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Review by adidas1 
Posted: 3.6 years ago
member for 3.6 years, 1 visits, last login: 3.6 years ago
 Los Angeles,Los Angeles,CA
 $19 per month
 "Inexpensive Unlimited world calling plans"
 "HORRIBLE customer service. Frequent service interruptions."
 "Broadvoice FRAUD and PRIVACY INVASION ALERT!"
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Plan Abuse Service Suspension
4 messages
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BroadVoice Tue, Apr 4, 2006 at 8:51 PM
Reply-To: support@broadvoice.com
To: xxx@gmail.com
Account Number: XXXXXXXXXXX
BroadVoice Phone: +1-213XXXXXXX
Suspension Date: 4/4/2006
Dear XXX:
Unfortunately BroadVoice has been forced to temporarily suspend outbound calling on your account.
It appears that your account may have been compromised, or is in violation of our Terms and Conditions for Use.
This action was taken because your usage pattern indicates your account is being used for business. If you have subscribed to BroadVoice's Residential services, the Service and Device are provided to you as a residential user, for your personal, residential, non-business and non-professional use. This means that you are not using them for any commercial or governmental activities, profit-making or non-profit, including but not limited to home office, business, sales, tele-commuting, tele-marketing, autodialing, continuous or extensive call forwarding, fax broadcast, fax blasting or any other activity that would be inconsistent with normal residential usage patterns.
In the Terms and Conditions for Use, which you accepted at the time you subscribed to this service, BroadVoice reserves the right to immediately terminate or modify the service, if BroadVoice determines, in its sole discretion, that customer's service is being used for any of the aforementioned activities.
We would like to rectify this situation as soon as possible and want you to know that your business is important to us. For assistance and possible restoration of your outbound calling please contact us at 212-202-0300, 213-634-1400 or 312-625-1400.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Your inbound calling and voicemail will continue to work while your outbound service is temporarily suspended.
Thank you.
BroadVoice Customer Care
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XXX Wed, Apr 5, 2006 at 2:41 PM
To: support@broadvoice.com, press@broadvoice.com, billing@broadvoice.com
I received a disturbing e-mail from your company implying that I'm using your service outside of the TOS... I make a lot of calls (granted, most of them are on my cell) but I keep BV in the house to maintain a home phone. You will notice in your records, that I continued to pay for your service for almost a year with virtually NO usage while I was away on business. So, while it may look like my "usage pattern" has changed - going from almost NO usage to 30+ calls in a day - I don't appreciate this kind of invasion of privacy. As a BV customer, I have endured consistent dropped calls, and frequent service interruptions. Despite these inconveniences, I have been a loyal customer in good standing for several years now, because I like the fact that BV is independent and has some great calling features and plans.
THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. How long do you think SBC or any RBOC would retain customers with this kind of violation of privacy?
For the record, my sister was using my phone to look for a job. I was recently laid off, and will be using MY OWN PHONE to do the same. I have NEVER had to justify my telephone usage to a "phone company" before. Trust me when I tell you, this will be the last time.
I DEMAND my FULL service be RESTORED IMMEDIATELY. If this EVER happens again, I will be forced to terminate my BV service and blog the kind of unethical privacy violations your company practices in the VoIP forums.
-- XXX
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BroadVoice Support Wed, Apr 5, 2006 at 2:54 PM
To:
Hello,
The plan that you were signed up for is designed for residential usage per our Terms and Conditions, which you agreed to at sign up.
Through routine monitoring of your calling patterns, it was determined that your usage was is direct violation of our Terms and Conditions,
specifically section 1.3.1 "Residential Use of Service", which states, "If
you have subscribed to BroadVoice's Residential services, the Service is
provided to you as a single usage (user) residential plan, for your own
personal, residential, non-business and non-professional use." Further,
usage of the service is not allowed for auto-dialing, continuous or
extensive call forwarding, telemarketing, fax broadcasting, or fax
blasting.
The Unlimited World/Plus Plans are designated for residential use only,
whereas the Unlimited Business Plan is for business use. Per our Terms and Conditions, accounts planned for commercial use must be signed up to the Unlimited Business Plan $29.95 »www.broadvoice.com/terms.html
Section 1.2.1)
The options are the following:
1) Upgrade your plan to Unlimited Business, and continue to enjoy the
BroadVoice service.
2) Cancel the service.
Please let us know how to proceed.
Thank you, and please let us know if we can be of further assistance.
Regards,
BroadVoice Customer Care
Ke
________________________________
From: XXX
Sent: Wed 4/5/2006 5:41 PM
To: BroadVoice Support; press; BroadVoice Support
Subject: Re: Plan Abuse Service Suspension
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Wed, Apr 5, 2006 at 3:12 PM
To: BroadVoice Support , billing@broadvoice.com, press@broadvoice.com
Let me get this straight, you're telling me that even though your "routine monitoring of [my] calling patterns" INCORRECTLY determined that I violated your terms, that my choices are upgrade or cancel??
That is called FRAUD!
To proceed, I recommend that you forward our entire correspondence to the president of Broadvoice for review.
-- XXX
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I encourage everyone whom reads this to flood Broadvoice with email regarding YOUR PRIVACY and legitimate usage of the Broadvoice service. support@broadvoice.com, depstein@broadvoice.com, aepstein@broadvoice.com
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Review by mrvoice
Posted: 3.6 years ago
member for 8.7 years, 126 visits, last login: 338 days ago
Northridge,Los Angeles,CA
$10 per month
"BYOD - Cheap calling plans - Uh that's it."
