look *remarkably* familiar to some of you. http://www.counterpath.net/x-lite.html&active=4 [counterpath.net]

      It's clear by the number of comments looking for a 'good' voip client you may not have a handle upstream issues. The only way to actually get a handle on it is to debug the UDP traffic.

      1. NATing Most home networking devices have poor support for media NATing. (RTP/UDP The ones that have decent support are cursed with firmware supporting a single VOIP provider. This is where a device you can install

      • Is this really difficult? My phone supports SIP, and when I'm in my house it connects to my SIP provider and I can make and receive calls via SIP. The phone is just a basic Nokia thing, with the SIP client part of the standard features. I could use the same account with my SIP provider with a softphone on my laptop, but I haven't bothered yet. I didn't need to do anything with my NAT / firewall; the phone initiates the connection to the provider (sipgate, in my case) and the stateful tracking makes it w

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by zafo ( 654378 )

      Try Gizmo. It's a SIP-based alternative that works quite well.

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      There's zoiper (http://www.zoiper.com/) which is known to work well with these guys - http://www.voipfone.co.uk/ [voipfone.co.uk]
      Account sign up is free and calls to other users are free.

      (I work for them now but used their service for years before getting my current job).

  • It begin (Score:2, Funny)

    by Tachys ( 445363 )

    It begins the Rise of the Machines skynet has declared war on humanity...

    Oh Skype? never mind then

  • going on for months/years (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @10:53AM (#28011831)

    This happened to a friend of mine about a month ago. He got logged out of skype and couldn't get back in. Then he starts getting emails from Paypal about charges from his skype account for phone calls to somewhere in eastern Europe.

    He got his account and money back but his contacts had all been wiped.

    There is either a hole in skype or a piece of malware out there harvesting skype credentials. Google "lost skype account" or something like that.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by je ne sais quoi ( 987177 )

      Then he starts getting emails from Paypal about charges from his skype account for phone calls to somewhere in eastern Europe.

      I had this happen to me as well about a year ago. It looks like somebody is running a big scam in Eastern Europe. The strange thing is that I don't have a skype account, nor did I think I had a paypal account. In the end, I found out that at one point I bought an ELER [geekz.co.uk] t-shirt where the guy required that I create a paypal account and then I forgot I had created that. It took a f

    • Re:going on for months/years (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Cousin Scuzzy ( 754180 ) on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @11:28AM (#28012367)

      Looking into this further, it does appear that my Skype account was compromised last night. There were 428 international calls made with SkypeOut in a 13 minute period. And yes, Skype has my PayPal information, which in turn is linked to my credit card.

      In retrospect I was responsible for leaving a trail of financial data that allowed this to happen. Skype deserves credit for stopping the illegal activity so quickly. However, I'd prefer that Skype send me an e-mail for confirmation whenever account changes such as signing up for Auto-Recharge are requested. And obviously if an e-mail account change is requested I should get notified at my old address as well.

      This certainly showed me that I need to be more vigilant about protecting any account that is linked in any way to my bank and credit accounts. I had considered Skype to be a very low risk account, but that changed when I signed up for SkypeOut.

  • a good feature would be ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jsnipy ( 913480 ) on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @10:53AM (#28011843) Journal
    Just as papal can give you a front number to hide your credit card, they should enact the ability to make that number approve payments on a time frame basis or time frame + payee basis.

  • Yes I have experienced it... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by blahplusplus ( 757119 ) on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @10:54AM (#28011847)

    .. In my opinion skype is being hacked enormously. If you have a skype client open it is also a gateway to your computer. I had never put my credit card # in skype's billing database, but I DID have it on my computer in a text file, my best guess is that Skype is being massively hacked and be weary of using the skype client on your computer if you value your security.

    • Re:Yes I have experienced it... (Score:5, Funny)

      by eln ( 21727 ) on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @11:33AM (#28012453)

      but I DID have it on my computer in a text file

      This is a problem, because anyone who got access to your computer would have access to your CC number.

      To avoid this security hole, rather than keeping my CC number in my computer, I keep it on a small plastic card in my wallet.

      • No doubt but hence that is why I said that is my best guess, I'm not certain that is what occured. Hence my disclaimer that is 'my best guess', since it is one of the simplest explanations for why my CC was billed from another country and billed using skype (something I frequently had opened and used).

        There are many ways to get credit card numbers now-a-days, it COULD have been skype, or it could be the criminals got a list of CC's from somewhere else.

