
how-to block ads
|
»next review in page
Review by rsa0  UPDATED: 2.9 years ago member for 6.8 years, 406 visits, last login: 17 days ago
Alpharetta,Fulton,GA
$21 per month
about 5 days
"good voice quality, good rates for Europe (when working)"
"almost no CS, billing errors, broken features"
"good choice if you don't have any other option"
| Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: Value for money:
|
*** No longer using their service *** Review edited/removed by user.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of BroadVoice |
 | »next review in page (previous review)
Review by baltcpa  UPDATED: 3 years ago member for 3.3 years, 2 visits, last login: 3 years ago
Burtonsville,Montgomery,MD
$24 per month
"Best priced service for all the features you get"
"Huge upfront costs; bad advice, lack of response, & mild rudeness from CSRs; connection issues that I never had w/Lingo"
"I wish I had stayed with Lingo for $5 more/month."
| Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: Value for money:
|
I've attached an email sent to Broadvoice and their response. This pretty much says it all. I think given that I'm the customer that Broadvoice's response was a tad abrasive. A normal customer isn't going to know upfront the intricacies involved in porting a number, and I think their response could have been a little more understanding & professional. I also want to add that I had a CSR refute (as if I was lying) that another CSR told me if I bought an after-market phone adapter that I could avoid the activation fee. They refused to waive the fee. I guess at Broadvoice that the customer isn't always right.
I will also concur with the other reviews on the often lengthy hold times waiting for a CSR.
To go into detail on my connection, sometimes people say Im cutting out, or there is a voice delay. Sometimes when I take my cordless phone off the hook to make a call or scroll through the caller ID list, the display goes blank. I have tried this on all extension handsets and get the same thing. The only way to get the phone to reset is to take the battery out and put it back in, which is a hassle. I never had these problems when I had Lingo. Also, I can no longer access my answering machine remotely since the touch tones sound distorted when they reach the machine.
I will give them one thing - They did respond to my second email regarding the porting of my number but not my first, which was the cause of rewriting them. This email was my third although I have made numerous phone calls. So, my sentence saying they ignored emails was a little overstated.
UPDATE 11/05/06: After waiting on hold for 25 minutes, a CSR tells me that they do not support faxing and that they can't help me with my problem. I was able to fax one other time before, and Lingo supported faxing. Also, my callers tell me I cut in and out sometimes, but I have no problem hearing them. Also, my caller and I can't talk at the same time on some calls due to some sort of voice activation feature that occasionally appears. The signal from Broadvoice does something weird to my phone half the time when I turn on one of my handsets. I wind up having to take the battery out to reset the line, which is a major inconvenience. The display on my phone will lock up when I scroll through my CID list. This only started after I switched from Lingo to Broadvoice. I still can't call into my answering machine to get my messages due to distorted touch tones. I can't call Broadvoice CS from my Broadvoice line since their system doesn't recognize the touch tones, and their automated menu hangs up on me. Long hold times, and after I reach someone, they almost act as if they don't want to or can't help me. My problems never get resolved. I would switch back to Lingo if it wasn't such a hassle to transfer numbers back and I hadn't made an investment in equipment. Please heed my warning: Don't walk, RUN!!!!!!! You get what you pay for. I wish I had stayed with Lingo.
UPDATE 11/29/06: Just got an email from Lingo giving me a $50 bonus and $4/month off the service price. Guess who's going back to Lingo? BYE, BYE, BROADVOICE!!!!!!!!!!
UPDATE LATER THAT SAME DAY: Broadvoice wants to charge me a $39.95 cancellation fee even though I brought my own device. Looks like I won't be moving now. I also forgot to note that there are several phone numbers that I can't call, and I wind up having to use my cell phone to call them. Two numbers that come to mind are 800-987-5521 (one of my credit card companies) and 859-431-0300 (the cable company at my Grandmother's house). I get recordings saying that the calls can't be completed. Additionally, I noticed that the calls cutting in and out, the problem where my caller and I can't talk at the same time, and the voice delay tend to occur on calls where the other person is on a cell phone.