"TOS indicates they do monitor your call usage and will switch you to business class if you make too many calls."
"$39.99 for activation is nuts / uses cheap voip carrier / unreliable / can't trust them / AVOID"
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never been a customer but read all the horrible reviews. also was in the process of signing up for byod but to my surprise the link i clicked to get me to broadvoice indicated that BYOD access was only a $9.95 activation fee. Wrong. Changed to $39.99 on all plans. Non Negotiable. So there's turn off #1. Entering my mac info and finally choosing a number, then the TOS. When they tell you in their TOS that they monitor your calling activity so it isn't abusive (their definitiion that is) you need to ask yourself is this company for real? they will and read the forums and find people that have been automatically switches to the business $29.99 plan. They are all not happy and pretty much stuck. it's in the TOS. their techsupport has taken up to an hour to answer and then the guy is half asleep. They also use the cheapest routing to port your calls. unreliable and not so good of quality either.
STAY AWAY. just cuz the price is nice doesn't mean it's for most people. plus who pays $39.99 just to activate your own equipment?
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 Review by bigchris
UPDATED: 3.6 years ago
member for 7.5 years, 1543 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Arlington,Arlington,VA
$24 per month
 about 3 days
"Cheap International calling"
"Unreliable service"
"I wouldn't touch em anymore, they haven't proved they can run a decent service"
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Update 4/3/06
Well after my number transfered I waited a few days for things to calm down and then I cancelled BV. A couple of weird things came up:
1) Some calls still kept coming to the Sipura device connected to BV, mostly from Cingular, so I'm guessing here, but I'm wondering if just like DNS the phone calling records take time to populate across all carriers and therefore some calls may go to the old address until they take new records? I'd be interested if anyone knows how this works, although I should probably just look at the SIP book on my book shelf!
2) After I cancelled I got an email from BV saying my number port was cancelled due to cancelling the service. First of all I thought they meant my Vonage number port, but after querying them on it they informed me that my Verizon to BV port wasn't complete and that was what they referred to cancelling. Quite why it would not be complete I have no idea, the number had been ported to BV for months!! Yet another poor performance from the BV porting group.
3) BV didn't charge me anything for cancelling which was a good thing.
In all I'm sad I don't have free European calling as it's now costing me a lot to call there, however my voice quality is significantly better and my phone service more predictable. I'm also sad that I don't have full control over my device like I did with BV and now I have an expensive piece of gear sitting idle. I had set up my device to direct 911 calls over the PSTN (DSL) line which was a nice feature and gave me comfort in not having to deal with E911, however it was it is, so I'll have to live with it.
Good luck to all those that continue to enjoy BV.
Now I have to write my review on Vonage.
Update 3/27/06
This morning my phone number that was originally my Verizon number was ported to Vonage. Call quality appears clearer although my phone bill is quite a lot higher than I'd like. It is however nice to know when you pick up the phone it's going to work which has been an issue with BV for some time now.
Update 1/7/06
Well it's time to move -- again -- let's hope I can port my number away from BV that I ported into them.
Over Christmas we had days of trying to make calls where we were told we couldn't. I kept having to reboot my sipura to make calls which was extremely annoying.
Now for the last 4 days they've managed to screw up the servers so that incoming calls don't hear a ringing tone. Of course they "haven't heard anyone else with the same problem, and sent it to tier II who have yet to contact me, and I very much doubt they will"... A quick scan of Voxilla shows others are seeing the same issue, so it's not just me.. well done BV.. great service.
TIme to leave and try another service.
Update 10/6/05
It's about time for an update and it relates to three things:
1) Call quality
Calls within the US aren't too bad. Calls to UK and Sweden are sporadically good and bad, but most often bad with delays and echo.
2) Case handling
Opened various cases with tech support. Usually these get escalated to engineering and therefore into a black hole. I think I've only ever been contacted once on a case that was escalated. Plus when they create a case you get an email with a case number in it but no reference to what the case is about so if you have more than one open then you have no idea what cases refer to which problems. Also, there is no way to track your cases through the portal.
3) LNP
I requested LNP many months ago and continue to wait. They updated my account at one time to (7/29) as the date of request, which isn't entirely true but even with that date it puts LNP at over 2 months.
Updated 6/3/05
After a month of service since the outage things seem to be getting better. They did cancel my account accidently and that caused another three days of me not having service and then subsequent overbilling for which I was credited, but on the whole I find the techs easy to work with and very willing to help (especially Jesus who always seems to pick up the phone when I call).
So, as a result I've push my ratings back to more positive, let's hope it stays there.
Updated 5/12/05
Well after a week of ongoing issues it's time to update the review. I first signed up to test Asterisk, liked the portal and really disliked Lingo so decided to switch. I bought a Sipura 3000 and for the first few days of service was stunned by call quality which is night and day over Lingo.
Unfortunately I was only a customer for a few days before the upgrade and Global Crossing fiasco started so now I've been without service (or at least have very spotty service) for over a week. By the end of this week I need to decide whether to move elsewhere. I really like BV and am trying to give them a chance, but I need a phone that works when I pick it up to call, especially Internationally.
Bottom line is that if you are looking to switch, NOW is not a good time to do it. Wait and see if they sort their issues out.
