Just recently Gizmo Project announced its Gizmo5 beta, a service that allows users of mobile phones to place calls for very low rates through a MIDP Gizmo client. A data connection is required just for setting up the call. In other words, the idea is that you pick a contact (or dial the number you wish to call) and then Gizmo calls that party and calls you back on your mobile. You pay for the call via the regular CallOut credits.

Now, I thought I’d give this a try. I had about $0.20 in my account and given the price of the calls to landlines it would have cost me about 4¢ at most to try it out. Sadly, it didn’t turn out this way. While my phone was supported and I downloaded and ran the software just fine, the calls never successfully completed. I tried placing four or five calls to my landlines at home, none of which were successfully completed.

Nevertheless, the calls were charged to my account to the amount of 19¢, leaving me with $0.01. While trying to add credit to my account I realised that the Gizmo store did not accept Paypal anymore. Scouring the forum and the support pages left me even more perplexed: the support pages indicated that Paypal was a supported payment option that should be available at checkout. The forums gave the impression that there were continuing problems that had been — at some point — fixed, only to reappear later.
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