13% of international calls now go via Skype

When a company is holding money for you, with the expectation of you spending it on some service or good the company can hold on to those funds for only so long before they need to recognize it as revenue. The reason they need to recognize it as revenue is because if they didn't, they would be subject to an ever ballooning set of obligations to provide service to people who don't redeem their prepayed minutes.

So why does Skype take your money after a few short months of inactivity instead of, say, two years? 1. Part of it is that current tax law requires that you recognize the money as a gain before too long a period (this increases profits and tax revenues, btw) 2. Skype decision makers decided to go with the flow on the issue, at a cost to customer satisfaction. ("Hey, they want us to take the free money, let's take the free money")

As an aside, redemption rates after 3 months are ridiculously low. Since they are going to get to keep the money regardless, Skype's only gain is on the service they wouldn't have to provide versus a longer grace period. Which considering profit margins and so forth, is likely negligible. So like I said, it is standard practice, but it's also bad business.

For more, look into the matching principal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matching_principle

If you weren’t aware, Localphone-to-Localphone calls are free too when using VoIP.

I've to have my mom use the computer with the USB mic, and it usually turns out to be a big hassle.

http://shop.skype.com/phones/

i think i even saw some phones branded as "skype ready" or something similar in brick and mortar store