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Well I'd had enough of Lingo. Lot's of stuff I've reported on my reviews so it was time for a change. At first I got Broadvoice as part of some investigation/training for work to get a handle around Asterisk so I just bought the 100 min bundle. The first thing that caught my eye was ease of registration, the web site in general and then after the first month I got an email with my bill and all my calls in it! -- amazing, this is how it should be.
So after yet more trouble with Lingo I saw a review of the Sipura 3000 and the ability to route calls back in a pstn line and back out over voip. Very useful for us as we call Europe a lot.
Bought a Sipura which I received within 3 days. Plugged it in and within about 10 mins was up and running. I followed their instructions on the web which only got me so far, in the end I needed to speak with them and they needed the MAC address of the device so that I could be fully provisioned.
The nice thing was the guy who answered the phone did it all. He was polite and knowledgable and he sorted out the provisioning, changed my plan and voila within seconds it showed up on my online portal.
Next major and nicest surprise by far was the call quality. I call my mother in Europe and it was like she was next to me. Even she commented on how much better it sounded than the Lingo service and quite honestly it was stunning. I realize this is mainly due to the Sipura but possibly also the codec Broadvoice will support.
All in all, superb. Will be cancelling Lingo by the end of the week.
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Review by redholm
UPDATED: 3.6 years ago
member for 5 years, 920 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Sunnyvale,Santa Clara,CA
$22 per month (month by month)
about 3 days
"Great plans for BYOD user"
"Inconsistent service"
"I am looking for a new provider"
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3/31 Update
I got tired of tweaking which proxy to use having inconsistent service. It was too much difference between the Broadvoice proxies to believe that all issues where mine.
I canceled and it was a smooth process although I had to remind them that I had been a customer for 12 month so they should credit me the disconnect fee they charged.
I am now with Axvoice to early to tell but the first couple of calls were great. I like the Broadvoice web site better Axvoice points to Voxilla to setup the BYOD device.
Axvoice as all RNK reseller just launched a VoIP2Go service. Call a regular number and get routed in to the VoIP network. Nice if you do not have a SPA-3000 or similar device.
1/14 Update
I have seen many bad reviews of Broadvoice so here is a ‘success’ story. E.g. I think I get my money worth of service every month. Still I do not believe that any VOIP vendor is ready for the average user.
Well I have been with Broadvoice for over a year.
There are occasional outages I solve that by only using them for outgoing service. I can use a different phone if I have to.
QOS makes a big difference but can be tricky to setup. I have progress from no QOS -> incorrectly configured QOS -> Standard Linksys Firmware QOS -> replace the Linksys Firmware with DD-WRT. My outgoing voice quality has improved with each change.
I will keep using Broadvoice since it has changed my international calling habits.
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Review by Redbluffian
UPDATED: 3.6 years ago
member for 4 years, 96 visits, last login: 289 days ago
Red Bluff,Tehama,CA
$23 per month (12 month contract)
about 4 days
"None"
"Service continues to degrade"
"Currently a poor value"
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3/29/2006
We have finally had it with Broadvoice and are considering where to go from here. What began as excellent service an great value in the fall of 2005 became a nightmare by the end of February 2006. As of today we cannot check our voice mail from anywhere but the BV website or a BV phone number, calls arbitrarily drop or experience one way audio, and my personal favorite, some incoming callers receive a message telling them that our number does not exist.
After writing letters and talking to CS, the iritation factor has reached critical mass while simultaneously finding two other providers which offer local numbers. There is no incentive for us to stay since BV makes it so inviting to leave. As a replacement, we are looking at Packet 8 and Teliax since they offer local numbers.
During this entire time our Vonage line (with no local number) has been flawless.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3/8/2006
Our Broadvoice service continues to degrade. What began as sporadic outages for incoming callers has grown to a high probability that both inbound and outbound calls will be dropped with no warning. Also echos are the norm for outbound calls to the 530 area code.
Another disturbing trend is the degrading voice mail service. Presently, voicemail cannot be checked from non Broadvoice lines since the touchtones don't seem to be recognized. Also some callers are greeted with a system message stating that "this service is not available" and cannot leave a message.
We have spent time examining our broadband including drops and ping times to our Broadvoice proxy and all indications show that the problem is not us, and we also have a Vonage account which is not experiencing the problems.
I can accept that problems will occur with an emerging technology and a start-up company. But what's very irking, is that Broadvoice tech support takes the information but offers no solutions or progress reports. If Vonage offered a local number for us in the 530 area code, Broadvoice would be dropped like a hot potato.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2/21/2006
Our Broadvoice service has begun to degrade over the past month. There are sporadic outages for inbound callers where they are greeted with dead air, no voice mail, nothing. At other times we cannot make calls to random 800 numbers. some work and others don't. We have had problems with calls to both San Francisco and Salem Oregon. Calls will just end, no warning, just gone. Re-establishing the call solves the problem for a while then the same thing happens. Call audio quality has been great as have the advanced features other than the above mentioned phone mail problem.
In all, given the 1800 minutes used per month, the problems only rise to the "mildly irritating" level with most calls going through flawlessly. The call manager integration with Outlook is great.
We also have a Vonage line which "seems" more stable, but it also sees less use so it may not be a fair comparison.
Will keep updating
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
12/15/05
So far, So good with Broadvoice. There have been two instances where calls to San Francisco started out great and degraded after 5 minutes until the called party completly looses audio. Re-establishing the call fixed the problem. Similar calls placed to the same number on Vonage did not have this problem. Vonage had similar issues for calles placed to Salem Oregon. No outages or billing issues to report since the last update.
