6 Responses to “NextAdvisor.com launches new Phone Power VoIP review”

1. Dan Taylor Says:
   August 22nd, 2008 at 2:16 pm

   I signed up for PHONE POWER on a promotion for 10 a month or something. I paid $44 to send the adapter. I never got the damned thing to work and they were NO HELP. They were surly and rude — totally condescending! After the promo I sent their adapter back after the promo ended, for another $8 or soI then got an email from them saying that they didn't get the power plug for the damned thing and billed me another $99.99!!! I know I sent the thing in, I put it together, left it, put it back in the box and sent it back. I don't have the thing in my house! SO I PAID $44 + $8 + $99.99 = $151.99 for no phone service.

   If you want to spend $151.99 for no service, use PHONE POWER. If you value your dollar, stay far away from them.

2. Joe Says:
   August 22nd, 2008 at 2:20 pm

   Hi Dan,

   Thank you very much for your comment. Obviously every subscriber's experience will be different with each VoIP service. That is why we have reviewed multiple providers so that consumers can make their own educated decision about the service that is right for them.

   Thanks again for your feedback.

   Joe Fahrner
   NextAdvisor.com

3. review phone power Says:
   November 21st, 2008 at 8:56 am

   Thank you very much for nice content.

4. OntheHunt Says:
   January 15th, 2009 at 9:47 pm

   I have been with this service since the end of Aug 2008. My modem came quickly in the mail and it was easy to set up. The price for the first 3 months was the reason I decided to give this company a try. Can't go wrong at $12.66 a month. I figured this was the best route before I committed to the yearly special of $139.95. Thank GOD I went this route because in no time the problems would begin.

   My first issue was my phone quality was horrible. There was a nasty delay of a few seconds, so you and the person you were talking with would just talk over each other because of the delay of the responses. The sound quality was just as bad with the choppiness and how faint the voice on the other line sounded. Even though this sounds bad, it just took a phone call to technical support and they made some changes and I just had to re-set the Grandstream device (HT502 that they send you) and all was fixed, Yay!!!! Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!

   Next problem that came up was that when on a phone call, I would get the sound of call waiting, but when I would click over, nobody was there. In the mean time, the person with whom I was trying to have a conversation with would tell me to stop pushing the buttons. At first I was confused at what the hell they were talking about, but after a few more times of this, I realized that every time I heard the call waiting like sound on my end, that the person on the other line heard a sound that made the noise of when somebody pushed the button. I even used my friend's phone to call myself to hear this sound and it's annoying. Of course my next move is to call technical support. Once again he said he made some tweaks and said I should be good to go (maybe not said in those exact words). Once again, Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!

   Well…..it did not take long to figure out nothing was fixed and that the call waiting noise was still there and along went my Joy with it. It was at this time I began to experience another problem. My phone would ring and nobody was there. The caller ID would read SIP. I had no clue of what SIP was, but it has something to do with the VOIP system works and SIP is some protocol that is used. Well, since the caller ID only shows the name of SIP and no number, I could not call it back. This became very frustrating as SIP would call me when it wanted and for however many times it wanted. I could get blasted for 5 minutes straight or have it call 5-7 times a day at all hours, and I mean ALL hours), then it would just stop for up to 5 days, then it would happen again. Since this was happening between midnight and 4am (time I am sleeping), I became pretty irate over being woken up and have this SIP calling me for no reason. I only would jump out of bed extremely quick to pick it up because the only time I wo7uld get a call at that time is if it were a emergency.

   In went a call to technical support. This time did not go as good as the others as I was now calling about 2 problems, the call-waiting problem and the SIP problem. Pretty much I was being talked to like I was crazy and making this up and the blame came down to my phone. Yes, my phone. It was suggested that my phone is just old or is broken and causing the problems. This was not a acceptable answer to me. I have been using this phone on Vonage for a year with no problems and also with SunRocket for 20 months before they closed the doors and left their customers in the dark. I asked to speak with a Supervisor and was told one would need to call me back.

