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 techThe 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.
My friend over at 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.
Furthermore, from talking to other people, and my own previous experiences with magic jaqck, I 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, 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.
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