I’ve read a lot online about how users of AllOfMP3.com are unhappy (and even upset) about not being able to buy credits anymore to purchase music from the USA. Apparently, political pressure from the media industry in the US forced the big name credit card companies to withdraw their service. So what can you do? Is there a way to buy more credits from the USA anymore?

Yes, there is! A website called SongBoom popped up that allows you to buy gift certificates easily with PayPal. So if you live in the USA and still want to use AllOfMP3.com, check it out! They charge more than the card is worth, however; but you’re still getting a good deal: a song that previously cost $0.15 would now cost $0.18 when you include the price of the added on fee. Definitely a site to bookmark if you are (or used to be) an AllOfMP3.com user!

A warning to Skype users: you may be getting charged too much for your service! I have US phone number through the internet service “Skype”, which lets me have a local number there for people to call me wherever I happen to be in the world. When I went to renew it today, I was astounded to see that it would now cost me $60 to keep this number, despite there being no mention of this price increase anywhere on their website. I read through all of their pricing detail pages, and there simply wasn’t any mention of it: it should have cost me $38 per year just like the last time - right?

After some poking around, I noticed that the Skype prices were being shown to me in Euros, despite the fact that I had my currency setting set to USD, and my location as being the USA. Apparently, the good folks at Skype charge you different prices depending on where your IP address originates: my IP address originating in the EU costs me 58% more if I try to renew my Skype service. That’s quite a price hike! Take a look at these screenshots:

The first one shows what it costs if I log in from an EU IP address, and the second one from a USA IP address. It costs the normal $38 to renew from the USA, and $60 to renew from Germany.

First of all, I was surprised to find out that this kind of practice exists. It’s probably done a lot, but I just never personally ran into it. It seems kinda fishy that a company that sells a service that is supposed to travel with you (”locationless”) would want to charge you different prices depending on where you happen to be at the time when you want to renew or buy more service.

So how to get the cheaper, US prices?

I happened to have access to a PC in the USA that I could log in with, so this wasn’t a big deal to get around for me. If you don’t happen to have access to a USA IP address, then try out CosmoPod - it’s free, and it’s a nifty service as well! You get a remote Linux desktop, which you can use like a normal computer - and connect to the internet from a US IP address. It’s pretty cool to try out, regardless of whether or not you have the Skype overcharging problem.

Simply sign up for an account there, login at Skype, and you’ll get the normal USA renewal price for SkypeOut.