   One day, two days, a week goes by and I still have not had my return call from a Supervisor. This Sip thing is going on, my friends are just ending the call when the call waiting thing happens, and I am getting pissed off. So now I try and call in to technical support and after being on hold for 30 minutes, I have to disconnect. I can't wait no longer as I have things to do and did not have the time to wait any longer. The next day I try to contact them on their web page live help, but it would just say I am number 1 in line and the wait time is less than a minute and would just sit there like that until I changed the page. This would keep happening, but yet I insisted to keep trying that web page chat. I tried to call numerous time in the following weeks, but once 20 minutes or more of holding happened, I would need to end the call and go back to the schedule of my day. This is quite annoying and my frustrations are building up.

   Tired of this damn SIP waking me up and disturbing my sleep, I went off at 3am to the 24 hours Walmart and picked up a phone. Came home connected it and took a short nap before I had to wake up. Turns out the new phone made NO difference. Same problems. I can't believe I fell sucker enough to go out a buy a phone that I did not need to use with this service since that is what was thought to be the problem. I knew better that the phone was not the problem, yet so utterly pissed off about that damn SIP, I still went to buy it in hopes of a fix.

   Well, one Sunday in the Wild Card round, I am sitting there saying to myself, this sucks that the Bears choked their way out of the playoffs and I'm stuck watching these guys play (not that I mind that much, but it's better when your team is playing ) I decided to call the technical support. I dialed the number and put on the speaker phone. It just had me on hold till the half way past the 2nd Quarter. The call was made 2 minutes into the game…….The kid I got this time would just say everything looks fine. Everything is not fine, so I asked to speak to a supervisor. He puts me on hold for 10 minutes and then comes back and says one has to call me back. Oh No! I been on the phone here for over a hour and been holding for a supervisor and been through the game of somebody will call you back, I'll wanted to keep holding. All during this conversation this kid would be pushing a HOLD button so I could not hear him talk to somebody, but would release it to early and still would be laughing. Well after a few times of that, I asked him what was so funny? He said nothing and that he was breathing and not laughing. The second time I am being told that I am a idiot (remember the SIP thing). Anyways, I just tell myself I will address that to the supervisor when I speak to him except now I am being told he is going to disconnect the call and he can no longer stay on the phone. Despite my frustrations, I found myself talking to the air on the line ….

   20 minutes later I get a call from the supervisor and I tell him the problems with my phone and with the whole situation about the contact with technical support and the live chat issues. Anyways he explained what SIP was again to me and that there was a issue and that he had a update for my device. Basically somebody, I going to use the word hack), found a way to send some signal or something on one of their ports causing the SIP problem. Supposedly not many people were affected, but the problem was discovered and a fix was here. Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy! He logged remotely into my router and did what he needed to do. I had to re-set (about 5 minutes after we disconnected the call) and he called me back and he said all was good. He then heard the call waiting sound and my craziness was not considered crazy anymore. After talking for awhile, it came down to he needed to look into that call waiting noise and that if I had a issue with a operator, call Customer Support. My call to Customer Support was not successful….they are not open at that time!

   It's Monday and I just got off a early morning phone call and the call waiting thing is happening……but there was no SIP to wake me up Despite that, I am just sitting here going I am paying for a service that is just a nightmare. I'm being treated like a bald headed step child and the service is now a few $$$ less than Vonage. Upset at the whole thing, I mean why should you even be wasting energy over being upset over a phone?) I call the Customer Service and ask to speak with a Supervisor. I was then connected with Maggie. She's a feisty cat too, but understanding and VERY helpful. She charged me the promotional rate for the months that the regular rates went into effect and gave me a Credit with them. The call waiting noise happened ….She then said she would go talk to a Supervisor and he would call me soon. And within 15 minutes Jim calls me back.

