Call Charges Add Up Fast | |
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For people wishing to talk to inmates at the Niagara County Jail, like most other jails who use Global Tel Link, or similar companies, it works like this: You contact Global Tel Link to charge a credit or debit card to put money on your phone in $25 or $50 amounts. The family member uses her credit card and puts $25 on her phone using the automated Global Tel Link phone number. It takes between five and 15 minutes to get through. There is a $5 charge to put the money on the phone. It is one of the few business models known that regularly charges users a fee to take their money. Every subsequent call has a connection fee. Your first phone call costs you, in addition to the $5 charge to put money on your phone, $1.85 to connect the call to the inmate. By the time you start your first call you have $18.15. A 30-minute call costs between $3 and $6. After your first call - at 10 cents a minute - you have $15.15. Each additional 30 minute call costs $4.85. After your second 30 minute call you have $1.85 to connect, $3 to talk. You now have $11.30. After the third call you have $7.45. A fourth call leaves you with $3.60. A fifth call leaves you with $1.60. You cannot make a sixth call because there is not enough to make the connection fee, and the $1.60 is forfeited. For $25 you get five 30-minute calls.
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Niagara Falls Reporter - Publisher Frank Parlato Jr. | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | OCT 29, 2013 |