        Not only that you'd have to know what you were looking

    • Re:Yes I have experienced it... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Allicorn ( 175921 ) on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @11:53AM (#28012739) Homepage

      Fascinating. Can we see the evidence you base this opinion on? If Skype is indeed being "massively" hacked, there must surely be a massive mountain of readily available evidence?

      A quick google finds me plenty of angry, barely coherent forum posts by folks warning all their school friends about trojan-hacker-virusses spreading via Skype calls. I also find a not-unsurprising crowd of unfortunate users who blame Skype for genuine problems on their unpatched, unfirewalled XP-Home box.

      The most serious looking warnings I find are mostly of two types. (1) warnings to businesses about the dangers of letting your employees install a secure, encrypted, peer-to-peer, file-transfer system (Skype) on work computers and thereby leak company information. (2) a whole bunch of scam sites using the same cut'n'paste text to misleadingly label the W32.Warezov email trojan as some kind of Skype-based virus.

      I don't find - at first glance - a whole lot of serious articles from trusted sources claiming that Skype is a wide-open gateway to malware hell.

      Nonetheless - as a Skype user and general security-concerned geek - I'd always be interested to hear genuine evidence that Skype is a security hazard to users who would not accept random file-transfers of from unknown Skype contacts.

      Lets not forget that FUD is FUD even when it's not directed against Linux.

      • "Fascinating. Can we see the evidence you base this opinion on?"

        Consider the likely explanation:

        Recently installed skype, have never used this particular CC online, the CC# suddenly starts getting billed *for* SKYPE, i.e. skype is getting paid by someone else using my CC for skype calls from another country.

        The only conclusion one could possibly come to given the relationship between the two is that skype has been hacked and is being used to infiltrate other computers.

        Try a little occam's razor, and I said

  • Just a friendly reminder of how tenuous your status as a 21st century "consumer" can be. Quick: How many people/organizations are one simple fuckup away from making a raft of cryptic charges to your credit card? Sure, you can fight them; but it'll be a big hassle and, depending on how cooperative various parties are feeling, you may be stuck with fees, paying bills until things are sorted out, years of harassment by collections people, and/or a credit rating hit. How many more people/organizations could(and

    • > How many people/organizations are one simple fuckup away from making a raft of cryptic
      > charges to your credit card?

      Very few. If such a thing were to happen I would contact the bank and inform them that the charge was unauthorized and I refuse to pay it. In my admittedly limited experience the bank will then charge the amount back to the merchant and demand that he prove I authorized the charge.

      > How many more people/organizations could(and possibly already are) tacking on little
      > charges he

      • Very few. If such a thing were to happen I would contact the bank and inform them that the charge was unauthorized and I refuse to pay it. In my admittedly limited experience the bank will then charge the amount back to the merchant and demand that he prove I authorized the charge.

        In the US, that's generally true for a credit card. It's not necessarily true for a debit card. Both of the banks I've used have given "provisional" credit back when I've contested debit card charges, and the process for the inves

      • The very few times that I have been forced to give a CC number to an organization that I didnt trust who intended to debit without my approval (earthlink, I am looking at you), I have immediately called in my card stolen after the transaction was completed. This way, the auto-charges fail, and I get a paper bill that I can then pay. If they make noise and try to force me to allow them to autodebit again, same process. The CC company actually laughed the third time I called in a lost card in less than 6 mont

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by blueZ3 ( 744446 )

      I'm not sure I agree...

      I've had problems with credit card charges in the past (three times in the last six or so years) and because of the consumer protection laws that CC companies are forced to comply with, it was essentially painless to fix--leaving aside the time for a single phone call and filling out the snail mail form they sent. They aren't allowed to require you to pay fees or disputed amounts. If they're trying to stick you with this, you need to let your state AG know.

      I reconcile my credit card s

  • Biling (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @10:55AM (#28011877)

    I am with Skype/Paypal Customer Service Biling. Please submit your account and credit card info hear and well ensure all refunds will be examined. Thank you

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by dkleinsc ( 563838 )

      I'm sorry, that sort of attempt at biling fraud makes me puke.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Chyeld ( 713439 )

        Yes, they should have at least spelt it as here instead of hear and registered a official sounding name rather than 'anonymous coward'. Who the hell is going to trust their bank info to someone with that name?

        • If it had been just once, I'd have let it go. Since Mr AC did it twice, I figured it was a worthy target of a pun, that's all.


  • This problem reinforces my aversion to automatic bill payment services that give companies the authority to draw money from my bank account at their discretion.

    There is really nothing wrong with automatic bill payment. I do it with a secondary checking account. To which I add money when bills are coming due. They can't withdraw more than there is and I have yet to be charged an overdraft fee.

