Review by ronny_b Location: Saint Louis, Saint Louis City, MO, USA Cost: $5 per month (12 month contract) Install: about 1 days Nothing, unless you like nightmares. Worked for one evening, then nothing. PhonePower is capable of excellent service, but badly botched this operation.

Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: Value for money:

Let me start off by saying that I have had service with PhonePower for several years, and performance has always been excellent. Not so when I signed up with their new Obi-PhonePower service.

This service would save me a worthwhile amount off the monthly fee I had been paying, so I leaped right in. Signup was easy, almost instant, and service excellent (while it lasted.) Which turned out to be one evening.

I put in a ticket requesting that the DID on the old account be transferred to the new account, then the old account was to be cancelled. Sounds easy, right?

Next morning, I received email telling me the number had successfully been transferred, and as soon as I rebooted the PhonePower ATA, i would be good to go. That ATA had been disconnected - I was using the Obi. Nevertheless, I hooked it up and rebooted both the ATA and the Obi. Nothing. The phone on the new account had stopped working BEFORE i went through this. Same with the old account (which was supposed to happen.) To me, it seemed that some over-zealous employee had cancelled BOTH accounts, since I could not sign into either on the PP web site. No problem, a call to customer service will clear that up Yeah, right.

First off, the CS who took the call told me that Billing handles number ports, and transferred me. Short conversation with Billing, then transferred back to CS. Different operator.

He first took control of my computer. No idea what he did. Then he had me go to the Obi web site and click on the "Approved Service Providers" button on the Obi Dashboard. Next. click on PhonePower, as if I were signing up Scroll down the page, find two boxes for choosing device and SP slot. It was installed on the Obi 110, SP 2, so that is what I chose. Next, click on a large button captioned "restore existing account". I clicked, and a message came up informing me that the requested page could not be found, an suggesting that I check the URL Same thing that comes up when I sign into either account. After about 1-2 hours, he gave up.

Next day - encore performance. That's where it stands now, except that PP put an unauthorized charge on my debit card for $99 and change because I have not yet returned their ATA.

I really would like to get this resolved because, as I said earlier, PP is capable of excellent service. Perhaps a simple solution would be to cancel the account, refund the money I paid for a year of service, and then let me sign up again - providing my phone number is not lost somewhere.

UPDATE - 5-24-2014

i can't say whether PP read my review, since they have not contacted me.

However, today, I once again tried going to the "Approved Service Providers" in the Obitalk dashboard. This time, when I selected PP, it told me to sign into my account. Something new! Previously when I attempted to sign in, a window would come up with an error message to the effect that the desired destination could not be found.

Hurriedly, I signed in - A message appeared, atating that I needed to resync the Obe 110 with PP. A button was provided for this task. I clicked, then glanced over at the Obi. Red light! It was re-booting! As soon as all the lights seemed OK, I dialed **2 (for PP) and the local time and temp number. I worked! Next, called my cell phone to verify the CID. Sure enough, it was the number I had requested to be transferred to this account. Made a few more calls, and all seemed well.

Recall, when I first signed up for this account, it worked for one evening and the next morning was kaput. Let's hope it lasts longer this time!

(Just kidding, PP - I don't know what you did, but if you fixed it, I'm sure it will stay fixed.)

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