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Review by clinn 
UPDATED: 1 year ago
member for 1.1 years, 6 visits, last login: 1 year ago
 Fairport,Monroe,NY
 $3 per month (month by month)
 about 5 days
 "EXcellent call quality, customer service, pay as you go option"
 "Few - only BYOD, so configuration can be tricky, no CID name lookup"
 "Excellent deal, best support at very low prices"
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I am very glad I have found this provider, and can highly recommend them for semi-technical or technical users (due to some user configuration required, as they are only BYOD). My use case was analog telephone replacement, where I was paying about $50 per month for a basic line + CID + long distance, with very few calls.
First - their rate plan. While their monthly plan is very competitive, they are one of the few to offer a "pay as you go" rate, which gives you an incoming / outgoing number for $1.95 per month, about $.80 / month FCC taxes, and then lets you "pay as you go" for 1.8 cents per minute. If you are using less than around 1000 minutes per month, this is cheaper than anyone else.
The call quality is absolutely fine, indeed, sometimes better than my analog phone. I have had no service outages to my knowledge in the 1 month I have had service.
Customer service: it is only email based, but it is GREAT, GREAT, GREAT! When I have posted problems by web (from the control panel page, logged into your account) they usually respond in hours, and all responses are technical and insightful - they know what they are doing. I have even gotten answers in the evenings on weekends.
They only support "bring-you-own-device" (BYOD), which is good and bad. It is good in that you get to pick and configure your own. I finally chose, and highly recommend, the Handytone HT-502. One thing that they do not make clear is that if your ATA does not support flexible dialing plans, you will be stuck with 10 digit dialing only, which is unacceptable to me. The HT-502 allows the proper string to be entered to get you 7 + 10 dialing.
The bad side of BYOD is that you have to configure it yourself. This took some research and experimentation on my part, which could have been a problem with people unskilled with things technical. Customer service may have talked me through in gory detail if I had needed it, but for users without an on-site technical helper, they may have less trouble going with another VIOP provider.
Caller ID: incoming and outgoing numeric only, they do not subscribe to any database services (like many other providers). You CAN add any number to your web page, however, in which case it will send that text.
All told though, I could not be happier, and I really AM saving myself over $40 per MONTH - my typical bill is about $10, including some international calls.
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Review by dogatemycomp
Posted: 1 year ago
member for 1 year, 4 visits, last login: 51 days ago
Phoenix,Maricopa,AZ
 Business customer
$266 per month
about 1 days
"Excellent website, amazing rates, fax to email works flawlessly"
"No phone number to customer service."
"This is the best service provider I have ever had the pleasure of working with"
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I am an IT consultant for a couple of Call Centers in the Phoenix Metro area. I had resisted using CallCentric because they did not have a number we could call for support and I thought their prices were a bit low. My client was pushing about 13000 minutes per month through a brand new Switchvox server using Teliax but we always seemed to be having problems on a daily basis. Strangely enough while forwarding calls through VoipVoip, CallCentric or Junction Networks all the problems went away. (Junction Networks and VoipVoip seem to have a problem with DTMF and their prices are higher otherwise they seem ok). Teliax kept blaming Cox and our router but CallCentric worked every time. I was ripping my hair out.
About 10 days ago we migrated from Teliax to CallCentric permanently and since then our error logs have been empty. My first real problem came when contacting customer service because our account only included 3 outbound call channels. I emailed them at 3:13pm expecting a response in a couple of hours but they responded with a resolution by 3:18pm and the ticket was closed by 3:19pm. The entire process took a full 6 minutes! Today my client called me frantically because someone said they had gotten 1 busy signal and he feared the entire system had gone down again (as it had with Teliax) - talk about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Sure enough I had an alert in my mailbox from CallCentric saying we needed to buy more channels. The cost? $1 per channel. We bought 2 and the problem was resolved within minutes.
I am impressed by..
- CallCentric's rates ($2 per number, 2 cents per minute)
- their fax to email service works flawlessly every time
- notification about call congestion really helps me remain proactive
- fast customer support and quick email response
- billing recharge feature works every time
I should note that I am a proprietor that owns a small business in Phoenix AZ. I am a proud customer with CallCentric because after 3 providers I can finally sleep at night.
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Review by garryadkins
Posted: 1.1 years ago
member for 1.1 years, 1 visits, last login: 1.1 years ago
Ona,Cabell,WV
$18 per month
about 3 days
"Call Quality and Support"
"Occasional delay"
"Very good service, very good price."
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I joined callcentric in Feb, 2007 (18 months from the date of this review). Prior to that I was using Gizmo, and had poor results, so I didn't expect much.
At the time I was a newbie to home VOIP, but had some Asterisk experience and played with it as a hobby. About 4 months later, my wife and I had bought a new house and were spending time cleaning it up, repainting, etc. We had electric and water, and I wanted internet so I could view the house remotely.
Having had many many bad experiences with Verizon, I was loathe to give them any more money that I already was... So I searched around and found Callcentric. I bought a grandstream HT386 (I thought the extra FXS port would be handy, but I've never used it) and hooked it up at the new home.
