 Review by Dogfather 
UPDATED: 282 days ago
member for 1.8 years, 684 visits, last login: 264 days ago
 Huntington Beach,Orange,CA
 $20 per month
 about 10 days
 "Decent features, when they work"
 "Ever increasing junk fees, VERY unreliable, WAY overpriced"
 "Going downhill, actually in a freefall - Good-bye lamers!"
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Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
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1/21/08 Got the cancellation processed and paid the $50 "you keep the ATA" fee. Good riddance. Over the last couple of weeks ViaTalk was HORRIBLE, with constant outages, even the weekend before they took the big hikes the service was down. Looks like I got out just in time. ViaTalk is in a quality free-fall and STILL they have the balls to double the junk fees.
1/14/08 I've had it. On the heels of being delisted from the BBB and all the outages, they take a hefty increase in junk fees. This is exactly the same reason I cancelled Vonage. These latest increases amount to a 20% increase in my bill which was already high compared to other VOIP providers.
Thanks for no thanks. If I want to be ripped off I can go back to Verizon which gave me at least 4 9's reliability if not more, plus superior call quality of Cu. Customer service during the call was quick and polite. No confirmation number but said I'll get an email later on with HW return instructions. We'll see if the email actually shows up.
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After being sick of endless new junk fees with Verizon and the fact that I don't make a lot of calls (this is for my other house) I decided to try VoIP. First I tried Vonage which was a nightmare of downtime, calls not completing, calls getting dropped and horrible, rude, actually the worst customer service in the history of the planet. Before going back to Verizon I decided to try ViaTalk (500 min limited plan) who at the time was highly rated.
Web-site (4): The website has quite a few features including how to handle annoying incoming numbers. The only reason it doesn't get a 5 is because it has some quirks like not keeping my chosen time zone and the lame way the do-not-disturb schedule is laid out. Other than that, it's very nice.
Ease of install (5): Just plugged the ATA in and within seconds I had a dial-tone. Can't ask for much more than that.
Call quality (2): Compared to POTS it sucks, it's tinny, fades in and out, but it's certainly good enough for ordering a pizza. To give you an idea of how back the call quality is, people I'm talking to with it can easily tell it's VoIP. It sounds to them like old analog cellular calls on the verge of dropping.
Reliability (2): My POTS was up 24/7/365 as I had a fax machine that would register an error if it ever lost a dial tone. Literally in the 6 years I had it, not a single time did I lose dialtone. ViaTalk is not the same, far from it. It goes down for minutes at a time on occasion and like today 1-11-08 it was down for a while. It seems to have gotten significantly worse lately.
Tech support (1): Would have rated them higher if you could actually get a hold of someone.
Value for money (2): I'm paying a bit more than 1/2 the price I paid for POTS and in exchange for it being cheap I get lower call quality and mildly spotty reliability. The mediocre value is made worse by bullcrap junk fees. You expect the bullcrap bill itemizing from the whores at Vonage or Verizon, but oh well. With the junk fees and given this level of poor quality, I consider it still a bit over priced. For $10 sure, but not almost $20.
Overall I wouldn't recommend ViaTalk to someone who uses their phone alot as they seem to be headed in the wrong direction. I would recommend sticking with POTS or a cable VoIP provider that has higher reliability. ViaTalk is going through a lot of pains right now and isn't the value it used to be. If it gets any worse I'll jump ship for a triple play cable promo. At least for the first year they'll match the price considering the lower prices of CATV and HSI I would get.
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