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Voip.com Review: VoIP |
| Visit Voip.com Website | |
| Great value on feature-packed plans with multiple payment options, but buggy service and ineffective customer support | |
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Voip.com was recently purchased by Phone Power, and its packaging, customer service, and website make it abundantly clear that you're dealing with Phone Power. However, while Voip.com hangs onto the value of its former self, it also acquires some of the features and the problems of Phone Power.
Its unlimited residential calling plans come in many flavors, depending on how long you want to continue your home VoIP service. All plans offer unlimited calling in the United States and Canada and low international calling rates. The best value is the Premium One Year plan for $129.95 for the first year (that comes out to about $10.82 per month), which requires an up-front payment. Those who want to pay monthly have a number of choices: the Premium Monthly plan at $19.95 per month, the Premium 12 Month for $16.95 a month, and the Premium 24 Month for $14.95 a month. Besides federally mandated taxes and fees and shipping on the equipment, Voip.com doesn't charge setup fees. The equipment is a small VoIP adapter box. Instructions are extremely minimal: a diagram of how to plug it into your router, a card for contacting tech support, and a card asking the user to recommend Voip.com to others. However, the help pages and tutorials on Phone Power's wiki (who uses a wiki when they already have a website?) are no more explicit than what comes in the box. We used an AT&T router and an AT&T phone, and we needed to wait an unusually long time (20 minutes) before we had a dial tone. Voip.com's call quality was acceptable. It had a few echoes and a cold, flat voice tone, but that's expected with VoIP. We did notice a big lag between dialing and ringing, up to 10 seconds at some points. We also had trouble getting a dial tone after hanging up on a call. Despite hours of chats with customer service and numerous attempts at changing firewall settings, the only way we could get the phone to disconnect from the last call was to unplug everything and start over. The MyAccount portal on Phone Power's website has many useful features: Softphone downloads (lets you take your account with you anywhere), managing your contact list, Click2Call, changing your services or adding lines, and more. Chat and phone support are offered from 8:00am to 4:00pm (EST) Monday through Friday and 9:00am to 1:00pm on weekends. Chat support was time-consuming, frustrating, and ineffective. We were handed off to three different agents in the course of four hours, and they all seemed unable to understand or fix the problem. Phone support was more friendly and accommodating but still rather unknowledgeable. There's a 30-day money-back guarantee, assuming you return your hardware, and no cancellation fee if you cancel a monthly plan after that. It's important to note that there's no prorated refund on the yearly plan. While $14.95- and $16.95-a-month plans divide up the payments into more manageable sums, there is still a service contract. If you cancel after the 30-day grace period, you will be charged a fee of $99.00 or the remainder of your contract, whichever is less. If you've paid in advanced for a year's worth of service, you will not receive a refund. However, Voip.com does not allow you to cancel over the phone, which we found rather odd. You must do it by fax, mail, or its online cancellation form. Voip.com is an excellent value due to its great deal of calling features, including caller ID, voicemail to email (which sends copies of voicemail messages right to your inbox), remote voicemail access, do not disturb, keeping your old phone number, 60 free international minutes to select countries, call blocking, and three-way calling. The most novel feature is Failsafe, which forwards your calls to an alternate number in the event of an Internet or power outage. One main pitfall of VoIP in general is that it won't work if your Internet or power is down, so this is a creative way to counteract that. Another great feature worth noting is Fax Catcher, which sends incoming faxes to voicemail, where they will become a file you can open, view, and print through your MyAccount portal on Phone Power's website. Although we didn't go crazy for Voip.com the last time we reviewed it, the service has changed marginally since it was purchased by Phone Power. While its rates are good and its features are many, we found the service buggy and the customer support lacking. |
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| Plans: | Premium Monthly: $19.95/mo Premium 24 Month: $14.95/mo Premium 12 Month: $16.95/mo Premium 1 Year: $129.95 for 1st year |
| Setup Fees: | $14.95 S&H |
| $ Back Guarantee & Cancel Policy: | 30-day money-back guarantee; after that, no cancel fee for month-to-month plan, can cancel other plans for disconnect fee; no prorated refunds |
| Promotions: | Free hardware; 1 year for $129.95 |
| Countries Included: | U.S. & Canada |
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