The surcharge or different rate is probably the case with Dialnow too. Haven't really felt the urge to test that.
Dialnow confuses me. It has no connection fee, does not appear to have "freedays" but yet they have these 0c/min destinations. Seems a no-brainer to me!
For people in the UK, where you have a surplus of free SIM card offers you can use the free credit to open an account via SMS topup and then make free calls to many destinations (or even if they change them to no longer free they are still about the lowest rate I can find).
I used a freebie SIM from BT Mobile but I suppose you could use Virgin UK etc. It's also worth mentioning for other PPGSM readers abroad who are maintaining UK SIM's and if you have surplus or free credit (e.g. if you are crediting the SIMs to keep them active) it is possible to do Betamax SMS topups via shortcodes even whilst roaming. You just have to remember to select UK as your country when registering the Betamax service in order to activate the SMS topup option.
It is also worth mentioning that with Dialnow you do not have to use the credit from the phone that you are topping up from. e.g. I have just topped up from a UK free SIM and am using the credit from a Spanish phone. Just remember to specify the number you will be using the service from first and then do the topup from the other phone. The system is primarily driven by CLI, (which recognises you) though if you want to use it from another phone you can enter a PIN.
The only downside is that for a £5 text they only credit you €4.30. Pretty poor conversion, but not bad if the £5 was free credit. However, I have also experienced that due to some bug they give you 2 topups (€8.60) for a single £5 debit!
