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Review by RiverMerger See Profile

  • Location: Hinsdale, Du Page, IL, USA
  • Cost: $16 per month (month by month)
  • Install: about 1 days
Customer/Tech Support,Reliability,Features and Price.
Very few.
It Works, filters out spam callers fantastically
Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:

I wont give just about anything perfect marks there is always room for improvement. That being said I have had very few problems with CALLCentric.

Had one incoming phone call that never showed up anywhere CC's log or anyplace else.

The porting was not a perfect procedure. It took half a day on the port in date where anyone calling me got a CC greeting about the phone number being out of area and unable to connect. Two hours of that I had no response from a ticket that was opened on the port request. The fact that when ever I have had a problem they have resolved it almost as soon as they put their attention to it makes me not worry much during that time.

We reduced our home phone bill by about 80% per month by porting the land line to this service

My baseline cost started off at $3.45 per month that is $1.50 for 911 service and $1.95 for the DID phone number both per month. I then paid $.015 (one and a half pennies) per minute for incoming and $.02(two pennies) per minute for outgoing calls to anywhere in the Nation! Calls to Norway, Sweden, England and Germany are all around the same amount means my genealogy quest just got a big shot of adrenalin.

What makes me like CC is the option to just pay for the minutes you use saves me a immense amount of money.

If you have more than 267 minutes average of incoming phone calls you would go with the personal unlimited inbound plan. That gives you a unlimited amount of incoming minutes for a ported number. Then you just pay for the minutes that you use on outgoing calls.

The Dirt Cheap-DID would be your pick for a new number, unlimited inbound for $2.95. I really didn't know what our incoming minutes were like for our ported number so I had gone with PPM inbound at first and switch later to unlimited inbound for $5.95 per month when the math made sense. Thinking about it now averaging about 9 min. per day inbound is hard to not go over.

If you average more than 920 minutes of outgoing calling per month, you would then go with the North America Unlimited plan for outgoing calls. I pay by the minute.

Free Sip address calling and active Sip broker peering (Vonage has disabled) is a attractive feature to me so even if my family does sign up with a different VOIP provider, as long as they have SIP ability with the provider we will be able to talk to each other unlimitedly for free.

CC is not for the technically challenged. You are putting most of your trust into the Internet. You also need to be able to provision and provide your own VOIP adapter.

Their technical support is only on line so if you are having trouble with your Internet service your having trouble with your phone and you probably cant get on line to contact them. Luckily their call treatment can automatically forward to a phone number of your choosing if the phone is not registered. I do believe though their technical/customer support is CC's greatest strength!

One drawback of this VOIP services I thought was going to be that the outgoing caller ID doesn't show your name. I know some other services now has that ability. It turns out not to be a big deal, most people have my number entered in the phone and it comes up with our name on their side anyway.

They continue to improve their service and in the year that I have had them just as a phone to use as long distance and the last 2 months as home phone service. They have added features that where asked for in the beginning is impressive.(CNAM,Call Treatment options...).

The fact that I could get inbound DTMF(touch tone) to work on their service. DTMF was the most important factor for me. We have a security door in the building that we live in which you must press a digit to let someone in. I had to do some jiggling with the settings under audio configuration on the line. DTMF had to be set to "in-band" and now it works every time. When I had researched other Voips about this service my other top choices didn't support this feature making CC the easy choice.

The other most important thing is not losing our phone number. Since CC has been around as a one of the oldest voip providers is reassuring. They have also reassured me that if the worst should happen plenty of time would be given to port out a number and that it would be recoverable even after that. The fact that they are willing and competent enough to answer these questions builds my confidence.

The other other most important thing was the call treatment. We had been inundated with these "out of area" calls that never leave a message and never answer. One click on the call treatments and all of those are gone. I can not say how much it is worth to have the phone ring now and know it is someone calling to talk. For other possible spoof protection I put in many illegal numbers and unwanted numbers to “number disconnected” or straight to voice mail with their wild card treatment.:)

In the end you don't want people to notice much if any change. I only told only a few people that I switched from a land line to a Voip phone. No one can tell the difference between the two. I sure can though, in my phone bill and in my phone ringing only with people I wish calling.

