Review by andy_c 
UPDATED: 1.6 years ago
member for 8.8 years, 1254 visits, last login: 48 days ago
 Louisville,Boulder,CO
 $15 per month (24 month contract)
 about 3 days
 "Sound quality of calls is very good and cost is reasonable"
 "Poor customer service, sneaky fees and sleazy business practices"
 "Reasonable prices and good sound quality, but poor reliability"
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Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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The Friday before the Sunrocket collapse (which occurred the following Monday), I decided to sign up for ViaTalk. At that time, the "2 years for the price of 1" deal was still in effect. I ordered the "bring your own device" (BYOD) option. The following Monday morning, I was hearing all kinds of gloom and doom on the forums here from Sunrocket employees who had just been laid off, and yet my ViaTalk order had not been processed yet. So I called ViaTalk. The wave of Sunrocket refugees that later overwhelmed ViaTalk customer service had not hit yet, so I was able to quickly talk to a guy in billing, who set up my account right there while I was on the line.
Two days later, the Linksys PAP2T-NA I had ordered from an online VOIP supply place arrived. I found some instructions for setting it up in the forums at forums.viatalk.com and was up and running quickly. Note that if you choose the BYOD option and do not have a device, you must order an unlocked device. For the Linksys adapters, these are the ones whose part number ends in "-NA". Many VOIP adapters sold in stores are already set up for Vonage or some other provider. If you mistakenly buy one of these, you'll be locked out of the part of the web interface that you need access to in order to get running with ViaTalk. If you choose the BYOD option, I would recommend buying your adapter at an online VOIP supply place rather than a local store. Most of these online places are very clear about specifying that the devices are unlocked, while employees at local stores will not know about this problem.
Here's how I computed costs:
$199 for two years, plus:
$68 for the Linksys PAP2T shipped, amortized over two years, plus:
$3.50 per month that ViaTalk charges you for the "Regulatory and E911 Recovery Fee"
Good sound quality
With my previous VOIP provider (Sunrocket with the Innomedia gizmo), I had become accustomed to slight echoes and delays, resulting in call quality that was mediocre at best. I had to put the Sunrocket gizmo on the WAN side of the router to even achieve this. Sound quality with Sunrocket was literally comical with the gizmo on the LAN side. At the time, I thought this might be due to my cable internet provider, Comcast. When I received my Linksys adapter for ViaTalk, I was concerned when I found out that it had to be put on the LAN side of the router because of my prior bad experience doing this with Sunrocket. However, after testing it with several lengthy phone conversations, I'm happy to report that call quality is excellent - way better than Sunrocket ever was. One person I spoke to said it sounded like a POTS line to him. I am very happy with the call quality. I do get occasional echos, but at its worst it is much better than Sunrocket was at its best.
Poor customer service
Since I have the BYOD option and am somewhat of a computer geek, I can get all the tech support I need here at BBR. That's fortunate, as there have been numerous horror stories about poor customer service and long hold times. This was especially bad around the time of the Sunrocket collapse.
Sneaky fees and sleazy business practices
When I signed up, I thought the total cost would be exactly what was stated on the sign-up form. Unfortunately, I failed to read the TOS thoroughly. It wasn't until my credit card got charged for the monthly fee that I read the TOS more carefully and found the $2.50 per month fee. A few months later, they upped the fee to $3.50 per month. So if you enter into a contract with them, this only fixes the base price, but they can still jack up the fees arbitrarily.
There have been even worse situations with regard to fees as well. Customers who entered into a contract before the fees started all of a sudden found their credit cards were being charged with the new fees. This started a long and angry thread in the ViaTalk forum here:
»ViaTalk charging pre-paid customers for E911 AGAIN
The upshot of all this was that the ViaTalk CEO determined that customers who signed up before the fees could supposedly have them removed by calling up ViaTalk and talking to customer service. The trouble was that the customer service people had either not been informed about this policy, or were deliberately making this difficult for people by arguing with them at length.
There are also sales affiliates who have been not been paid, and have been given the runaround for months by ViaTalk. There is another long and angry thread (still ongoing) about that here:
»ViaTalk Commission Payment Issues
This resulted in complaints to the Better Business Bureau. ViaTalk was subsequently de-listed from the BBB for failure to address complaints.
Poor reliability
When I first signed up with ViaTalk after the Sunrocket collapse, service was good and reliable. But after the first of 2008, I began to have numerous outages. Sometimes I'd pick up the phone and there would be no dial tone. Other times I'd get a dial tone but not be able to dial out. With the BYOD configuration, one can enter the SIP server name in the web interface of the VOIP adapter. There is a list of servers, and one can try different servers from the list. Usually, switching to a different server fixes the problem. I have to test my phone each day now, to make sure I can dial out. This week, I had to change servers twice - two days in a row. One user has dubbed ViaTalk "the maybe phone". My experiences so far in 2008 are similar to his.
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