Calling cards get static from immigrants

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Saturday, Sept. 22, 2007 | 7:43 a.m.

For Adolfo Galvez, keeping in touch with his wife and 3-year-old daughter back home in Guatemala has meant learning a thing or two.

You change telephone calling cards every few months, because some cards lose minutes after being on the market for a while.

If you dial your wife's cell phone, you'll get fewer minutes than if you call her on a land line.

Then there are some things you just accept - fewer minutes than the calling card promises, dropped lines resulting in a loss of minutes.

If you complain? "There's no one who will listen," Galvez said.

The 30-year-old stood Thursday afternoon outside the Phone Card Super Center, a busy store near Bonanza Road and Eastern Avenue plastered with fiesta-colored posters offering dozens of $5 cards that allow immigrants and others to call foreign countries.

After four years in the United States, his experience with the cards has mirrored the results of a study released this week by the Hispanic Institute, a Washington nonprofit organization.

The study said the calling card industry is ripping off Hispanics and other immigrants, offering fewer minutes than advertised and hitting millions of immigrants , many of whom don't complain, with hidden charges.

Gus West, institute director, launched the study to coincide with Tele-Card Expo , held from Sept. 18 to 20 at the Sands Expo Center .

The cards are big business, perhaps $4 billion a year nationwide, according to convention materials.

In Clark County, an estimated 480,000-plus Hispanics make for a sizeable market, not to mention tens of thousands of others in the Las Vegas Valley with roots in other countries.

If the study is right and most of these cards are offering half the minutes they advertise, a lot of money is being taken from the hands of working people - maybe $1 million a day nationwide, West said.

He said attorneys general are investigating in California, Florida and New York, adding that it's not a question of the industry being unregulated.

"There are laws on the books," he said. "They're just not being enforced."

The Nevada attorney general's consumer protection division has not received many complaints about the cards, according to spokeswoman Nicole Moon.

Meanwhile, in the heart of the barrio Thursday afternoon, Yvonne Alfaro, 26, stepped out of a Western Union store where she buys calling cards.

Since arriving in the U.S. from Esteli, Nicaragua, six years ago, she has called her two sons at least once a week. The cards cost the cashier at a Primm gas station $5 a pop.

How much time do the cards promise for the money? An hour and 10 minutes. How long does she speak to her sons before being cut off? Usually 20 minutes.

She changes cards, seeks a better deal.

She calls a 1-800 number on the back of the cards to complain when the minutes are fewer than advertised. The company replaces some of the minutes, which disappear if not used the same day.

Maria Blanco, leaving the same store after paying a gas bill, has called her parents in Jalisco, Mexico, once a month since leaving them two years ago. Her $5 cards promise one hour, three minutes; they leave you in silence at 45 minutes.

Does she grouse?

"Why should I? They see your face, you're Latino - and on top of that, without papers."

Confronted with the study's results, Tele-Card Expo officials put Carlos Rodriguez on the phone.

He's the president of Blackstone Calling Card, a Miami-based company that the convention's Web site calls "a pioneer of the prepaid telecommunications industry."

Rodriguez said the Florida attorney general named his 12-year-old company in its investigation - "but only because we're one of the largest." He said his company, which sells $40 million to $50 million in cards a year, only distributes the cards to stores.

The stores, he said, handle quality control for the industry, because they get the complaints.

"A very small percentage result in complaints," he added.

Then he cast a metaphor having something to do with a can of soup, a nutrition label saying something different from what's in the can, all of which adds up to a central premise: "Every industry has its flaws ... But it's not everybody."

On Bonanza Road on Thursday afternoon, a candid girl at the sales counter said in Spanish that there were two $5 cards available to call Colombia. One offered 150 minutes. The other, 241 - "at least, that's what the poster on the front door says," she said.

"A lot of times, the company says one thing, but the cards offer another," she said.

"Customers complain, and I show them the 1-800 number. A lot of times, they don't answer the call."

Shortly after , the owner appeared.

"I don't produce the cards," he said. "I just sell them. They come in, they complain to us. We tell them to call the number. Sometimes they get through, sometimes they don't."

Then he begged off further questions, noting the time of day.

"I have to get the bank by 4 and make the daily deposit - otherwise I'm in trouble."