I had a little difficulty with the initial setup, mostly because I didn't understand the terms and what some of the HT386 settings were (like which codecs to use and their order, Voice Frames per TX, G723 rate, etc.) At the time the documentation for the HT286 was quite a bit different. After a couple of hours playing, opening firewall ports, etc. I was UP! I went outside and disconnected the Verizon NID from Verizon's network, and plugged the GT386 into one of my open jacks... VOILA! I had phone service at every jack. I was very happy.
Call quality was spectacular! I had planned to set up an asterisk box (I had some previous asterisk experience, but no VOIP) to handle call treatments, voicemail to email, etc. But Callcentric added all those to their website, so I never bothered! Eventually we moved in (Dec 2007). I had my old Verizon number ported to my wife's cell phone, and we're legacy free!
Over the last 18 months, I've had very very few problems. One (maybe two) minor outages.
One problem I initially blamed on Callcentric but turned to be ATT Wireless. Every time I would call my cellphone from home, I would get "your call cannot be completed as dialed...". Worked fine from work and other cell phones. My dad got Vonage and he couldn't call me either... Then I knew something was up... I opened a trouble ticket, and Callcentric was all over it. We spent a couple weeks working back and forth until they finally had to give up. ATT owned the number and refused to do anything until I called. Callcentric offered a kludge, in that any time I called my cellphone, it was routed through an ATT circuit that could complete the call.
Of course when I call ATT Wireless, the phone people have NO IDEA what I was talking about. Finally I got through to tier 2 support at ATT and they reset my number "routing" and everything went away. My dad bought a new cellphone and had the same problem! I later found out that people in other states couldn't call me either.
Recently I've been experimenting with Faxing over Callcentric, and it's been a little spotty... I'm using hylafax and some older faxmodems. Turning on T.38 (supported by Callcentric, btw) helped, but I still have occasional problems completing a fax (maybe 1 of 5?) but that's probably related to my ISP (Suddenlink) I have far more trouble during the peak ISP time 8pm to 11pm.
Sometimes my wife complains about a minor delay... It's not always there but when it is, it can be annoying. An animated conversation degenerates quickly since you end up talking at the same time, then pausing, then talking again at the same time.
I recently changed from lower bandwidth codecs to ULaw and ALaw and the problem seems to have resolved. I don't know if that helps anyone else.
I also bought a Linksys "Network Optimizer for Gaming/VOIP" and put it in front of my router. (about $25) Any issues with jitter (very very few) are now completely gone. I can do anything on the internet without worry.
Hope this helps!
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 Review by dot_null
Posted: 1.1 years ago
member for 5.4 years, 1803 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Kennesaw, GA
Contract price not specified.
"Great deal for the Dirt Cheap DIDs, excellent web portal, sound quality is great terminated to a SIP device"
"Calls forwarded to SIP URI sound horrible, high E911 fees, high termination costs (1.9¢/min)"
"If you need an "all-you-can-eat" DID, sign up with these guys!"
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Well, I needed a local number and didn't want to pay exorbitant costs for a DID with "unlimited" incoming, nor did I want a pay by the minute plan for my needs. A CallCentric Dirt Cheap DID fit the bill perfectly.
Now, if you live outside of a large city you might not be able to find a local number. Luckily I live in the Atlanta area, which supposedly has the largest local calling area in the world and 3 full area codes (and parts of two others as I remember) are "local" to my location. I wound up picking a number approximately 40 miles away in one of these area codes, which is just as "local" to me as my next door neighbor's AT&T POTS line.
The service has been great! Call quality is excellent, except when forwarded to a SIP URI. Haven't really tried to troubleshoot this much further as I am not currently using this option. Call quality is great when sent straight to the CC SIP account though.
I am still on the "IP Freedom" rate plan, as I terminate outgoing calls over less expensive providers, where I pay from 1-1.1¢/min for domestic calling. As such, I cannot rate CallCentric's outgoing termination quality.
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 Review by espaeth
UPDATED: 1.1 years ago
member for 8.6 years, 2039 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Minneapolis,Hennepin,MN
$6 per month
about 1 days
"Call treatments, SIP URI forwarding, reasonable cost 'unlimited' DID, consistent call quality"
"Slightly more audio latency than other providers, termination costs are on the high end, no inbound CNAM offered"
"Solid, reliable service"
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I first signed up with CallCentric back in June as I needed a place to move my Sprint cell phone number I've had for more than a decade. (Sprint won't let you transfer your number to a new SERO plan) My original plan was just to take incoming calls and forward them to ViaTalk via a SIP URI, and leverage ViaTalk simulring to have the call hit both my home and cell phone.
Fast forward through a couple weeks of ViaTalk issues with the new servers, which lead me to setup an Asterisk box at home to troubleshoot the ViaTalk service. I have Cisco CallManager experience from work, but never really played around with Asterisk prior to the Viatalk issues. Starting down that path was the best thing I could have done for my home phone service satisfaction, in addition to creating something interesting to toy with on the weekends.