    A third checking account if for my pay check and only my pay check. Everything comes out on pay day.

    I am very tem

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by blueZ3 ( 744446 )

      It's better (IMO) to use a credit card with your PalPal account than to rely on the fact that you haven't had an overdraft yet. Credit card companies are forced to comply with a fairly consumer-friendly set of regulations (limitations of liability, not charging interest or attempting to collect disputed amounts) that your bank is not. Giving up banking details--to PayPal, epecially--seems fraught with risk.

  • transaction processing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Red Flayer ( 890720 ) on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @11:03AM (#28011981) Journal
    This is what happens when transactions are done based on results of database queries and/or spreadsheet analysis. One error is made, someone attempts to reverse the batch of transactions to correct the error, and makes another error. Then someone else steps in, and compounds the problem. In the end, the only way to get it back to some semblance of the correct state is to go back and run the transactions in opposite amounts from the top of the stack (LIFO).

    This is what happens when you have technical people (especially not-so-competent technical people) handling financial transactions.

    Workflow for payments and other financial transactions should come from your source document (it doesn't have to be a literal document, it can be an authorization entry, etc). The accuracy of the data capture at this point is essential. If you use a key value to grab most of the data needed, validation needs to be very strong.

    Source --> Data Capture --> Validation --> Set-up of transactions --> Validation --> Execution --> Data capture of results --> Validation --> Update file --> Validation .

    I personally have seen many failures because of errors in validation, and the ensuing mess as well-meaning people try to correct the error. Nothing like 36 db entries and half a wasted day just to correct a single error that a user offshore made overnight, then compounded with the "helpful" input of his team members... and then the ensuing clusterfuck of explaining to the client what had happened, what we'd done to ensure it wouldn't happen again, and many, many apologies.

  • I know it can be convenient, but I think it's just crazy to let anyone directly charge your CC or worse yet, your bank account.

    The era of buggy software which can make enormous mistakes quickly, hacked software which is out to get you, and corporate overlords who look at their customers as the enemy, makes it far to risky to grant them such access.

    I won't do it.

    Even if it's a CC and you can get it fixed, it's going to be a hassle.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by blueZ3 ( 744446 )

      I've had three mistaken CC charges in the last six years and it's never been a hassle to get them reversed. In each case a single phone call and the return of a snail-mail letter (in a postage-paid envelope) sufficed. This of course depends on having an account with a reputable credit card company, not Joe's All-you-can-charge-bank. The consumer protection laws seem to work pretty well to protect credit card customers, though that's just my personal experience.

      On the other hand, I would never, NEVER give my

    • but I think it's just crazy to let anyone directly charge your CC or worse yet, your bank account.

      The only time I've had a problem with this is one that I traced to an occasion when I had no alternative to making an internet transaction on someone's Windows box while I was on holiday. Either the antivirus software didn't do its job or the machine was compromised in some other way, but shortly afterwards my c/c account was slugged for a bit over $800 by clickandbuy.com, with whom I have never had any deali

  • Dreamhost (Score:3, Informative)

    by horatio ( 127595 ) on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @11:05AM (#28012021)
    Dreamhost had an issue last year where they incorrectly billed customers to the tune of millions of dollars [dreamhost.com]. They seemed to be quite up front about what happened, apologized, returned the money [dreamhost.com] as quickly as possible and really tried to figure out how to not have it happen again.

  • It can't mean that! Can it? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I am afraid to have to say that the Belgian police agree with me that the situation can only mean one thing, that my password was obtained by thieves from Skype: I hold a post which means that security is a day-to-day habit, and passwords are not written down anywhere as a result at my end. My usage pattern is such that it is very clear both the fraudulent attempts to extract funds from my account and the fraudulent use of my phone subscription were not of my doing, that the data could not possibly have been extracted by any means as it has not been input in years, and that it is just not credible to put this down to a software fault as a result: telephones don't suddenly start calling the other side of the world at the same instant money takes itself into its own head to start paying itself to both PayPal and VISA. Similarly, the many other similar complainants indicate that this is not the users' fault, but Skype's. As a result, a dossier has been opened for theft and you should be hearing from the Belgian Police and Luxemberg Banking Regulators in the near future.

    Actually, it can mean more than one thing. It can mean that Ebay/Skype do not employ any sort of heuristics to watch the treasure trove of unlimited VoIP minutes available to those who can hack the database of user/passwords. It can mean that the PayPal/Skype agreement is triggered by the "need" to refill each account as it is depleted of funds. Therefore, though all accounts have not been effected yet, this may be true only because there are a limited number of minutes that the hackers can use at any given

  • ...Free Software Project Number 3 [fsf.org]. This is just an illustration of why alternatives [fsf.org] are so desperately needed.

