Customer Service:
We signed up with WorldxChange via their web site and it took forever to get the service switched. Also it was never clearly stated when the service is being switched nor an information has been given that the service has been switched. A strange thing to note is that the names on the calling card were spelled incorrectly even though we typed them on their web forms.

The availability of the customer service is also quite questionable. It is advertised that they are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week but don't hold your breath while waiting on the line. You are much more likely to win the lottery than to talk to a person before you pass out. Long waits are a problem but what do you call it when you can't even connect to their toll free support line when your long distance service is down (see Phone Line Availability).

Phone Line Availability:
Unbelievable, but yes this is an issue. We never experienced that a phone line was not available but with WordxChange's service. We experienced it twice. No, it was not that the phone line was down. We still could call local and toll free numbers. Just the long distance service was not available for an extended period of time. And of course during that time it was impossible to contact WorldxChange's customer service. We requested several times through calls and e-mail for an explanation of this unavailability of their service, however, no reasonable explanation was given.

Billing:
The billing is only available on their web and lists only the current unbilled calls and the last billing period. No notifications are sent via mail or e-mail that the new billing period has started and billing for previous periods are not available online. So if you don't get the bill right away you might never see the bill. To make things even harder, their web based billing system is often not online or working correctly. Just to top it off, the security of their web based billing system is horrifying. No SSL and no logout to terminate the session exists. I'm sure that even a novice is able to hack into the system and retrieve your billing statements, which list all the details including phone numbers. During the first few months we had service with them it was not even possible to change your password which was set to the last four digits of your phone number. If you are a novice hacker you might want to know that the login is the phone number of the customer.

Finally the bill itself is not very clear. It's easy to see the phone calls you made but to find out when and how much your credit card has been charged is not easy. Also there are some charges and credits that are quite confusing, like the "Incoming 800 charge" and the "Volume Discount".

Phone Cards:
Using the phone card is actually simple as long as you have the card with you. The toll free number that you have to dial does not give you any voice prompt that informs you what to do, instead you just get a tone after each number that you have to enter. WorldxChange either hasn't charged calling card calls or they aren't shown clearly on the bill, we believe the second is happening as there are some weird "Incoming 800 Charges".

Addendum:

July 17, 2000:
We moved within our town and had our service from WorldxChange transferred to our new phone number. Without our knowledge WorldxChange substituted our plan with a different one that had a monthly charge. Apparently they didn't have the other plan anymore. Of course this and previous complaints caused us to switch our long distance service to PEC. We really should have done that earlier.

December 16, 2003:
Just to keep things up to date I wanted to mention that WorldxChange is now known as Acceris Communications Partners (http://www.accerispartners.com). I'm not able to tell you if their service has been improved since I'm quite happy with my current provider (see previous addendum).