Never had a problem like that with skype, and i've been using their skype
out and skype in services for years and years now.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Belle" <[email protected]>
To: "Carol and Roger" <[email protected]>; <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2011 8:11 AM
Subject: beware of nettalk and voip services in general
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]
for customized web design
If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender
only. If your reply would benefit others on the list and your message is
related to GW Micro, then please consider sending your message to
[email protected] so the entire list will receive it.
GW-Info messages are archived at http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo. You can
manage your list subscription at http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv.
If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only.
If your reply would benefit others on the list and your message is related to
GW Micro, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so
the entire list will receive it.
GW-Info messages are archived at http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo. You can manage
your list subscription at http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv.
