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Skype Credit is no longer available
- xvector 2y agoSkype is still alive!? Back in the day my entire extended family used it to connect with each other across the globe. But today? I don't know a single person, old or young, that still uses it!
- lemiffe 2y agoI use it every month for book club meetings, just for convenience, it’s easy to use and hasn’t changed much in years and years
- relyks 2y agoIt's definitely still one of the best consumer VoIP solutions and I've found that video/audio calls still work really well, better than other apps
- aphroz 2y agoI still use it daily, the business version was swallowed by Teams but I hope Skype will survive, not as bloated and just does the job.
- wkat4242 2y agoThe business version was nothing to do with the real Skype though. It was just a lame rebranding of Lync. Just some Microsoft branding BS. If it still existed now it would have been called copilot video or something :)
- kmlx 2y agoi know of two companies (via acquaintances) that use skype (the regular non business version). one is a medium sized spam company that trades IPs and malware from eastern europe whose spam clients are all using skype. and the other is an online porn company whose contractors are all using skype. i couldn’t find out why they’re not using something else.
- paxys 2y agoHas any popular service disappeared overnight quite like Skype? It was common to set up Skype calls with friends/relatives as late as 2018-2019. Starting 2020 people would laugh at you if you even suggested it. What happened?
- wkat4242 2y agoMicrosoft happened.
- mirekrusin 2y agoBusiness analysts added their touch.
- itake 2y agoiMessage (family), FB (friends), and Slack (work) replaced my audio calling needs. If I truly need to call a US phone number, Google Voice will do it for free.
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoI live in perpetual fear for the day Google sends voice to the graveyard with 30 days notice
- usr1106 2y agoGoogle voice is a US-only thing. Not sure whether that's bad or good. At least I am not tempted to sell myself to Google.
- brabel 2y agoI’m still using it. Why would anyone laugh, it still does what it’s always done.
- Nursie 2y agoIt's what my mum's learned to use, so it still has a place in my life. The credit is useful when she's not on skype and I can use a few cents (if that) to dial her landline from the other side of the world and say "Hey, turn your computer on!". It's true this is no longer that special - I get a few hours international calls for free with my mobile plan these days so I don't need-need skype for it. I imagine the reason they want to move to a subscription model is that there are too many people like me - $10 credit lasts a few years and probably represents a liability on their books as well as a customer they aren't getting any more money from for some time.
- relyks 2y agoI hope they refund people or still allow people to use their existing credit... I use Skype to get a virtual number so I can call places in England from the U.S. before I visit there and so I can continue to use the same number while I'm in England :)
- sangel21 2y agoMy credit was credit from using bing. I use to use it on the rare case of needing to call my bank. (I live overseas)
- te_chris 2y agoOh man, I use Skype to call foreign numbers ever 4 months or so when we’re on holiday.
- usr1106 2y agoExactly. I still have to call foreign phones, but not regularly enough to really wanting a subscription. It can be 500 minutes one month and then close to zero for several. Pay as I go seems the right choice. But there seems to be no competition in that market. My cell operator charges something like 20-30 cents per minute and Internet-based services close down one after the other.
- thedailymail 2y agoI confess to still using skype w two old friends, mainly because i resisted getting a phone until a few months ago and couldn't text by SMS. But I'll be unsurprised when microsoft finally pulls the plug
- csomar 2y agoGreat. So now the only useful feature and why I keep Skype around is removed? I need this every 1-2 months where I need to make an international phone call. I am on different country every 2-3 months and my call can go to Europe, US or Japan. Skype credit was just amazing because I'd charge a 100 bucks and consume as I needed. Sometimes I need 30 seconds and sometimes it can be a lengthy 20 minutes. I don't understand this. Their new "plans" require that I subscribe to a full plan, for example, to call India? Does anybody have any good alternative?
- paxys 2y agoWhatsApp. Completely free, and every person or business in large chunks of the world (minus a few notable exceptions like the USA) is on it.
- paranoidrobot 2y agoUnfortunately, WhatsApp will not let you use it without handing them all of your contacts. I wanted to remain in contact with a friend that had moved overseas, so local texting/calling was no longer an option. They use iMessage and WhatsApp, and I don't have an iPhone. I can't add them as a contact, I can't get messages from them, I can't send messages to them - nothing, unless I hand over all of my contacts.
- na4ma4 2y agoOn Android I just rejected access to contacts. Then to add a contact enter their phone number specifically and it works for me.
