Section 6.9. Managing Your Account

6.9. Managing Your Account

Vonage and other phone-centric providers include quite a bit of account control on private web pages for each customer. Skype puts very little, because the service details are configured almost completely with the client application. Less web page management by users also fits into Skype's decentralized approach to the business.

6.9.1. The Skype Web Site

Important reasons to go to the web site for your Skype account include buying services. Unfortunately for Skype, only one service and a few products are available for sale right now: SkypeOut and phone headsets and handsets. Figure 6-23 shows the overview screen for an account.

Figure 6-23. Log in, buy minutes, log out

You reach this screen by providing your Skype name and password, the same ones you use at the client. Activities you can perform on the web site run down the left side of the page, under the My Account heading.

The SkypeOut page shows two things: all your calls and all your Skype purchases. When a service bills you for calls, they must keep track of those calls so you can argue with them later.

Buying SkypeOut credits works easily and simply unless it goes horribly wrong. More details about that issue await in the next chapter.

Skype generates revenue through SkypeOut minutes and some hardware sales. They partner with a growing list of hardware vendors to include Skype functionality in new devices. Figure 6-24 shows the Accessories page.

Figure 6-24. Skype-friendly hardware

Plantronics leads the headset market, and has for years, starting way back before regular phone users ever considered a headset. Their connection with Skype gave the upstart broadband phone company some cachet in the marketplace.

The second two items illustrate Skype's attempt to look more like a phone-centric provider than a computer-centric provider, or at least to give some customers the type of phone interaction that makes them comfortable. The middle phone handset uses a USB connector to link to a computer and the Skype software running on that system. The Olympia cordless DUALphone cuts the six-foot tether that every headset wearer strains against by using a USB connection to link a standard cordless telephone handset to Skype software. Handily, it also works as a regular traditional telephone handset, servicing both types of telephone connections.

Other menu options on the Skype My Account page duplicate client options: change your password, and update your email address. If you have a voucher for SkypeOut minutes, the Redeem Voucher menu item leads you to the page where you type in the voucher number for redemption.

6.9.2. Your Skype Application

While you can change your password and email address on the web site, you can do the same from within your client software. The Personal Profile discussed earlier (refer back to Figure 6-8) shows the email address field to change. To change your password, go to Tools Options and click the Personal page tab. The third button on that page, Change Password, opens text fields for your old password, your new password, and the new password typed a second time.

That same Personal page includes a button to open your web browser to the My Account page on Skype. Put in your username and password, and you'll see the page shown earlier in Figure 6-23. You can reach the same page by choosing the Tool menu option on your Skype client application and clicking the Go to My Account Page item.