   Jim turned out to be one cool cat too. He had looked over what was going on and I told him what was happening so he knew exactly the problems. The call waiting noise happened ……He explained SIP to me and then asked if he could try a few things. After a few phone calls and re-sets of the device, they pretty much disabled call waiting, lowered my codec, and made me go to port 2 on the device and test it out. We would give it a few days and see how it goes. Jim and somebody else did try to call the next few days, but unfortunately I was not around since we had a ton of snow come in and I was busy trying to make some $$$$ and it was also Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I did not make calls and was not around to test anything. There were no more calls after that from them.

   I continued to test out the way it was set up. No more SIP ….but, my call quality was like when I first started, choppy and delayed with a echo. The sound was very faint as I could barely hear people. The call waiting noise continued. And now my internet is down. After a day of no internet, I call Comcast and they say there is no problems and had me bypass the Phone Power Device (not use it) and try to connect to the internet. Sure enough my internet works. That ends my call with Comcast. I then connect the phone power device back and no internet….I reboot the device a few times and do the same with my Comcast too. I changed out cables and still no internet….Well, I have a new problem and I tested out the new settings on the phone …..RING RING RING Technical Support (since I can't connect to Live Chat as I sit in queue 1 with a wait time of a minute and it sits there for a hour like that and since I had no response from my e-mail I sent).

   Daniel answered and I explained the situation. He then asked me to wait a minute while he did something and then asked me to try the internet. BAM! I had the internet, but it's seemed slower. He said for some reason my router did not show online there and he had to reset something. Anyways, he then went on and made adjustments and I had to reset my router a few times. He called me back every time. We did this for over a hour. Towards the end of our call, the call waiting noise happened and I got a e-mail from Technical Support. Daniel asked if I could wait as he looked into that noise. I said fine and read the email. Surprised at what I read, I asked Daniel to listen to the response. He was surprised himself and asked who responded to the e-mail. I told him Matt did and that seemed to confuse him more. He is suppose to be one of the top guys (if not the top guys) when it comes to the equipment and stuff and he was not sure why he would say that. Matt said that if I can't connect to the internet, to call my ISP and not to say that I have VOIP? Comcast knows I use VOIP from other people for years as I was with Vonage and Sun Rocket. I don't need to lie or hide anything. I was not happy with that but thank GOD I had Daniel on the case. He was by far the best operator I had. He spent the time with me and called me back and stayed with it till he fixed it all, except the call waiting noise. I have tried both phones with the settings Daniel has and all is good except that damn call waiting noise.

   I am now looking back and saying what is this now, 4-5 months that I am paying for a service that seems like it's a BETA of something. I should be getting this for free till they work out their kinks so they can charge. Isn't that the way it usually goes. I don't even use 150 minutes a month unless I am on the phone with Phone Power and their technical support. These problems are just ridiculous and I have tried to help as much as I can, but I can't justify paying for this service. I then look at Vonage and consider them again as they are only a few dollars more a month. I would never pay Phone Power for a year of service in advance till it is improved, so I am going by monthly rates. I then look at AT&T and see their package and was going to make of switch of both my internet and phone over to them. Nice package deal. I then call Comcast to give them a disconnection date and I get this guy who gives me this AWESOME deal! I have been with them since they had internet, so he did not want me to go and gave me my high speed internet at a discount of like $30 a month and then gave me the phone at a discount of $20 for a total of $52.60 a month. I pay $2 more for internet alone. Needless to say, that is the way I am headed. I then call Maggie back to let her know what was going on and to give a disconnection date. She did ask me to do this and I left a message and asked for a return call. Few days have gone by and I have not heard back from her, which I am surprised. I will call back in a few days. Comcast will be here and then I don't need these guys. I had notified my Credit Card Company to refuse payment from these guys and told them the problems. They asked if I wanted to do a Chargeback for services not given. I told them no and just said don't let them take money out. I actually have a credit on my account …….

