I would like to retract anything good I said about yahoo messenger phone out. In the past they have worked great but now they have switched from at&t as their carrier and are using jajah. At&t charged for the minutes talked but the new yahoo (jajah) charges from the second you select call until you hang up. Now you can use up all of your credit and not even connect to your party.
Now I must say At&t really sucks in this area also. I got an at&t clear connections card for $20. After many tries and several refunds from customer service because the card would not connect and charged you anyway I did manage to talk to my wife twice for a total of 45 minutes over a 2 week period of time before the card that was advertised good for 129 minutes expired. This could be called ignorance because I did not know At&t was such a joke. However I purchased a 20 dollar recharge for that card because I knew no other way to talk to her. That was really stupid. I have had their outsourced customer service refund close to $20 on that recharge for charges trying to connect and still have been unable to connect.
A friend told me about a card "Vigodnaya" that his wife buys at the Ukrainian market in Florida. I googled and found that card on lgrcard.com. I bought a $10 card and have talked to my wife 8 times already with that card and have only had one or two times it would not connect. Under an faq for this card I found that it starts charging 30 to 40 seconds after the connection ring so if no one answers in 30 seconds hang up. So I have incurred no charges on this card without a connection.