One of the most useful tools for frequent travelers, Skype, has made a significant change to its business model, which unfortunately affects the ability of most people to use the program efficiently for international road warriors.
It is no longer possible for Skype users to charge the account with a $ value (Skype Credit); instead, you must now buy a subscription for each country on a monthly basis if you want to call regular numbers.
This basically renders the tool useless to me for anything other than calling 1-800 numbers of various companies, and it really forces me to look for an alternative now, which is rather annoying.
I have been using Skype since it was started, and I remember sitting on the computer for hours, calling BMI Diamond Club and U.S. Airways Dividend Miles to set up reservations. While it would still be possible to call a big airline in the U.S. (since they all use 1-800/1-888 numbers) you can’t call any other number anymore that would incur charges unless you have a subscription for that country/region if all your Skype credit has been used up.
This change was done suddenly and I really didn’t expect it. In fact I was questioning my sanity when I recently just wanted to add another $10 as I had always done via the quick charge button in the profile and it was no longer there.
I then tried to see via Google if this is a known problem and guess what – they ended it:
Why does this affect me (and possibly yourself as well)?
I usually use my Thailand-based AIS Travel Sim for data roaming and that covers me well with a very reasonable cost however it doesn’t include voice calls and every now and then I have to make such calls while traveling.
- Airport Hotel not sending their shuttle? Have to call.
- Airline just having a general phone number in their country of origin? Have to call.
- Want to contact a hotel directly and speak to them regarding a reservation or urgent question? You have to call, etc.
I normally place enough such calls that I have to charge my Skype ~ twice a year, at least until now, as this option is apparently no longer available:
The Auto-Recharge no longer works either despite a valid Amex card being in the profile.
So rather than just dropping $10 into the account and being able to use it year after year, you now have to buy subscriptions:
Now, these are unlimited options. There are packages of about 100 minutes for $2.99, and I basically had to buy one of those for Germany last week, making some calls over the holidays. But the prices for the packages are not cheap.
In my particular case for Asia, there isn’t even a package for all countries. You would have to get one for Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan separately, and that just doesn’t make any sense to me.
Of course, you can still use up any credit you have left in the account in the traditional way. If there is some loophole you can use to still fund the account with credits I’d love to know.
I only use it for emergency calls, such as when I had to call the Grand Hyatt Incheon, ANA Reservations in Japan, or the Hyatt Regency Hong Kong recently.
This isn’t the first time Skype (or, better, Microsoft) threw a wrench into the machine because a bit over a decade after Microsoft bought it for $8.5B in 2011, recently Skype was somehow more and more integrated Skype into the Microsoft 365 Ecosystem without the user really noticing it. My account didn’t even have a Microsoft email, but I was logged into my Hotmail account, so that automatically created a separate Skype account, and all my charges went to that “invisible” new profile, all while I wondered why my App doesn’t show the new account balance.
Maybe offering these calls to actual phone lines rather than just Skype-to-Skype has become unprofitable for Microsoft, hence why they did this, but as it stands right now, it’s no longer a user-friendly tool for me, and I should have seen the writing on the wall when I read this 2023 CNBC article about the company.
Conclusion
If you’re a frequent traveler who has used Skype while on the road internationally, then you might get caught off guard by the recent changes Microsoft has implemented as they own Skype since 2011 but have left it largely untouched – until now.
To say that the developments around Skype were annoying in 2024 is an understatement, and I guess I only have myself to blame for sticking around this long. But it was very convenient – until it wasn’t.
I guess this is finally the point where I have to look for other alternatives, such as Google Voice, which I’ve already been using for receiving voicemails and SMS/OTP messages for quite a while. I wish more companies and hotels would go messenger based such as Finnair and Virgin Atlantic. I also ask hotels proactively if they have a messenger service and save it in my contacts. This is very common nowadays, especially here in Asia.
If you have any suggestions on what service other than Google Voice to use, please drop a comment below.