   While I see others are ok with this service, I wonder how many of them work for the company. I find it hard to believe that everybody is running smooth when I try to call in and Technical Support is so busy that you are on hold forever. I can't be the only one with problems for that to be or there is a staff of 1-2 operators at a time. Who knows. I have not even said some of the other things they did to me, but I am letting go and just posting my experience with this company. While I was hoping to find another SunRocket, I found what I was afraid of before I found SunRocket, a service that does not work the way it is suppose too! It's not right to look at your phone and get all pissed off about it. That's when you know it's time to go. If you are intent on VOIP, consider th small price difference for a service that works in Vonage. Otherwise look for a bundle from your local phone company. Hell try Comcast and see what they can do for you Best of luck in your choice and if you go this route and have problems ….I TOLD YOU SO!

5. Jani Says:
   January 26th, 2009 at 3:10 pm

   I had their service since Oct 2008. I have been satisfied with the service. No, I am not working for the company. All the cost was upfront and the invoice details everything. PP separate the regular service invoice and the international call invoice. I did not have to pay extra on anything as previous reviewer indicated.

   Customer service has been good. English language and accent was not a challenge. I have used both the voice line and their chat line. They helped me setup the Grandstream to work with my Netgear router. Need to use low bandwidth codec for better voice. This setting reduces the echo.

   One note, if you are using the cable broadband, make sure that your router is set to use a hard coded DNS insstead of auto. I used OpenDNS and the service has been great.

   International service have also been stellar and comparatively cheaper to the regular landline service. Voice quality is not bad.

   It looks like the company wants to work with you. Simple plan, very reasonable price and good customer service in the US. I don't care for 24/7 customer service that does not speak good english and have canned answer.

   I have recommended it to a few friends and their referral credit is also automatic and fast.

6. Jason Says:
   January 28th, 2009 at 12:43 pm

   I have had Phone Power service since the beginning of November 2008. It has been great up until 2 weeks earlier. I call at most 5 different numbers all the time. They include pretty much all my immediate family members. About two weeks earlier I started to experience major delays in voice conversations only to a particular set of phone numbers which were all in the same area code (507 southern MN). I live in a 952 area code which is part of the Twin Cities. I can call phone numbers in the following area codes 952, 612, 763 and 651 which are all part of the Twin Cities without voice delays.

   I called their customer support to ask them to look into this problem. I talked with a support tech and we did not experience any delay in our conversation. I explained my situation and he had me perform a speed and jitter test on my line. I questioned his reason of troubleshooting because I only experience delay for certain area codes. From what I understand about VoIP, my Phone Power device in my home always connects to their SIP server and it is always the same SIP server. So why would my internet connection cause problems for only 507 area code numbers. Never the less I agree to run these tests. The tests looked fine after they completed. After being on the phone for a good 1/2 hour I decided to give the tech a break and I said that if the delay does not go away after a few days that I would then call back.

   The delay did not go away. I now came at this from a different approach. Phone Power has a feature on their website that is called Click2Call. It works by putting in a source phone number and destination phone number and click on the web button "Call". This feature works whether the Phone Power device in my house is on or the power is removed. So I proceeded to call my cell phone as my source number and one of the land line phone numbers as my destination. So without using my internet connection, I was able to hear the delay.

   I then got in touch with Phone Power support again to explain that this problem had nothing to do with my internet connection. I explained how I knew it was not my internet connection and that I was using Click2Call with my VoIP adapter removed from power. Apparently they could not understand. They refuse to look into the problem until I supply them with my router model number, cable modem model number and my service provider.

   Phone Power support does not understand their own equipment to help me. By the way I have supplied that information to them knowing full well it wouldn't help in trouble shooting the problem. They still have not fixed the problem. I am waiting to hear back from them. I don't have great confidence.

   I was very pro-Phone Power and before this incident had recommended their service to my friends. I would feel horrible if this happens to someone that I recommended. I now do not recommend them at all. The problem also is I paid for 2 years up front and they do not prorate their service if you want to quit.

   I had Viatalk prior to this but choose Phone Power because viatalk would not give as good a deal for existing customers as they would for new customers. I wish I would have not moved to Phone Power now. I never had problems with Viatalk.

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