Since I signed up, I've now ported my home phone number away from ViaTalk to a CallCentric $5.95 'unlimited' residential DID. The inbound call quality has been consistently good; my only gripe with the service is there is approximately 150ms of additional audio delay compared to other providers I used. I noticed this most prior to my number porting when ViaTalk was set to forward to my CallCentric pre-port number, and I was using my cell phone to call home to use DISA. Since my number ported, the additional audio latency is still there, but much less noticeable with ViaTalk out of the loop. The other big selling point for me is the ability to use Call Treatments to do things like send anonymous calls to a different SIP URI than identified calls, and to be able to forward all inbound calls to my cell phone if my home Asterisk box goes offline.
Overall my service with CallCentric has been great. Ticket response is fast and thorough, audio quality is great for the DID service I have from them, and the service has been incredibly reliable for the last 3 months. CallCentric is currently dead last in my outbound trunk selection, however, as their 1.9c/min terminate rates are almost double what my other providers offer and they don't allow you to set outbound CID via SIP so it limits the functionality of my Asterisk box forwarding calls to my cell phone.
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Review by hwittenb
UPDATED: 1.1 years ago
member for 5.9 years, 2536 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Moraga,Contra Costa,CA
Contract price not specified.
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Callcentric has a fairly unique feature where you can designate an incoming phone number (DID) that you obtain from them as a personal dedicated access number where you can call the number and access CallCentric's voip calling services. This allows a person without access to high speed internet to use voip for long distance calling.
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 Review by DeeChandel
UPDATED: 1.2 years ago
member for 1.7 years, 544 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Edmonton,AB
Contract price not specified.
"Price, reliable, quality of sound, calling card feature, SIP"
"None"
"Good VOIP solution for someone on a budget"
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Configuring the ATA to work with CallCentric was very easy with the instructions provided on their website. I was up and running within 10 minutes.
The call quality has been excellent so far. Even my wife likes the quality!
I love the calling card feature.
Update: September 12, 2008
I have been using it for four months now and still have no complaints. The sound quality and reliability continue to be very very good!
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Review by adage
Posted: 1.2 years ago
member for 1.2 years, 0 visits, last login: 1.2 years ago
Sherwood Park,AB
Contract price not specified.
"Great support.Patient and tolerant with this techno klutz."
"none"
"Highly recommend"
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Great support. I highly recommend. Audio quality is as good as land line and the price is the best I've found.
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Review by scott2020
Posted: 1.2 years ago
member for 1.3 years, 311 visits, last login: 1 days ago
El Dorado Springs,Cedar,MO
$27 per month
about 2 days
"Call quality, support, web portal, fax support"
"High E911 charge, no CNAM"
"The best VOIP provider out there now"
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I have tried many different VOIP providers including Broadvoice, future-nine, Axvoice, Voip your life, Vitelity, and others. For my needs, CallCentric has topped them all. Their customer support ticket system is great. I was reluctant at first because they have no one to call, but all of my questions are answered within minutes. I had to change around some DID's and using the ticket system, it was done in 30 minutes. They are very responsive. They are not the least expensive provider, but if customer service matters to you, CallCentric is the way to go. No being on hold for 30 minutes with them!
The bad part is they charge $2.37 a month (I believe) for E911, which is quite high. In the end, I pay $19.99 for unlimited out, $5.95 for unlimited in, $2.37 for E911 and a little for tax/other fees. More than I wanted to spend on VOIP, but the quality, service, and reliability make the few extra dollars a month worth it.
If they can add the CNAM option and some of the other features listed by others in the reviews, they would be perfect!
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Review by kentuck1163
UPDATED: 1.3 years ago
member for 3.6 years, 246 visits, last login: 45 days ago
Vicksburg,Warren,MS
$15 per month
about 1 days
"Deliver on what they promise to provide. What a novel concept!"
"Hard to think of any bad points - really there haven't been any"
"WOW! What a find. This is a great company. Hope it stays this way."
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Ordered this service and am extremely pleased. Used softphone immediately and it worked. Ordered Linksys PAP2T phone converter from 3rd party and instructions on CallCentric's support pages were spot-on correct. Took no longer than 5 minutes to get my phone working.
Their "MyCallentric" web page is simple - but very well organized and very easy to use. Their support pages deliver what information you need. There is no phone number provided to speak to a real human for support - but, there is a way to open a support ticket. Although I have had no need to do this, I've heard from others that their issues are promptly addressed.
Call quality is absolutely SUPERB. Its just as good and perhaps (I kid you not) maybe even a tad better than my regular phone service. I use AT&T (Bellsouth territory) FastAccess DSL (3Mbps) service.
My only issue is that, since I use DSL for my Internet service, I was unable to port my old phone number. But, that is a small inconvenience for such a large savings over time. CallCentric made it very easy to purchase a local number and I only had to wait a day to get it delivered.
So far I'm a big fan of CallCentric. I sure hope it stays that way.
UPDATE: I had a question for CallCentric and entered a "trouble ticket" since there is no way to call a support person directly, nor support for live chat. I had a response on my ticket within 28 minutes! Thats a very good response time - and the information they provided answered my question.
UPDATE2: I've now had to use the "trouble ticket" several times - not to report problems but to ask questions regarding preparing my old POTS number for porting. In each case they responded to my tickets within under 10 minutes. I'm very pleased!
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