Periodically the Broadvoice box (Sipura 1001) needs to be restarted when the dialtone goes away. This occured twice since the last update and was noticed in the morning when making the first call. Never has been an issue with the Vonage Motorola box.
The biggest factor effecting call quality continues to be the quality of our DSL line, specifically the upstream speed. If SBC is having a bad day or there is a lot of uploading going on, both VoIP services suck big time. Charter, please bless our town with internet service this year, so we can say good by to SBC.
Bottom Line. Comparable call quality and customer service. Broadvoice has the edge with having a local number, included international calling and the Call Manager application but Vonage has the edge with Fax compatability and needing less fiddling with the box.
For those thinking of trying out VoIP, remember that your level of satisfaction with VoIP is in large part proportional to the quality of your broadband provider.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
11/28/2005
Found a real limitation with Broadvoice service. It is useless for fax use. Every fax we try to send or receive fails. This prompted our first call to broadvoice support which was answered by a real human who spoke decent english in seven minutes. He explained that Broadvoice does not support fax at the present time but is coming in the future, but he did not know when. He also explained that the fax limitation is spelled out in the user agreement, which I did not read.
This is the first real "problem" we have had with Broadvoice when compared to Vonage. They have been equal in all other aspects. Our "value for the money" rating has been doungraded from a 5 to a 3.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
11/22/2005
Since the last update we have had no problems that could not be explained by our clogged up DSL line. If you decide to use VOIP make sure you have plenty of up load bandwidth available.
We use SBC as our DSL provider with a 1500+ up and 300+ down package. At certain times of day we upload some very large files and when that happens, forget either the Broadvoice or Vonage lines. For now, this class of service is the only game in town.
At this point, both our Broadvoice and Vonage experience has been identical, both excellent.
Will keep updating!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
11/15/2005
Had our first "problem" today. Three calls went through but only the called party could be heard. Also had one out of state call dropped for no apparent reason. It connected fine after redialing. All other calls had no issues.
With over 200 minutes of use these are the only problems so far. As with our Vonage line, the call quality degrades if there is heavy upload activity on the DSL connection. The service always measures at 1500+ down and 300+ up.
One feature that is a big winner is the Call Manager, it is always up on the desktop. The interface with Outlook is seamless.
Stay tuned, will continue updating.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
11/9/2005
After one week of service, the service has been flawless. No dropped calls, echos, or loss of dialtone. No need to contact customer service yet. So far so good.
Since we also have Vonage service, there has been an opportunity to compare call quality. Nothing was conclusive. Some calls sound better on Vonage, some on Brodvoice. The differences appear random, but either way, all calls sounded better than those made over a POTS line.
Will update as time goes by.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
We have been using Vonage service for over a year and have been very happy with it. Our only gripe was their inability to get us a local number, and very lousy customer service when we called them to try ask about a local number. See our reviow on Vonage posted a few weeks ago. We still have Vonage, but have subscribed to Broadvoice to do head-to-head comparison since they do have a local number available. If Broadvoice works out, we plan to cancel the Vonage account.
The broadvoice start up package was purchased on Ebay from a reseller. The package included the Sipura adapter, and an activation code which waived the start-up and cancellation fees. Total cost including shipping was $60.
The kit arrived in good condition 5 days after placing the order. Signing up on the web took about 5 minutes and was very straight forward. Confirmation was received by Email within minutes.
Hooking up the kit was uneventful. After plugging the Sipura adapter into the switch and powering it up, it spent about 30 seconds talking to the "mother ship" After about a minute, dial tone was available and we made our first call. At the time of this writing only about a half dozen calls have been made and about three received. All were clear with no chopping.
With little experience so far, take the ratings an tenative, they will be updated.
Stay tuned
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Review by bolco
UPDATED: 3.6 years ago
member for 4.3 years, 296 visits, last login: 1.2 years ago
Washington,Washington,PA
$15 per month (month by month)
about 4 days
"BroadVoice got off to a GREAT start!"
"It just went downhill from there...and this post is TOO long ;)"
"Not recommended...at any cost."
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First, a little bit about me and how I ended up here.
After overpaying for local telephone service, a separate long distance service, mid-speed DSL, and satellite television for several years...I decided that some changes needed to be made. In December of last year, I determined that the only way that I was going to lower my monthly bills was to dump my local “mom & pop” telephone company. My monthly bill for local and DSL ONLY exceeded $110.00 per month. I used a separate company for long distance & 800# service. However, my only other sensible option for internet was Comcast HSI. I haven’t had cable since 1995. At that time, I cancelled “New Channels Cable TV” after I got fed up with their almost bi-monthly price increases and switched to Dish Network. I loved my Dish, but without subscribing to CableTV with Comcast, their HSI was too costly. So, just before Christmas, I cancelled my local telephone/DSL service, my long distance/800#, and my Dish Network service and subscribed to CableTV and HSI. For telephone service, we all have Nextel and the signal is excellent inside our house. So, I just made a small adjustment to our plan to allow for more minutes and free incoming calls…and we were ready to go with only cell phone service…or, so I thought.