Callcentric is easy to try, easy to get rid of, easy to stick with. I think if you try them its quite likely you will stick with them. They just do many things the right way.

Sept. 2 edit for content.

Sept. 19th 2011 Year and a half average cost per month is $16.27. Have had one problem. I had to change the settings in my adapter for some unknown reason. The service was not working until the change was made. Service is still not for the technically faint at heart. Call treatment is the best part of service as well as reliabiliity. They have added the number of call treatments available up from 50 and have not reached the limit yet. White listing was added as well. All people in your phone book can be set to get through. My Phone now rings almost 100% with only people that I wish to talk with. A real accomplishment in this day and age!

March 19th 2012 No problems again, finally reached the limit of call treatment (103) darn spam callers. Very happy with service.

member for 16.2 years, 170 visits, last login: 1.7 years ago
updated 11.8 years ago

SraM
join:2009-08-27
Ottawa, ON

SraM

Member

Changing plan

Hi,

I'm with CC and I could not find an answer to the following question: Can we keep our DID if we decide to change our incoming plan? How much does it cost?

Since you did it, you may know how it works. Thank you in advance.
SraM

SraM

Member

Re: Changing plan

Sorry, I just found the answer on CC FAQs:
Can I change between rate plans?
Yes, you can change to a different rate plan at any time. If you wish to change to a higher priced rate plan the difference in price between your current rate plan and the new higher priced rate plan will be charged. If you are changing to a lower priced rate plan, the change will only occur at the end of your current billing cycle.

Is there a service fee to change rate plans?
There is no service fee to change rate plans.
I guess we can keep the DID...

N9MD
Too busy to chat
Premium Member
join:2005-10-08
Boca Raton, FL

N9MD

Premium Member

FYI

Nice review. May I just "clarify" the reason behind your porting issue?

"The porting was not a perfect procedure. It took half a day on the port in date where anyone calling me got a CC greeting about the phone number being out of area and unable to connect..."

CC was not responsible for the delay in receiving incoming calls.

When someone calls your number, the call is directed from your caller's provider ... ATT Mobile, Verizon landline, QWEST, Comcast (cable), Vonage (VoIP service), etc. ... to one of many different ROUTING TABLES that are maintained by various telecommunications companies throughout the US and Canada.

ROUTING TABLES direct calls from your caller's provider to your provider ... in this case to your VoIP provider's CLEC (the company that actually "owns" your number and leases it to your VoIP provider) ... and the CLEC sends the call to your VoIP provider's server ... and the call then is sent to your registered adapter, ringing your phone.

These ROUTING TABLES are constantly being updated ... but that might take a few hours, a day, or sometimes a few days ... depending on which phone company provides your caller's service.

Thus, your callers may have different success rates in calling your newly ported number. Someone calling you from an ATT cellphone may get a "number not in service" message while a caller using Verizon landline easily connects to your number.

I've ported lots of number over the years. In one case, my brother could not connect when he called me from his New Jersey Verizon cellular account ... but he could connect from his Florida ATT landline. This went on for more than a week. In this situation, I and my VoIP provider had no way of correcting the situation. My brother (the calling party) had to call his provider to have them update its ROUTING TABLES ... correcting the situation within minutes!

- - - - - - - - - - -
Regarding the 2 hour CS response time:

"Two hours of that I had no response from a ticket that was opened on the port request."

I know you are very happy with CC ... and you may have been a touch exasperated during the "silent" porting period ... but allow me to point out that a two hour response to an online Trouble Ticket submission is awesome ... and a quick response from CC is typical of their outstanding customer support. I've subscribed to a score or more (score = 20) of VoIP providers over the last many years (even before SunRocket appeared on the scene). Many took a day or more to respond ... and some never responded until I badgered them, or they never responded.

Conclusion: Enjoy your CallCentric service (and your savings over the exorbitant PSTN rates).