For several years I have had the long distance service for my house in upstate NY, the family beach house in NJ and two toll-free numbers provided by ECG. Their service is fine but their rates are kind of high and they have a lot of nuisance fees, notably a $5 low usage fee when my total bill is under $10 which it is about half the time. We are in what's known as a Tier 3 area, a rural non-Bell telco, which a lot of low cost LD companies won't serve. The beach house is VZ territory, no problem there.
The bills fluctuate a lot, notably the beach house has a $0 bill for eight months of the year, and about $25 when people are there in the summer. One toll-free number terminates here, [and the other] one at my sister's house in another Tier 3 area in Vermont.
I'm looking for someone else who will provide good service at lower cost, without so many nuisance fees. Any suggestions? Poking around on the net I found a company in Maine called Pioneer Telephone that looks promising with reasonable Tier 3 rates of 3.3 cpm and no monthly minimum if I get billed online. Anyone use them?
R's, John
PS: I'm NOT looking for dialaround, VoIP, calling cards, Skype, Magicjack, or anything else. I need something that will work when my wife picks up the phone and calls her mother, or my daughter calls home on the 800 number because she forgot her wallet. They're perfectly able to use all that other stuff, but they has better things to worry about and my wife would think it silly to have to do funky stuff just to save 1.5 cents/min.