Review by dipswich 
UPDATED: 81 days ago
member for 5.2 years, 1630 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Raleigh,Wake,NC
 $18 per month (24 month contract)
 about 1 days
 "Strong feature set"
 "Does not honor its contracts; pads with junk fees; feature-happiness affects stability"
 "Cannot support an ethically challenged service"
| Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
Signed up July 28, 2006 on a BYOD plan to give service as a gift for 2 years to a college student ($199 buy one/get one year free plan, everything included (including E911)). This was advertised as a "buy it and forget it" plan, and I turned off international dialing to ensure that it would be.
However, on October 16, 2007, a mysterious invoice appeared for a $2.50 "E-911 & Regulatory Recovery Fee." This fee has been invoiced monthly since and attempted to be debited as an unauthorized charge. It leaves a very sour taste in the mouth as an obvious tactic to pad the bill and not in the agreement I made with Viatalk.
Luckily, the credit card I signed up with is no longer active and the accumulating charges have been declined. By continuing to bill, Viatalk has declined to perform on the contract; I plan on testing the arbitration clause at this point.
When service was used, it performed well. Rarely a complaint, although without a provisioned adapter I had to bump servers around occasionally to keep stable service. Based on this, I wouldn't recommend nor would I sign up with Viatalk as BYOD again (or at least, I would let them provision it). I assume stability would be better that way.
I've contacted support twice--
On 7/30/06, I asked about Viatalk provisioning the adapter. A complete response was received 5.5 hours later.
On 10/16/07, I contacted them regarding the mysterious invoice. A canned response was received 672 hours later (that's 28 days).
In the year, the level of support obviously went south.
About the ratings--
Web-site: The control panel is decently designed and covers all the features. I do find myself going in circles every once in a while between billing, support, and call feature management. Due to the daily morning outage and its current unavailability, as well as the too-frequently changing deals on the front page that make shopping the service difficult (and can't be trusted to be honored, anyway), I award 3 out of 5 stars.
Ease of Installation: Within 15 minutes, I had the necessary credentials to begin using the BYOD service. Top rating, here.
Call quality: Not perfect, but far better than a mobile phone. Probably deserving of a 4+, I'm giving it a 4 of 5 as the closest available mark.
Reliability: I'm giving 3 of 5 here due to a couple of outages that I've noticed with Viatalk. Often, changing servers gets it back quickly, but that's a hassle. Again, I think a provisioned device might offer a little better reliability, but I'm rating the service as sold and received.
Tech support: 28 days to answer a billing question is excessive, pure & simple. And, tickets are not answered in the order they were received. 2 out of 5.
Value for money: This is a hard one to rate. Assigning value purely on service and price, Viatalk is probably a 4. However, I'm bundling in the bumbled ethics of changing contract prices here. And, being an honor question, it weights heavily. I am giving 3 of 5, and stretching to do that. 2 of 5 after a second junk fee increase announced three months later.
***6/18/2008 Update***
Nothing's changed, except I can confirm that service is suspended due to disputing the E911 and "Regulatory Recovery" fees. Real telecom companies don't suspend service while hashing out a dispute. Adjusting "value" accordingly.
Luckily, I can't use Viatalk, as I'm sure I'd notice, based on the forum complaints, sub-par reliability and call quality. Since I'm not, I can't reduce the ratings on those components.
I cannot recommend this service.
***7/22/2008 Update***
I've had a pretty simple request in with support. They aren't responding. That's "worst."
I've also lowered the web-site rating, as the information in the most important page, the Terms of Service, is pretty bad. You'll want to read it before signing up, especially the part about
"ViaTalk LLC may update this agreement at any time without notice and you are agreeing to such changes in advance."
Followup comments:  
cash
@cox.net
| fees, fees, and more fees The principle of adding more monthly fees on when you have an "annual contract" is despicable. I don't care if it is $5 or one penny, the principle leads me to suspect their business just based on ethics and principles. I then completely disconnect service? Come on. I refuse to continue to do business with viatalk.  | |
|
ConfusedinNY
@verizon.net
| The taxes are everywhere I don't defend them one bit but I will say that I asked thru the online rep if there were other charges to the annual plan and was told there is a e911 charge and regulatory fee. These were recently (within the last year) enforced by the government and the company's have no choice. Only one service has told me that they include all taxes and fees in the annual plan. However, with the 2 years I did the math and its still cheaper with these guys. It is the service quality that worries me though. I am still deciding. | |
|  | dipswich
Premium
join:2003-06-27
Raleigh, NC
 ·RoadRunner Cable
 ·Voicepulse Connect
·ViaTalk
| Re: The taxes are everywhere They do tell you about the fees now, but they are being deceptive about the "government enforced" part.
•The government does not require any fees to be passed onto the consumer.
•E911 was already offered by Viatalk without the extra fee, and it is still listed as an included feature (without mention of an extra fee) on the features page.
•"Regulatory recovery" is not a transparent disclosure of the source of the fees. These could be costs generally accepted as costs of doing business, although legal requirements, that are rightly built into product pricing.
Further,
•USF, the presumable primary source of "regulatory recovery fees," is paid based on a percentage of revenues (not net expenses). Viatalk gets its revenue up front on long-term commitments, so why charge a monthly recovery fee? The monthly collection problem on contracts is exacerbated since Viatalk charges the fee during "free" periods. Even in the accounting department there is no revenue during that time. Hence, Viatalk has a glaring disconnect between what's charged and what it's based upon. Yet another problem is that the fee is a fixed amount vs. a percentage of the equivalent monthly cost. This isn't how Viatalk is charged.
•Viatalk continued their offers after their USF liabilities were announced. That was the proper time to implement pass-through billing. | |
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