Review by bryank 
UPDATED: 1.2 years ago
member for 9.6 years, 3157 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Plainfield,Will,IL
 $12 per month (12 month contract)
 "Price, Quality, Support, & FEATURES!"
 "Minor issues, described below"
 "Worth every penny"
| Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
** UPDATE September 7, 2008 **
So I have been with ViaTalk for about 3 years now and I have been 1000% satisfied with their service. Quality is on PAR with all other VOIP providers and service reliabilty is outstanding. The only gripe I have, but all VOIP providers are doing it, is being charged an e911 fee. So I pay 11.95 a month (or $143 a year) and with the e911 fee, I am up to $14.95 a month. I can't complain because it's alot cheaper than the $50 a month I was paying for POTS, cheaper than the $40 a month for Comcast Digital Voice, and any other VOIP on the market such as Vonage.
I am now in the process of getting my parents away from their $50 POTS line to ViaTalk; and yes, I do love my parents!
**ORIGINAL REVIEW**
---
Well I am coming up on my year of service with ViaTalk and I think it's time to post my results about them. I am happy to say that it has been an awesome experience and I recommend them as a VOIP provider for whoever is in the market for the new technology.
Before ViaTalk I had Vonage, which was great, but their cost was too high with all these extra fee's and they had no calling features. Like most people, we receive many telemarketing calls at the worst times of the day. So looking around the web, I found ViaTalk and noticed all the features they offered for the phone service; boy was I amazed! They had the two main features I was looking for, "anonymous call block' and 'custom call routing'. With each of these features, I would be able to block calls I did not recognize or calls that had no caller id information. To this day, I keep filling up my custom call routing list with numbers that seem to call wanting to sell me something.
In addition to those features, I like the flex ability I have within my control panel with features such as 'Call Broadcast' (Call specified numbers with your recorded message), 'Custom Caller ID' (Make the name appear as you wish), and 'Call Hunt' (Call up to five different numbers when receiving a call on your VT line). I can go on and on about all the features of ViaTalk, but you just have to experience them yourselves to appreciate them.
Unlike other VOIP providers, ViaTalk allows you to bring you own PAP device at a reduce monthly cost. This was great because I had Vonage which used an adapter that will work with ViaTalk. The problem I had was my PAP adapter was locked and set to only work with Vonage. But the internet is a great thing and I found step by step instructions to unlock the device to work with any VOIP provider.
Somethings that I found bad about the service...well sometimes when I dial a number, I will not hear ringing in the handset, but if I wait on the line, the other side will pick up. Support can never find the solution for that. Another problem, sometimes incoming calls will not display a Caller ID tag, instead it will just say 'NO DATA', but if I go into the call logs after the call is complete, the Caller ID info is there. Support cannot find a solution for that.
The call quality of ViaTalk is the exact same as I had with Vonage. Granted it's not the same as a POTS line, but for as little as we use our phone and the cost difference, I can deal with it. 95% of the time the call quality is crystal clear and no issues, but sometimes we can get a little break up that last only a couple seconds. We have never had a dropped call....
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of ViaTalk |
|
ViaTalk
(41)
(39)
(105)
(60)