    Friends don't let friends use skype.
  • I had something similar happen with one of my bank accounts. I had set up a new loan for a car with the same company that I had my other loan through. The only change was that I had set up this second account to auto-bill a different bank account. I then discover that they had decided to auto-bill the first account at the same time as the first. This led to a significant negative balance (because it normally had just enough at the beginning of each month to pay said bill). It took several hours and calls to

  • Your conclusion doesn't follow.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cortesoft ( 1150075 ) on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @11:24AM (#28012307)

    I don't understand why this occurrence would make you want to avoid automatic payment systems... You didn't sign up for the automatic payment system in this case, and you still had a problem.

    Clearly the not using the automatic payment system doesn't help you avoid this problem. In reality, there is no way to NOT give a company permission to charge your account repeatedly whenever you pay for something online... (unless you use one of those one time credit card numbers). I don't think it is practical to advise never paying for anything online, so you always run the risk of accidentally being charged the wrong amount. The only prudent action is to always monitor your accounts to make sure all the charges are legit.

  • I avoid anyone dipping their fingers into my accounts and mucking things up.

    Back when direct deposit was starting to become more common, a former girlfriend was paid that way and found her checking account overdrawn when they made an adjustment. (And no, they wouldn't cover the overdraft fees.)

    Now sure, she shouldn't have relied on her balance statement alone, and nowadays some of us create separate accounts for those things, but it's much more of a hassle to try to track and keep accurate records and shif

  • NEVER EVER EVER (Score:4, Insightful)

    by just fiddling around ( 636818 ) on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @11:31AM (#28012409) Journal

    Give ANYONE direct witdrawing access to any of your bank accounts, or they will one day use it as their personal piggy bank.

    Even if you only deposit what you owe them in the accound, you will face overdraft fees.

    Anyway, that is an ugly hack in the age of internet bill paying. All my bills are paid (a) on a credit card if it cannot be avoided OR (b) registered in my bank portal so I can send a payment at my leisure. The two options give me full control of who gets how much, and when.

    And in the event of a dispute about the amount owed, I can still pay the rent because I only have one call to make to initiate a chargeback. I know people who got their main account emptied by Bell after an "error". If Bell cannot be trusted, who can?

  • I use Citibanks virtual numbers which lets me give a virtual number and then fix the amount to that number and time limit. I usually choose the exact amount as the limit and time limit of 2 months. This way no merchant can force me to use automatic payments. I have noticed that in Skype it automatically selects automatic payments for you and you need to be careful to make sure it does not get selected. If you go to the next screen and then come back it gets selected again. So you have to be careful

    • I, too, use a Citi credit card which lets me generate virtual credit card numbers on the fly. Very handy. Set your own credit limit (up to your max) and expiry date (2-12 months from now). Once that credit card is charged once, only the same merchant can use it again.

      Recently I bought something on the Internet. It would cost $78, so I created a virtual card with a $90 credit limit and submitted that. I went through the purchase on the web, but I wasn't sure it was cmoplete; the final web page gave me a

  • It's just Skype becoming sentient.
  • I've read several articles that tend to ramble about Skype's security. Most of it's speculation though since Skype uses proprietary software. Obviously no program is 100% secure, but I think w/ the millions of accounts, and it's history of running w/ a nefarious crowd if there was a huge security link the shit would of hit the fan by now. Still it's not a bad idea to close skype when you're not using it, and watch your account closely.

  • It's not often a good idea to grant a company automated billing, but then again, some tech operations depend on it, and consumers are all about the convenience.

    But, once a company ... ANY company, abuses it, you should cut them off and insist they bill you and wait, like everyone else has to, for payment.

    It's an abuse of trust, and that should never be tolerated or rewarded. If the offending firm complains that to revert to old fashioned billing would be too expensive, tell them you don't believe them, sinc

  • Everybody makes mistakes... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by feepness ( 543479 ) on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @12:10PM (#28012991)

    Although I believe that all unauthorized charges to my credit card have been refunded, it is worrisome that Skype, or anyone, would charge my account erroneously.

    Companies make errors all the time. I suggest you spend a few moments reviewing your statements when they come in. It is pretty obvious when mistakes are made, and they seem to happen most often with cellphones.

    This is one reason I like to stick to paper statements. It reminds me to look at them when the bill comes in.