It became quite clear by the end of the first week of January that losing home telephone service was somewhat inconvenient and I was on the receiving end of a lot of grumbling by the other family members. It seems that they didn’t like being “tied” to their cell phones and, I must admit, it felt like every time someone called me I had to run up the steps or in from the garage to answer the call. I must be available at all hours for my employer and if someone happened to call in the middle of the night, and I forgot to take my cell to bed with me, I would end up missing the call while I tried to figure out where I left my Nextel. We all missed having wired or cordless telephones placed where ever we might need them throughout the house. But I was determined to avoid my local telco for any reason. Finally, a search on the internet landed me here at BBR checking out VoIP. BBR truly is an invaluable public service.
After reading through all of the reviews of the different companies here I had it narrowed down to either BroadVoice or VoicePulse. After looking into them closer, it was a no-brainer. BroadVoice rated at or near the very top, has an amazing list of features, and has the lowest cost! I placed an order for the SIP1001 and the $9.95 in-state calling plan and my adapter arrived in about 3 days. I thanked the delivery man, ripped open the box, cut the incoming telco line at my demark, and hooked the new adapter up to my router and plugged a phone line into an existing wall jack. About 5 seconds later I picked up a phone in the house, had a dial tone, and made my first call. The voice quality was noticeably better than POTS and it worked perfectly. Only $1.95 for a second phone number with a ring pattern specifically for my Mother? I’ll take that! A couple of days later, I login to find that now I can get a toll-free 800# for another $1.95. Totally incredible, I’ll take that too! After a couple of days, browsing through the fairly thorough web portal, I found the simul-ring function and had it ring to my cell phone too. It worked perfectly. What a great idea! Then, in early February, my Mother landed herself in the hospital in need of open heart surgery, and I tell the hospital my phone number and tell them to call me anytime at my new BV number, it will ring me wherever I am…day or night…home or cell. BroadVoice even issued me a credit on my second bill because they claim that they overcharged me. I called them up to advise them that I have not been overcharged…I read my bills closely. The rep tells me that for a day-or-two there was a “typo” on one page of the website that created the need to give everyone who signed up over an X-day period of time to receive a $5.00 credit. Talk about an honest company. This one is unbeatable! It’s time to tell all of my friends and family about BroadVoice! But, HOLD THE PHONE!
The beginning of May rolls around and it’s time for the “Big BroadVoice Meltdown!” I can’t make outgoing calls. Then I realize that I can’t receive calls either. My internet is working fine…hmmmm? But that’s okay; calls will simul-ring to my cell phone. Wrong again! Nothing works. For almost an entire week…NOTHING! I couldn’t get through to customer service, my employer couldn’t call me, and the Doctor couldn’t call me to update me on my Mothers critical condition. Nothing on their website, no E-Mail notifications, and if I didn’t see in these BBR forums that I wasn’t alone, I would have thought that it was a problem on my end. BV handled this outage poorly, and my family and friends that switched to VoIP weren’t very happy with me, but I bit my tongue and kept quiet.
Albeit very slowly, service returned and (although still unstable) seemed to improve daily. Then it was just one problem after another.
First, my simul-ring failed. If someone called my BV line, my home and cell phone would ring correctly but if I answered the BV line, it would be dead but my cell phone would continue ringing. Then when I would hang up the BV line and run for my cell phone, only to find out that when I hung up my home phone…the caller would be disconnected. Attempts to resolve the matter with customer support failed miserably, so I had to stop using simul-ring. Oh well, this feature was unexpected techno-candy anyway.
Next, call waiting failed. If I was on the line and the CW tone sounded, I would press “flash” to switch calls and end up losing them both. CS suggested that it was a problem with my handset. I explained that it’s happening on ALL 9 of my phones and that I seriously doubted that all 9 went bad at the same time. Then they assured me that having 9 phones connected to my device was the problem. Ummm, it worked before? So, as you can see, attempts to resolve this matter with customer support failed miserably, so I had to ignore my CW tone. This is a basic service that every service should be able to offer. Very disappointing.
Then comes the choppy calls…and calls that are disconnected in mid-conversation. Customer support tells me that they made some changes to my account and that I need to reboot my SIP1001 to correct the problem. I do that…but the quality remains poor.
I decide to give the tech guys and easy one and fire off an email that my timezone must be set wrong, because the timestamp on my CallerID is one hour off. Amazingly enough, I even got a reply. Unfortunately, it states, “We are sorry for the inconvenience. Currently, our system does not support summer time saving. It will correct by itself in fall.” I thought to myself, “Well, if that’s not stupid!” At any rate, attempts to resolve the matter with customer support failed miserably…do you see a trend here?
Here’s some icing for you. One night in mid-May, I’m sleeping and my cell phone rings. It is my boss telling me to call the hospital. They called my workplace one night looking for me because when they call my BroadVoice line, they got a recording telling them that I was talking on the other line and to leave a message, but I never returned their call. I wasn’t on the other line, I was sleeping. I pick up the phone and didn’t get a stutter-tone indicating that I have voice mail, but I call the hospital to find out that my Mom had passed away. Later that day, after I got home from the funeral directors office, I’m sitting in my kitchen and my phone rings one time to indicate that I have a voice mail message. I check to find that I had THIRTEEN messages over the last day. The hospital called a couple of times, my brothers and sister called, my boss called…and a few of them mentioned that the recording says I’m busy on another call. My phone NEVER rang. I then call my BV line from my cell phone and get the same message…my phone never rang.
