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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 19 days ago
(review was emailed from domain tailwag.rog)
 Grafton,Ozaukee,WI
 Business customer
 $18 per month
 "Customer service responsiveness, price"
 "Latency, numerous little problems, call quality only adequate"
 "Jury still out"
| Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Have been with several VOIP providers over the years, and all ended up failing me due to generally poor service, annoying line latency (the gap between when you say something and when the other party hears it) and non-responsiveness of support. Voipo sounded good from the reviews here, and with several recent tax increases that have taken my one-line monthly service fee (MCI) to $50, I decided to give them a try.
I got a web site (vpanel) ID and password almost instantly when I subscribed. The adapter took about 10 days to arrive with the Labor Day holiday weekend thrown in there. I suspect that if it weren't for the obscene USPS delivery times in my area the device would have arrived sooner.
Install went smoothly. I plugged into the wrong phone jack initially (bizarrely, the active jack was Line 2, not Line 1 as one would expect--but see the issue I mention later). Phone worked right away once I got the right jack, and I had VOIP service with free long distance throughout the house.
Since then there has been a series of annoying little issues. First, the VOIP adapter was either not provisioned correctly or had some other problem--it would cycle its active port between port 1 and port 2 at a seemingly random interval. I let this happen about 4 times thinking that it would settle down once it'd been active for awhile, but it didn't. Contacted support via Viopo's "vpanel" and got a reponse (and a fix) within minutes. I restarted the device as the requested, and the fix seems to have worked the first time as I've gone a couple of weeks without a port change now. Very impressed with support responsiveness.
The next problem was a billing problem, which has happened twice now. Voipo notifies me that my bill is ready and I can pay by logging onto vpanel. I do so, click the Billing tab and click the Click to Pay button next to my bill entry, followed by OK. I get a message indicating "Payment attempt successful," but the "UNPAID" flag next to my bill doesn't change, and PayPal has no indication that a payment has been made. The first time this happened I assumed it would take time for the payment to register but in a few days I got another payment reminder from Voipo and ended up contacting their support. It took a couple of messages back and forth, but they eventually got my payment to credit. It happened again today, and I filed another trouble ticked at 11 pm on Sunday. Hopefully they will contact me early tomorrow, but I'd be more impressed if billing would just happen as it's supposed to without this intervention. If this happens and I'm out of town I worry that I'll be disconnected.
The last problem is one of call quality. In general, voice quality is acceptable. Although I sometimes get dropouts or garbled sound, it doesn't happen often enough to interfere significantly with the conversation. I did have a call dropped once, but it might have been the other party's cell phone that did it. Sometimes Voipo's connection speed after dialing is really slow, and sometimes they don't connect me at all--on a bad day it might take 2-3 dialing attempts to make the connection. Once connected, the call is reliable. I do seem to have varying amounts of latency on the call, which can make calls with certain people very difficult, just because it interposes gaps in the conversation which encourages the other person to speak and I end up unintentionally speaking over them, which they then don't discover for an additional second or so which makes us both stop talking and then it starts all over. Makes for a very choppy conversation. This is by far the worst quality issue of those I've mentioned, but I've seen this issue with ALL Voip providers I've tried so I'm not sure whether to blame Voipo specifically or the technology in general. I do know that corporations I've worked for who had VOIP didn't have this annoying latency, but they also had SLA-level service on their WAN networks. Some judicious QOS setting manipulation on my router/firewall might improve the latency issue somewhat.
Bottom line: I think Voipo is promising, if they can fix these niggling issues. Certainly the price is right.
I have a number transfer request in process right now, and will update this review as time goes on.
Followup comments:  VOIPoTim
VOIPo.com
Premium,VIP
join:2006-06-06
Houston, TX
4 edits | Router If you have to use our adapter behind a router, make sure the following port range are forwarded:
5060-5080 (TCP and UDP)
35000-65000 (UDP)
Also disable any SPI firewalls and SIP ALG if your router has it.
These changes will likely completely resolve most of your issues.
In terms of billing, we recommend using a credit card for payment so it can be automatically charged when a balance is due. While we do accept PayPal for users with a credit card, it is not recommended.
The vPanel "Click to Pay" tool does not support making a PayPal payment because we can't just process a PayPal payment. The reason for this is that PayPal requires the user to be redirected to their site and through their process to complete the payment.