- paranoidrobot 2y agoI reinstalled the app just now to re-check. Click the green 'Add chat' icon. It prompts: "To help you connect with friends and family, allow WhatsApp access to your contacts" with options for Not now, and Continue. Not Now closes the dialogue, and returns you to the main chat list. Continue launches the Android prompt for "Allow WhatsApp to your contacts", clicking Don't Allow returns you to the main chat list. So, unless there's something else you need to do... e: Make a Call works the same way. I can create a community and a group chat in that, and even send messages to the group. I can't add anyone to the group though, same "Give us your contacts" thing.
- cbsks 2y agoMy elderly grandmother who lives in the Bay Area uses Skype daily to talk to her sister in Hungary. I bought her an iPad a few years ago and loaded $50 of credits on it. I check her balance when I visit and occasionally top it off. Now I need to set up a monthly subscription?? As an aside, Skype has a terrible iPad app for accessibility. My grandmother can’t see very well anymore and needs the font to be increased a lot. The iPad Skype app doesn’t do well at large font levels. The interface spills out all over itself and it’s unusable. Microsoft badly needs usability testing.
- baxtr 2y agoSerious question: why not use FaceTime Audio (or something similar) these days?
- vrotaru 2y agoMaybe web.skype.com will be better? Just a guess. Anyway, that's how I use Skype when I still have to use it. Which is about once a month.
- cbsks 2y agoI didn’t know that existed. I’ll have to check it out. Thanks for the tip!
- gorbypark 2y agoThe company I work for (full time contract) uses Skype as their communications platform. Besides notifications sometimes being wonky and getting false missed call notifications (this only happens like once a month), it works well. I also have like $4 in credit left, I sometimes use it to call foreign numbers. It's a shame, really, since it works well and I in no way need a subscription because I use maybe $1/year in credit.
- sandbach 2y agoSimilar situation here. My company uses Skype for all in-house video calls, in large part because none of our clients uses it. So far, I haven't had any problems with it. The same cannot be said for Teams.
- amyames 2y agoLinphone works good for internal use and is free to other linphone users. The drawback is that unless you can in a newer version, you must choose between using your free linphone video messenger account OR your external sip account that can do landlines. Having mentioned both in this thread: my small business is using grandstream phones that receive calls on twilio [because it’s the only one that will ring up to 10 extensions on a single login], and then competitively make outbound on all the others I mentioned based on dialing patterns. And then we use linphone for internal video, since we’re a Linux shop and teams is out. [it’s wonderful but just exasperating that I can’t configure a second account and use it for everything.] Linphone otoh will call a proper SIP address for free, eg ourtelephonenumber@twilio or oursipusername@sip.telnyx.com so I can conference in Cisco tandbergs, or I can conference in someone on one of the grandstreams that way. [when linphone is configured as a linphone rather than a SIP phone]
- relistan 2y agoI was once called in and questioned by the police in Munich because of Skype’s phone service. When I moved to Germany, lots of places required a local phone number, including the bank to set up an account. But you needed a bank account most places to get a phone number. I will not follow that thread down all the you-can’t-get-there-from-heres. Anyway, to solve a problem, I got this fixed SkypeOut phone number. It turns out that O2/Telefonica provided the German numbers to Skype, and whoever had the number before me was committing some kind of fraud with it involving shipping containers. The police asked them who owned it and they said me. So the police called me in for questioning. I had no idea why. I don’t speak German and they didn’t provide translators. I luckily had a good, ex-punk friend who volunteered to translate for me. We spent a couple hours in the 1930s era police station. It all worked out in the end thanks to my friend and my retention of the sign up emails from Skype. But what a mess. Thanks Skype. Has made me leery of other similar phone number services.
- benjymo 2y agoThat really sounds awful, especially if you don't speak the language. If they only go by phone number I'd guess this could have happened with any phone. Companies regularily reuse phone numbers.
- Martinussen 2y agoI guess the phone company is more likely to see if they reassigned it, but Skype might not need to notify them/might have stopped doing that at some point.
- lambert99281 2y agoThis is happening due to Microsoft buying Skype so they could create/market Microsoft Teams. In their continuing push of Teams, Microsoft has eliminated the Skype Credit process entirely. I am canceling my Skype account and going with my cellphone provider's WIFI Calling feature. What we all knew and loved about Skype has passed away.......