Your Skype Credit has expired

We hate to bring bad news but there's no nice way to say it - your Skype Credit has expired. This means that all your credit you had at your account is now gone.

We've tried to make our expiration policy as user friendly as possible. You just have to place one call every 6 months to keep your credit. Skype Credit expires 180 days after your last purchase or SkypeOut call. Extending the period is as simple as doing short call. This automatically extends the period for another 180 days.

OK, I've no issue with the credit expiring (actually that's not quite true, but much less of one), but 'as user friendly as possible' just doesn't wash. 'No nice way to say it'? Well how about notifying you a week BEFORE it's going to expire? They should email and let you know IN ADVANCE, like DynDNS and myriad other services. This is a blatant scam. They are taking the piss.

I lost 92p (I think; there's no way of checking the balance you had) but if it had been a significant amount I'd be fuming, instead of just outraged.

Googling about a bit, it seems I am not the only one to be seriously riled by this.

Apparently a tool called Gizmo is a good alternative, and I suppose it's long overdue that I check out Google Talk since I'm a fan of many of google's other offerings (gmail, spreadsheets, writely, calendar, chat... to name but a few).

But in any case it's BYE BYE SKYPE and have a nice life.

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