I have given BroadVoice more than a fair chance. They have failed me and continue to fail me. They have failed my friends and family, and they have already switched back to POTS or to Vonage. Maybe my case is isolated and not the “norm” for them, but, it’s time for them to be removed from my house. The end has come. Your mileage may vary…but I’m only being honest. I really wanted BroadVoice to succeed.
PS-based on earlier posts, I’m fearful to what is going to happen to my credit card account when I cancel my service. Here we go!
-----------------------------------
UPDATE (03/21/06) -- Well, after cancelling my service, they didn't slam my credit card...even though I felt that they may. However, when I cancelled, they sent me an EMail stating that I needed to return the device to them. I politely replied asking them if I still had to return the device even though I was a customer for 12 consecutive months...
"Am I required to return the device to you even though I remained a customer for a full year? I will if you want me to, but was unsure if this was just a canned email OR if you desire it's return."
And they responded within 12 hours with...
"As you said you are the customer who is over one year. So you may keep our device for free."
That sounded slightly rude to me...but I was happy that they actually responded. Too bad they didn't respond to technical issues that fast.
Finally, I have relieved myself from the horrors of BroadVoice! There's a reason that they are at the very bottom of the ratings list out of 16 providers. BroadVoice is TERRIBLE! C-YA!
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Review by fkee
UPDATED: 3.6 years ago
member for 4.9 years, 12 visits, last login: 2.9 years ago
Hayward,Alameda,CA
$22 per month (month by month)
about 1 days
"Price, coverage,decent quality, ease of setup, choice of TA"
" Occasional drop connect (can't hear or be heard) & loss of quality"
"Good value and good enough for most"
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3/18/06 Well its been a year since they had the big upset in May 05. Since then it been a steady improvement so I upped some of my ratings. Tech/Customer support has been recently improved and they have three new phone numbers based on geographical location. When a call conection is established call quality is usually very good. In the last two weeks I seem to be noting more dead air or drop calls and voice quality degradation (garbled or digitized sound) during a call. Note Echo or latency has not been an issue anymore. Calls can be be fine for 10 minutes then hicup. My wife especially has noticed this with calling Canada, she can talk an hour and has low tolerance for when the call goes bad and will switch to the cell phone (gulp). Could be internet traffic jams, how does one know?. Tech support switched me to a closer server today so I hope that ups the realiability. In all I just accept that VOIP is still not as realiable as a regular line service and will have the the occasional fluke. When that occurs I just hang up and redail. I usually never had any problems getting through and out of a years time can only recall only one day when I had trouble dialing in one area code only. I use about a 1000 minutes a month and some occasional international calls. The web site has been reliable never had any problems with it and I can access all info & control my features.
6/23/05 I am down grading on Tech support and Call Quality. Their service is up and running reliably but QOS has degraded since the major change in May.. The most annoying issue is echo. Customer service is difficult to get through but possible with persistence and patients.
Update 5/15/05 Broadvoice has had tremendous difficulties with tech problems spanning over a week. As a consequence these the latest reviews with good reason have not been too positive and they as a consequence they lost users. The company came out with a statement finally from the CEO. While dissapointed by the intermittant lack of service this past week I am going to give stick with them "on probation" due to this letter from CEO. Here is the statement.
Open Letter from David Epstein, President of BroadVoice, to our customers:
The last seven days have been very difficult for BroadVoice and many of our customers and I’d like to sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. I also want to explain, briefly, why service has been intermittent or interrupted for some, and what we have been doing to solve the problems.
On Wednesday May 5th at 2 am, BroadVoice began a major infrastructure upgrade of our core systems. This upgrade, which initially went as planned and had been tested in our lab, represents a substantial investment in future service enhancements that will allow us to add more features, new CODECs and additional user capacity. In retrospect, the upgrade could not have happened at a worse time.
On Thursday May 6th at 9 am a 12-month long dispute with a telecom carrier partner came to a head, when that carrier unilaterally broke off negotiations and interrupted some of our outbound calling services and all of the inbound calling services of over 7,000 BroadVoice customers. Even though BroadVoice has received bills from the carrier that inflated charges due by over 44% and, in some cases, reflected rates that are 13 times the contracted rate, BroadVoice has paid 100% of the undisputed charges. The heart of the dispute involves the appropriate classification of our users’ calls. BroadVoice believes these calls originate from the Internet which is global in nature. We further believe that the proper resolution of this open issue has significant implications for all VoIP service providers and end users.
Fortunately, we quickly found alternate carriers who have worked with us around the clock to restore service to the affected users. Unfortunately, the combination of the above upgrade and the need to technically interconnect with these new carrier partners on such short notice has exposed some significant bugs in the newly upgraded system that were not present in our earlier testing. Our team and the vendors involved are making substantial progress on stabilizing the system and removing the remaining issues – but they are not done yet. We believe we have identified all the remaining issues and are working to fix them as soon as possible.
I am sorry this communication did not go out earlier but we have been 100% focused on resolving the problems and the team here is working non-stop to do just that. We have seen incremental improvements, and a number of issues are resolved, but there is more to do.
We all apologize for any interruptions you may have experienced, and we thank you for your loyalty and your patience. We will continue to work 24/7 to bring you the high-quality, feature-rich service you deserve, as we are committed to making BroadVoice the best VOIP service available.
D -
David Epstein
President
BroadVoice
-----"Orginal Review below"
The price, coverage, features, and the option to buy and select your own TA was the reason why I choose Broadvoice. I do not call overseas much but do have friends around the world and having international options was nice. Canadian coverage was also important as I have relatives there.
