Have never purchased a phone card and don't intend to. The bottom line is that airservices can't really refuse your request for a briefing or the lodging of a flight plan etc.(although the person at the help desk might tell you otherwise).I have never not been put through to briefing, when I have sought their services. How foolish are CASA/Airservices going to look, when some poor schmuck wraps his/her 172 around a tree on the side of hill somewhere in sh!tty weather and it's revealed on the six o'clock news, that one of the contributing factors to the tragedy was the refusal of a Wx briefing, simply because the person concerned didn't have a phone card. I still remember on the very day that this idiotic system came into being, I recieved documentation from CASA informing me of the outstanding job they were doing, in their never ending pursuit of Aviation safety. Give me a break! Yet another SNAFU.