We do need to clarify that on the site some because users seem to think we can just "charge PayPal" when a payment is due but that's not the case. With PayPal, when a payment comes in the system attempts to match it up based on the info PayPal sends with the transaction and apply it but if the e-mail, subscription ID from PayPal or any little detail is different from the info in the client profile, it won't be matched up automatically. The way PayPal requires things to be done is one of the biggest caveats with their service especially for services with variable usage/charges.
If yours are not applying automatically then something is not matching which our billing department can work through with you. If you're having problems with billing getting this done, PM me the ticket numbers or email tim @ voipo.com and I'll take a look. I recommend using a credit or debit card for automatic billing. | |
| jbcg
join:2001-09-15
Milwaukee, WI
1 edit | Thanks! Thanks for the quick and helpful response, Tim. I'm sure you're aware, but good customer responsiveness is what it takes for a lot of us customers these days. That's part of the reason I'm dropping MCI (and eventually AT&T)--these guys provide virtually no usable customer support at all. I don't care how good their service is if I can't talk to them when I do have a problem. You guys are very responsive and I appreciate that more than you know.
I already had most of these ports open and routed from my last VOIP trial, but had to open the port ranges a bit. Do you also require port 69 (TFTP) for provisioning, or can I close that one?
I'm very wary of dropping stateful inspection . . . but I might try the adapter outside the firewall one day just for grins. Would be interesting to see if that would eliminate latency altogether.
Oddly, I had a very good, low latency call with a friend today while I was downloading some large files. That was before I tweaked the port settings. Hmmm.
Re payments: This is one area where the online interface needs some work, or at least an explanatory message on the billings page.
I like PayPal because I'm very wary of giving service companies my credit card number. First, I've lost control of my card number three times in the past 10 years after I've used it on the web, every time with a "reputable" merchant.
The second reason is the Compu$erve effect. You sign up for a service with the promise that you can cancel at any time. When you do cancel the service terminates immediately. But the billings go on and on. The credit card company doesn't care because the charge is so small, so you have to call to dispute the charge every month until the service company finally decides they've bled you enough. This has happened to me with numerous subscription services (MSN charged me for almost two years!).
A variation on this is the surprise "kiss off" fees some ISPs like to charge when you cancel. One company charged my card for $25 because I returned their modem in a brown cardboard box rather than the white cardboard box they sent it to me in. No joke! Another ISP tried to charge me $280 for not returning my DSL modem after they merged with the ISP that sold me the modem outright as part of a package deal. Presenting the terms of my original agreement didn't help--it took a letter from my attorney to resolve it.
So I really appreciate that Voipo allows payments via PayPal.
Thanks again. I'll update this thread with how it works out.
Best,
Joey | |
| | VOIPoTim
VOIPo.com
Premium,VIP
join:2006-06-06
Houston, TX
| Re: Thanks! said by jbcg  :I already had most of these ports open and routed from my last VOIP trial, but had to open the port ranges a bit. Do you also require port 69 (TFTP) for provisioning, or can I close that one? This may sound odd to ask, but we see it A LOT so I will anyway....
Do you have the new adapter set to the same IP that everything is forwarded to?
We've had a ton of customers have forwarding setup and then the new adapter gets a new IP but everything is forwarded to old.
We actually use http for provisioning, but it's a "pull" with the adapter initiating the request so it doesn't need to be forwarded. | |
| | jbcg
join:2001-09-15
Milwaukee, WI
1 edit | Yes--one of the first things I did after installing the device was to ensure my DHCP server would issue the VOIP IP address to the MAC address of the device Voipo sent me. The firewall ports we're talking about are open only for this IP address.
Okay, based on three phone conversations today, the port work may have helped latency a bit. I also had one call where I had to dial twice to get a connection; the first time I got a long delay and then a busy signal on a line that has phone company voice mail.
The sound quality (on this relatively limited test) did seem to get somewhat better--no garbled or "gritty" moments, at least on these three calls. Two of the calls were fairly long ones.
Perhaps the device really does need to be outside of the firewall (or I need to turn off stateful inspection) in order to produce less latency.
When I sent the payment directly from PayPal it was credited promptly.
Thanks for your advice, Tim.
Joey | |
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