Before posting this, I thought hard about it, whether to just cowboy
up and suck it up but I feel this is a topic which in general is of
interest to blind folks, and sightedalike, and an integral part of
our life needs and people need to be aware.
I humbly appologize in advance to anyone this offends because it
isn't a window-eyes or gwmicro issue specifically.
But you may need a phone service to call gwmicro for tech support you
see, and how would you feel if you had to wait, only to be cut off
after waiting a long time by some bean counter at the phone company
admin, because the good folks at gwmicro were busy helping someone
else spending just as much time with other as they would with you?
Following is a recap of our experiences.
Feel free to forward this to anyone who might benefit.
snip
I really don't think it's in good taste to publically badmouth
companies, but I don't like to see people taken advantage of or be mislead.
My wife and I subscribed to the nettalk voip service wanting a flat
rate, unlimited service for long distance.
We heard about it through blind cool tech
The tech we originally talked to to get our service set up was
helpful and polite, and answered all our questions and there was no
mention of limited service, and yes, we asked.
But buried deep in the service agreement is a clause which mentions a
limit of 5000 minutes a month, which ends up being less than 3 hours
a day, and indeed, our service did get cut off gsoon after we subscribed.
Seems after exceeding 5000 minutes in a month, they want you to pay
by the minute in reality, they call this their business plan.
they mention on the front page that their plan is good enough to fire
your phone company and they suggest their service as a perfect
solution for home office.
I have written and called customer service, to no avail, and made
repeated attempts to contact them and get a satisfactory resolution,
including their public relations person, Bill Douglas, who hung up on
me because i wasn't an authorized dealer.
I got shuffled around from one rep to another, they were polite, but
we more or less got the run-around.
So we are $69 out, and no phone service unless we want to pay by the
minute because they deemed we used too much time,
5 thousand minutes a months ends up being roughly 2.7 hours a day,
hardly what I consider excessive use.
They claim most folks use less than 300 minutes a month.
To me, abusive usage would be staying on conference lines for 8 plus
hours a day, and doing telemarketing, etc.
there was no warning, or anything, just all of a sudden in the middle
of teaching, my phone wouldn't work anymore for outgoing calls.
Our friends who use vonage, which also seems to have hidn
restrictions, got a polite call from the company, but at least they
were warned.
Just thought I'd let you guys looking for good phone services to
note our experiences, and make a wise decision accordingly.
YOu would think in these hard times, a company especially a small one
like nettalk would want to have happy customers, and repeated business.
But we won't be recommending nettalk anymore if this is the way they
treat their customers.
Furthermore, our regular dsl and phone provider at&t gave us a great
deal, and lowered our price to come back, with full features, and
even a reduction in dsl price, and it is truly unlimited, only
restriction is to not use it as a data line, and that was told to us
up front, and they give warnings if they deem something is out of line.
So once again, I guess you do get what you pay for, and let the buyer beware.
Don't make my mistake and get taken up the garden path as it were.
I'm still trying to negotiate some sort of meeting halfway with
nettalk, to at-least get limited service through out the year I
bought from them, so far to no avail.
Lastly, from talking to other people, and our own previous
experiences with magic jaqck, we suspect voip companies use tactics
to discourage long calls such as being dropped in mid conversation,
the inability to call the party your are talking to back immediately
after being dropped, also there are issues reaching certain areas,
and considering; you are using your own bandwidth this just seems
like not such a good deal after all.
These guys just need to be up front and tell you, you get so many
minutes a month and here you go.
Thank you for reading this, now go do the right thing.
For all your audio production needs and technology training, visit us at
www.affordablestudioservices.com
or contact
Chris Belle
[email protected]
or
Stephie Belle
[email protected]
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