I have a Sipura SPA-3000 that is a bit complicated to learn how to setup but Broadvoice has a setup program that made it easy to use. The SPA-3000 has a POTS gateway but I have not tried it yet. I got it from Voxilla they are a good resource and they will give one free month, with all activation fees waived, of any Broadvoice's unlimited plan, including "Unlimited World Plus"; Getting on was quick and easy with the setup programs available for download at Voxilla for many carriers. Oh in the News Cisco just acquired Sipura!!!
By the way having your own TA not only allows you to be carrier independent but also means you can take the device with you and plug it into any broadband Ethernet network and male/receive calls at your number. You don't need your computer just a TA and POTS telephone. This means you can take your number with you anywhere in the world.
For the past three months I have not noticed any down time but (May 5 & 6) a major outage (spanning over a day) has happened. I did not know until my sister called on my cell saying she could not get through. Also found I could not dial out nor access my web logon though eventually that came back but incoming calls still a problem. Others users have reported down times but one would never know unless by chance you can't call out or in,...or caller provides feedback. I am not a heavy user nor on the phone all day. I make and receive calls only a few times a day.
May 6 Update on Outage; Broadvoice is announcing "We are currently experiencing in-bound call issues with a carrier partner in some areas. We are aware of the issue and our engineers are working to have it resolved as soon as possible."
Comments: Somebody will get their butt chewed for that outage. From th
e sound of it may have nothing to do with their system but someone they are contracting with. Is some sense this will make them stronger as they realized the weak links and improve on it. The VOIP industry is a new emerging industry that is dealing with rapid growing pains and is shaking out the bugs. It is improving daily so we can't be too critical. Even if a voip is down 2 days out of 365 it is 99.72602% available. Think about that. POTS has had decades to perfect it self to near 100% uptime in the Industrialized Nations. Try making a call in an under--developed country. Also mind you small companies like Broadvoice will be under tremendous pressure as the big POTS companies are taking notice and start to roll out there version of VOIP.
For call quality once in a while you get flutter, drops, and for some reason they can't hear me (I always hear them fine). It is no worse then a cell phone which is what I used mainly before I had VOIP. Call quality is usually very good.
Tech support usually answers and the wait is usually not too long. I had some minor issues. For one their email notify had a bug and they finally disabled it by calling it a feature "in progress". Also had an issue with in correct time stamping on my voice mail or CID stamps. It was a simple fix but took two tries, as first tech did not apply the simple fix (setting my account for the right time zone). Note I first tried to set my TA locally but learned signal time stamp from Broadvoice overrides it. Drove me nuts figuring that one out. Hence my experience are the techs knowledge varies and some are better then others so do not be shy to call again if your issue doesn't get resolved.
Simultaneous call ringing works great but know if one number is down (like cell phone off, or home link down) it will not ring any phone but just go to voice mail. Also if power or broadband is out, or modem is offline calls go to voice mail (no auto forward which would be nice)
Except for outage reported above Broadvoice has for most part they have been reliable, not 100% perfect but should please most users. If you need 100% reliability and 100% call quality reliability Broadvoice is not quite there yet but they are close. Then does any VOIP have that yet?
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Review by vanstrien
Posted: 3.7 years ago
member for 4.8 years, 5 visits, last login: 3.6 years ago
Katy,Fort Bend,TX
$25 per month (12 month contract)
about 4 days
"(Mostly) Worked out of the box with high quality"
"Some glitches with incoming number"
"Has been the best VOIP I've tried, so far..."
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I've tried both SunRocket and Vonage the last few months. Because I'm on Time Warner Cable (and our local phone service is Consolidated Communications - with poor but expensive DSL services) I've had problems with latency and bad voip service.
What surprised me is that while having the best international call plan, Broadvoice also worked really well straight out of the box. I figured it would be a case of 'you get what you pay for' but so far I've been pleasantly surprised.
I ordered the service last Friday and received the kit on Wednesday afternoon. It was literally five minutes to get everything plugged in and powered on.
I didn't have to reconfigure my firewall at all for the Sipura device to work correctly. In fact I didn't have to do any configuration of the device at all. No entering of passwords, setting IPs, etc. I did, however, change the device to a fixed IP on my network - but that was for my own peace of mind.
On Vonage and Sunrocket the other party had a lot of trouble hearing me, especially in the afternoon. The weird thing is that any speed tests run online showed that the throughput of my connection was still very tolerable. It must have been more of a latency issue. I've not had any similar problems with Broadvoice in the short time I've tested them.
The only glitch I've run into in the couple days I've had the service was when in dialing my own number. Apperently all the routing wasn't configured and I was directed to someone else's number. A called tech support and got what sounded like someone in my own time zone. He was a bit flakey, but who can complain if they answer within a couple minutes and actually do something about the problem?
One word of warning: there were posting on message boards that some people were being switched to Broadvoice's business plans because they were making too many calls. That switches a plan from $25 to $500 or more. I spoke to a tech support person and asked him about it. He said that some people were making hundreds of calls in just a couple days, and that it was clear they were not using the phone for normal household use. He said that people get warned first, and that after that if their activity continues they get switched over to the expensive plan. This is contrary to the stories on the net.
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Review by JehCT
UPDATED: 3.7 years ago
member for 4.5 years, 11 visits, last login: 3.7 years ago
West Hartford,Hartford,CT
$22 per month
about 2 days
"Excellent voice quality. Fast-booting Sipura adapter. Easy install."
