Three Ways to Pay for Phone Calls from Heritage Trails: Collect, Prepaid, and PIN Debit Compared

Heritage Trails offers three main ways to pay for phone calls. Collect calls bill the cost to you through your phone carrier. AdvancePay lets you set up a prepaid account - each time you accept a call, charges come out of that balance. PIN Debit flips the arrangement: the incarcerated person uses debit minutes from their own phone account to call approved numbers, so the cost comes from their balance rather than your carrier.

Collect calls from Heritage Trails don't charge you immediately like a card payment. Instead, they show up on your monthly phone bill. That means your ability to keep receiving calls depends on what your carrier allows and how high that portion of your bill gets.

There's another catch with collect calls: they can't be placed to cell phones, office phones, or hospital numbers. If the number you want to use falls into one of those categories, you'll need a different payment option.

AdvancePay is the prepaid collect option. You fund a calling account upfront, and each time you accept a call, charges are deducted from your balance. This is often the smoother route if you'd rather pre-fund calls than deal with your carrier's collect-billing rules.

• ✓ Call ViaPath at (800) 483-8314 to sign up for an AdvancePay prepaid calling account.
• ✓ Use that same number - (800) 483-8314 - to add money to AdvancePay by phone.

PIN Debit puts the incarcerated person in control of their phone spending. They purchase debit minutes from the commissary and use those to call approved numbers. If your loved one prefers managing their own calling time - or you want to avoid carrier-billed collect calls - this option can be a better fit.

You can also help fund calling time through PIN Debit. Create an Offender Phone account at ConnectNetwork.com, then make a payment that gets credited to the incarcerated person's phone balance.

• ✓ To add money to PIN Debit by phone: (855) 706-2445
• ✓ To add money to Trust Fund by phone: (888) 988-4768

Want the simplest "bill it to me" approach? Collect calls can work - as long as your carrier allows them and you're okay with charges appearing on your monthly phone bill. If collect calls are getting blocked due to billing limits, AdvancePay is the most direct fix since it's designed for prepaid accepted calls. For frequent calls where your loved one wants more control, PIN Debit is worth considering. They can buy minutes through commissary, and you can add minutes through an Offender Phone account on ConnectNetwork.com. Before committing to any setup, confirm that your number can actually receive the call type you're choosing. Remember: collect calls can't go to cell phones, office phones, or hospital numbers.