  • Agree-to-this! (Score:3, Informative)

    by revjtanton ( 1179893 ) on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @01:03PM (#28013809) Homepage Journal

    A little over a year ago I moved from FL to MD and I had DirecTv. I moved for a job with short notice so my fiancee and I had to move in with her mother for a month until we found a place. The DirecTv followed us to MD for free, but when we moved to our condo there was a problem.

    DirecTV doesn't state it online but when you move using their "Movers Connection" you've agreed to extend your service by 6 months, and you've agreed not to move again for those same 6 months. If you do move or cancel within those 6 months they charge you the full cost of your original move plus fees...and they charge your card automatically!

    Like I said there was no notice online of such a stipulation, nor did the agent who set up my original move inform me of that criteria. My card was charged $600 4 days before my wedding putting me overdrawn and causing my rent to bounce...putting me down an additional $1500...and I had to pay for some things for the wedding. When I questioned DirecTV about the agreement they said there is no place to view it online, they dont have a document to send, but they assured me that I did, in fact, agree to some silly agreement by moving in the first place.

    This story is relevant to the posting because of the automatic withdraw. If they billed me that is one thing, I could call them and work it out, but instead they automatically took money off of my default method of payment simply because it was there. How is this OK with people?! Eventually I got all of my money refunded and a full apology from DirecTV for the hassle...needless to say Im with Verizon FiOS now.

    This whole thing burns me up. I think Penny Arcade summed up our collective frustration nicely here [penny-arcade.com]. I have been working on creating a wiki to translate user agreements to plain English so we can all get an easier glimpse at the crap we're agreeing to, and the "rights" we forfeit to our utilities etc. Furthermore the site will branch off into areas where those who are commonly disadvantaged can come together to take legal action against companies who blatantly violate their privacy (like Skype did in the post) or their right to know what they agreed to (like my DirecTV situation). Government is supposed to enforce what we the people deem morally just, yet it seems that whatever the government deems legal we all assume is moral...that doesn't make sense to me. Its about time we started revisiting how we're conducting ourselves in my opinion.

  • Skype's Billing and "Plans" need overhauls! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Ka D'Argo ( 857749 ) on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @04:24PM (#28016897) Homepage
    I had a major issue with Skype when I signed up with them in January. For $2.95 (in America) you can get their Unlimited, key fucking word here, Unlimited calling plan. $2.95 a month. I figure ok that's a great deal, low cost VoIP bandwidth maybe, so I signed up for that. Transaction went through just fine, within minutes I was calling family and friends across the country with ease from my PC.

    Then my account shut down. I was talking to a relative and the call dropped. I attempted to call back, Skype came up with an error message saying I needed to purchase "Skype Credits". Which from reading the plan, I knew I didn't need. I thought maybe it was a bug or lag, so I relogged Skype, dialed again, same problem. I get more curious and hit the Skype support forum.

    A few searches showed people with a similar error. Except it's not an error, it's Skype bending customers over a barrel. Apparently, there is a hidden clause, and I do mean hidden cause it is NO WHERE in their Terms of Service or any policies they have online, that states any account signed up with the "Unlimited" calling plan has a limit of 6 hours of talk time a day. Now you're thinking "ok that sucks but it's still good for $2.95 a month, free long distance, just call back the next day." WRONG. If you exceed your 6 hour limit, which YOU have to monitor yourself, your account becomes null and void. You can't use it anymore. When the next month comes around, the next billing period if you are using more than per-month payment, they will reset all accounts and you can then again use your account.. So I spent $2.95, talked 6 hours, then my account was just void for 31 days. This was not stipulated anywhere on their website and even their forum moderators who help people with technical support stated "Skype is currently working on revising our ToS to include this 6 hour limitation.".

    Now again I know what you're thinking, if they didn't tell you about a policy for a service they offer, how can they hold it against you? They do. They will NOT issue you a refund, they will NOT make any exception about the matter, hell they act like the user is supposed to be psychic and know this. Granted, they may have updated their information since January of this year but at the time there were hundreds of threads on their forums about this, dozens of people out money. I had to resort to buying two more additional accounts since my first one got closed, just to make sure I had enough talk time per day. Every 24 hours the "limit" is reset so if you talked for 5 hours 58 minutes on Monday, Tuesday at 5pm EST it is reset so you can use it another 6 hours.. So my two accounts gave me 12 hours just ya know, to get around their HOUDINI-like ToS..

    Last I saw several people were considering a class action lawsuit about it on their forums. If that ever happens who knows, I mean yea I know someone will mod this down and be like "QQ more it's only $2.95". Sure, that's a small fee for free long distance in North America but when you buy something labeled as UNLIMITED ya know, ya don't expect a 6 hour LIMIT.

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