First impression not good

**jvosburgh** · 02-09-2010 07:01 PM

I am a new customer. Phone number porting is really fast, however, unit shipped when I signed up was dead on arrival.

Submitted a ticket on Friday night to support to have a replacement unit shipped ASAP. I received a quick response. New unit shipped yesterday (Monday). My existing number ported today (Tuesday). The replacement unit did not arrive. Bummer.

I would have thought that when I explained that my number was being ported on Tuesday, the new unit would have been shipped overnight so I would have a working telephone on Tuesday. I guess I should have explicitly requested overnight shipment.

We are surviving by forwarding the number to my wife's cellphone, although this makes it difficult to send in her heart monitor data to the doctor.

I guess my point is that with the rave reviews of the support services, I expected a little better service.

Thanks for listening.

**VOIPoTim** · 02-09-2010 07:04 PM

Sorry to hear that you've had issues. Unfortunately sometimes equipment is bad which is unpredictable.

We don't offer overnight shipping as an option, but do ship everything using USPS Priority Mail which is generally 2-3 days to anywhere in the country. You should have your replacement device soon and be up and running.

**Russell** · 02-09-2010 09:13 PM

To put it bluntly, there was no reason to port until you had the hardware and had checked things out - i.e. made sure everything worked as expected at your home. Absolutely no reason for VOIPo to bear the cost of overnight shipping, imo.

**ctaranto** · 02-10-2010 07:12 AM

Originally Posted by Russell

To put it bluntly, there was no reason to port until you had the hardware and had checked things out - i.e. made sure everything worked as expected at your home. Absolutely no reason for VOIPo to bear the cost of overnight shipping, imo.

Conversely, I've been a VOIPo customer for almost two months, and my port has yet to happen! There was an issue at the prior carrier with regards to the address they used when storing my number. VOIPo support has been great in trying to resolve this (Tim especially has jumped in many times), and it's scheduled to port next week.

I also have defective hardware. The RT31P2 works (most of the time), but VOIPo support was unable to send commands to it remotely and came to the conclusion there was something strange with it (they spent a few hours on the phone with me trying out various configs, settings, etc). Unfortunately, the RT will lose reauth, randomly, every few days. I should be receiving a replacement in a few days.

VOIPo support has been very good throughout.

-Craig

**ctaranto** · 02-10-2010 03:07 PM

Surprisingly, I received my replacement VOIPo adapter today! Very fast service.

Plugging it in, appears to be working fine.

/c

**lost_** · 02-10-2010 03:12 PM

I could understand the frustration, especially when having someone with a medical condition or a need to be in touch with a doctor frequently.

Not to pile on as others have pointed out that one would be wise to observe a trial period before porting in (I didn't port in until after about 2-3 weeks), but most people who need a solidly reliable phone service for those extra-ordinary situations should retain a backup landline. I wanted a reliable 911 when my kids were younger and would occasionally be home with the babysitter, so I kept a Verizon line open and paid the minimum $19/mo for a few years until I finally cut it off (now that we have enough cellphones in the house. Though they are not as reliable as landline, I understand the risk).

VOIPo is more than fair in that it doesn't even charge for a port-in after the initial signup. Other providers charge an extra fee if the port is not initiated with the signup!

**jvosburgh** · 02-12-2010 08:43 PM

I realize now that I should have waited to port my number for a few weeks. I did it right away because we make very few outgoing calls. Most are incoming calls. I did not want to advertise the temporary number to only have it change back in a short time. Anyway, I have learned my lesson now.

Now for an update. I receive my replacement unit on Wednesday. It was not the original model PAP2T, but a RT31P2. Plugged it in and it fired right up. After a couple of minutes I had a dial tone. All good? Well, not quite.

Testing outgoing call was flawless. Worked great. Incoming calls were a problem. After I answered the call, I would get a couple of seconds of silence, then a fast busy. This happened a few times, so I fired up online chat.

The support person was very helpful and fixed the problem in about 15 minutes. It seems my ISP, Time Warner Roadrunner, was blocking some of the default ports. We tested and everything worked fine. Problem solved? Well, not quite.

Thursday we did not make or receive any calls. Friday we received several calls while at work. One left a message on voice mail and all seemed good. Our son answered a call around 4:00PM and another one at 6:00PM, all still good.

Then at 7:15PM our other son called us. This time, a couple seconds of silence then a fast busy. He called again, same symptom. I called him back and everything was good.

Used online chat to talk with support. He found nothing unusual with the device settings. He had me download network_check.exe and run it. I looked at the resulting output file and it just did some pings and trace routes which all looked pretty good. Sent the file to support and am waiting a reply.

Just received another incoming call with no problems. It appears that the problem is intermittent. That may make it harder to resolve. Hopefully it's just more port blocking by the ISP that is causing the problem.

I am optimistic at this point. Just hope it doesn't take too long to resolve.

FYI in case anyone is going to ask the question. I plugged the device directly into my cable modem. None of my devices are in between that could be causing a problem.

Thanks for you comments and interest.

**usa2k** · 02-12-2010 09:13 PM

Great report, and it sounds like progress. I expect that support will get those details worked out.

As a new VOIPo user, you would not know that outgoing calls on a temporary number, with some simple steps, could have sent the CID of the number yet to be ported. Of course that is a moot point now.

**Russell** · 02-13-2010 06:38 AM

Originally Posted by usa2k

Great report, and it sounds like progress. I expect that support will get those details worked out.

As a new VOIPo user, you would not know that outgoing calls on a temporary number, with some simple steps, could have sent the CID of the number yet to be ported. Of course that is a moot point now.

And, another moot point ... and if your previous service offered call-forwarding you could forward that to your VOIPo temporary number. Bottom line (hopefully, it'll benefit others - and this is what we should tell our friends when recommending ANY VOIP provider). Use the phone for outgoing (setting caller ID like VOIPo lets you, if the provider has that feature) and forward incoming to the temporary number. If you cannot forward incoming, at least use the temporary number for family incoming calls (assuming you're not single). Make sure any kinks are worked out and you're happy with the service, before ordering your port.

**holmes4** · 02-13-2010 08:33 AM

I too am a new user (from Vonage) and chose to hold off on porting until I am satisfied with the service. Vonage lets me forward the number so incoming calls work fine, and outgoing calls show my "real" number by default.

They sent me an RTP312 and MOSTLY it has worked fine, except that within a day after I received it it stopped communicating with the Internet and I had to power-cycle it. This has not recurred so far (couple of days now.)

The calls I have made and received have been fine, but I have not tested extensively yet.