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About Me

Melissa
I grew up in a village of 500 people and now live in a beach town of 10 000. Wife to Jeff, Mama to Makenna and Jack. This is my place to share what's up with us, and the place where I sometimes need to pour my heart out about the not so sunshiney moments. This is my happy place. Thanks for stopping by :) Copyright 2012 by Melissa Wormington, that no part of this blog may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without permission from the publisher.
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The Wormingtons

The Wormingtons
Jeff, Makenna, Jack and Melissa. Spring 2012. Photo credit: Tricia Denomme/Hope Photography

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Do you Yak?

And by "Yak" I mean "on the phone", not "vomit".
Okay, so now that we have that out of the way...

In my ongoing quest to cut costs and save money, I have been looking for the best value when it comes to telephone, internet and cable/satellite rates. Currently I have my telephone and Internet bundled though one major Canadian Company, and for TV we have a Satellite Dish through another company.

A friend of mine told me about Yak. She uses it for her long distance calls. Instead of having them charged by her regular phone company, you can opt out of their long distance plan (no fee or penalty) by signing up for Yak.

Yak is a Canadian company. In Canada, all long distance calls, anywhere, anytime across the country are 3.5 cents/minute. With my phone company, I had a long distance plan that was a flat rate of 18.95/month for calls made anytime, anywhere within Ontario, not Canada as a whole. This wasn't a big deal to me though as I only currently call only one person living outside of Ontario anyway and his number is still an Ontario cell phone number.

However, I took my last phone bill and added up all the long distance minutes on it. When I took that total and multiplied it by Yak's rate of 3.5 cents/minute, it came to less than $5.
And there I was paying $18.95. And on my bill it said I had "saved " over $100 by using the flat $18.95 rate plan.

Huh. Well that was enough for me. So I checked out Yak's website.

There's a huge list of countries and their corresponding long distance rates/minute. Long Distance calls across Canada,to the US and China are all 3.5 cents/minute. Rates vary for all other countries, as you will see. I called the company at 10pm on a Friday night (love how we can do that now!) and signed up for their plan. Best part was that they take care of notifying my phone company. I still have my phone, same phone number, and everything else through them, and it is still bundled with my internet, I just no longer have a long distance plan with them. It took 5 minutes to complete the phone call, and three business days to complete the transaction. So now, I will most often be paying less than $5/month for long distance calls. If I don't make any long distance calls, I pay nothing. And there are no weird codes or anything to dial before making your call - it works exactly the same as before, just the bill is from a different company. And is a lot smaller.

Nice.

The monthly bill comes to you through email and you can opt to have it charged directly to your credit card or automatically withdrawn from your bank account.

While on the phone with them last Friday night they asked me how I had heard about Yak and I said "through a friend". Turns out she recieved a referral bonus which works out to about $5 off her next phone bill. All I needed to provide them was her phone number or her referral number, which is given to you once you start using their services.

You can use Yak for your cell phone too! Just make sure that by opting out of the long distance plan your regular company provides, you won't be penalized in any way.

My advice? Have a look at your phone bill, add up your long distance minutes and multiply the total by 0.035. That's what you would pay with Yak.

Are you with the right long distance plan?

If you decide to sign up and want to give them my referral number, that would be great. It's 409653. You can also give them your referring person's phone number if you don't have their account number. So if any of you reading this know Sheila and would rather use her as your referral, you could give them her phone number. But of course, don't feel you have to go that extra step.

Check it out! Save money!

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I used Yak for a long time because I had unlimited incoming calls and they had a feature at the time that would call you back if you dialed them, then you dialed the number to call, and it was $20/month. It showed on your bill as an incoming call. Brilliant.

Then I switched over to Worldline - and discovered it's even better! For about $5/month (plus $12/year admin fee, so really about $6/month) you get unlimited calling within Canada. You dial an access number, then dial the number you're calling. The person you are calling sees you in the Caller ID though. Definitely worth a try!