"None."
"I canceled three Vonage lines, and switched to BroadVoice"
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2/25/05 Over the months I've experienced occasional loss of audio on inbound calls. in the most recent incident, customer service responded very quickly. I have four BV lines. The phone and fax via SPA2100 work flawlessly all the time (the fax on line 2 as a BYOD device). My Xten softphone works perfectly. Only the SPA1001 has been giving me trouble. I am thinking about replacing that device with another SPA2100. Maybe this is the source of the recurring problem. Perhaps BV tech support should be more proactive about replacing funky adapters.
10/23/05 I emailed BV customer support because I had one way audio on calls simultaneously ringing to my alternate numbers, and me main extension was dead. Within a day they came back and said that my line was working correctly, that I must have a connectivity problem. This upset me, because I knew my network connection was working fine. Then I discovered that one of my telephone cables was unplugged. As soon as the phone had a proper connected to the ATA, everything worked smoothly. BV needs to have a thorough online troubleshooting process that starts with "Make sure all your cables are plugged in..." My call quality continues to be perfect,. and I enjoy all the features.
I've been using BroadVoice for five months over my Comcast dynamic IP connection, and have been completely pleased with it. I recently added two more lines, and cancelled all of my service with Vonage.
The main difference between BroadVoice and Vonage is that BroadVoice costs less, provides better features, and supplies better equipment. BroadVoice allows simultaneous ringing of ten numbers. Vonage only allows two. My BroadVoice plan costs less, and includes calling to Europe. The BroadVoice adapter boots up much faster than the Vonage adapter, and seems to perform better when my network connection has traffic.
Customer service at BroadVoice is good. I called them because I needed help running two lines on my BYOD Sipura 3000 router. They answered the phone within a few minutes, and e-mailed me the instructions. With my first BroadVoice supplied Sipura adapter, installation was exceedingly simple and fast.
With BroadVoice, the voice quality is uniformly excellent. I have very rarely experienced dropped calls, and those few I blame on Comcast, because my Internet drops out once in a while. I'd say 99% of my BroadVoice calls complete successfully. When we were with Vonage, my wife was complaining all the time because her line would not work. WIth BroadVoice, she has no complaints whatsoever.
I've been running a fax over one of my BroadVoice lines, and it works perfectly. This is not a supported feature, but if it works, why not?
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Review by Test99
UPDATED: 3.7 years ago
member for 6.5 years, 3879 visits, last login: a few hours ago
San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
$11 per month
"Great international rates and BYOD"
"Customer support unwilling to troubleshoot a problem."
"Service unusable. No way to get it fixed."
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My early experience with BroadVoice was rocky. There were 5.5 hours of downtime in the first few weeks of service. I was unsure whether to keep the service. Because of numerous reports on BBR that it was difficult to contact BroadVoice customer support, I waited passively at first for the problem to be resolved. When I finally did send an email to customer support, the problem was resolved within the hour and has never returned. Subsequent emails to customer support also received a prompt, friendly, and helpful response.
I don’t use a lot of features, apart from simultaneous ringing. If I understand correctly, BroadVoice has recently blocked simultaneous ringing of numbers outside North America. If true, this is definitely a step in the wrong direction. This feature is essential, even if it costs extra. The call manager, which opens in a browser window, looks like a great idea. But it is unstable. In Firefox, it pops up repeatedly for no reason. In the browsers I have tried, it usually loses contact with the server after a short time and apparently is unable to recover.
As of this writing, the web site's list of available features is not up-to-date. For example: simultaneous ringing is listed as an extra-cost option. In fact it is included with the basic service. Shared call appearance is listed as available, when apparently it is not. Caller ID name on outgoing calls is at the top of my wish list.
The thing that drew me to BroadVoice was their rates: $10 per month for unlimited in-state calls, plus the best international rates. And it is very comforting to know that if my calling pattern changes, I can log in to the web site at any time and switch to unlimited calling to 21 or 35 countries for only $10-$15 per month more. That ability to change plans online, even if I don’t use it, feels like an insurance policy. It is a big plus for BroadVoice.
The ability to bring my own device, to retain full control of it using freely provided credentials, and to switch devices at any time, are big selling points for BroadVoice. It would be hard to go back to a locked device. The ability to use the service outside the US without restriction is also an important benefit.
To my way of thinking, BroadVoice's policies are rational and transparent. They really "get" what I need in a phone service.
Update: service was unstable for the entire week starting on 2005 May 2. BroadVoice gave no clear explanation for this for many days. The service never really recovered after it was ported away from Global Crossing. Often the audio would fail in one direction at some seemingly random point in a call and would not recover. Sometimes two or three calls in succession would have one-way audio. Customer support proposed only ineffectual measures such as switching to a different proxy or adapter. At no point were they willing to consider the possibility that the problem might be related to the involuntary change of CLEC after the falling out with Global Crossing.
It would take too long to write a full description of my experience with customer support. In summary, my experience was that when they could readily identify the cause of a problem they would fix it. But they flatly refused to do genuine troubleshooting of a problem that they could not immediately identify. They automatically assumed that the problem was on my end. The fact that I had up to 8 other VOIP services operating successfully on the same network seemed to be of absolutely no relevance to them.
The set of features offered on the BroadVoice network was superb. But my dissatisfaction with customer support's troubleshooting efforts was profound. The service was unusable and there was no way to get it fixed.
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