Email to Broadvoice:
After receiving less than confident sounding confirmations from Broadvoice customer service that this number is in the process of being ported from Lingo to Broadvoice and not getting responses to my emails from you, I decided to call Lingo today to see if they are processing this request. Lingo says they have never received anything from Broadvoice. The idea behind coming to Broadvoice was to save money. However, it has wound up being a money sink and a headache. In addition to the items mentioned above, one of you CSRs recommended that I buy an after market phone adapter and that the activation fee would be eliminated, and that turned out to be false. Then, I find out that I also needed a router with that adapter since one wasn't built into it. Then, he neglected to tell me that there were two versions of the phone adapter, and I got the one locked for Vonage, had to send it back, had to eat the shipping cost back and forth, and had to pay more for the correct one. I also continue to have connection issues despite several calls to your customer service center......all of this in addition to paying for two phone services. Your CSRs say they have no assess to the part of the system responsbile for porting, and they won't give me a phone number to directly connect to you. I'm ready to throw my arms up in the air, dispute the credit card charges from Broadvoice, and go back to Lingo. Are you willing to do anything for me at this point, or are you just going to ignore this email too?
Broadvoice's response:
We have responded to all emails and questions you have asked of us. When you continue to ask the same questions and receive the same answers this does not mean we are being unresponsive. We honestly do not have better answers for you. So, in turn, you have prompted me to write you the best answer I can possibly give you. I will say that our common porting time is roughly 30-50 days. Your port has been pending for 3 weeks.
Broadvoice is a service provider (just like Lingo), not a local carrier, aka: CLECs. Unfortunately, we have no control over the porting process after we've received the request. We forward this information to our carrier partner who then in turn must complete the necessary steps on their side. Then they must contact your current carrier, whomever Lingo uses in your region, who then will have to contact Lingo. Lingo will authorize or deny the request, and then both carrier partners will need to work together to complete and disconnect the configurations that allow that particular number to ring to your phone. Lingo will never receive the request to port directly from Broadvoice. It will come from our carrier partner. The notification will not be sent directly to Lingo, but Lingo's carrier partner. Each carrier partner has thousands of transfers going in and out of their service and they have set up a system to organize this process. Although porting seems simple, it takes the work of many, many people along the way working for at a minimum three to four different companies to make it happen.
For your own personal benefit I highly recommend you read this post in a popular Broadband forum: »Porting Rules
Since we are only a service provider we are not governed by the FCC about carrier Porting issues. We cannot promise a certain time-frame to complete the transfer, but can only offer an estimate of the length of time that the typical transfer takes. We have outliers on each side, some that take far more time, or far less.
We gladly offer to transfer our customer's previous phone numbers as a bonus for being a Broadvoice customer. We do this free of charge, even though the transfer costs our company money. Of course, we hope that is not the main reason for being a customer. We pride ourselves on our quality VoIP service and outstanding affordability. If you feel one of the above reasons is not compelling you to stay with us, than you will need to do what is best for you. Ultimately we would like to maintain this relationship, but the decision is yours.
If you feel that this email has not been as educational as you had hoped, I can only steer you in the direction of the internet. Do some searches, look things up. Find out the difference between Voip porting and ILEC porting. There is nothing more that I can tell you to help you feel more at ease.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of BroadVoice |
 | »next review in page (previous review)
Review by wcjiang  Posted: 3 years ago member for 6.8 years, 260 visits, last login: 338 days ago
San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
$20 per month (month by month)
about 1 days
"Cheap, allows use of Asterisk for unlimited plan, two inbound/outbound lines"
"No tech support, poor voice quality, unfair Terms of Service, setup fee & cancellation fee"
"Run away from them as fast as you could"
| Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: Value for money:
|
When I signed up for Broadvoice in September, the Terms of Service said that there would be no cancellation fee for bring-your-own-device users. I had trouble calling out everyday, (device not registered, see related thread
»[BroadVoice] Device is Not Registered...)
and despite repeated calls to their Support line, the issue was never resolved and no one ever followed up with me. After one month I finally decided to cancel the service because I simply couldn't use it.
The cancellation fee for BYOD was introduced in Oct. after I signed up, but they refused to waive the fee and said they could change the Terms of Service anytime without notifying the customers.
What makes me angry is not the money, but their business practice. If they could impose additional fees without notifying customers, what would stop them from, say, jacking up the monthly fee to $1000?!? You would have to pay it, because they could change the Terms of Service at will, and you are still bound by them. When you sign up with this provider, you are exposing yourself to unlimited liability.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of BroadVoice |
 | »next review in page (previous review)
Review by Cybertoy_ch  UPDATED: 3 years ago member for 4.6 years, 132 visits, last login: 255 days ago
Stamford,Fairfield,CT
$24 per month
"very good pricing, can use your own devices."
"horrible customer services"
"you get what you pay for..."
| Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: Value for money:
|
After having raised numerous tickets regarding call quality to Brazil I have now downgraded to BYOD lite plan. I will no longer use broadvoice for any outgoing calls. Their quality has gotten really bad for international calls. The money (although very cheap) is no longer worth it. Their support is horrible. The open tickets are not being worked on. There's no feedback... Once every two week I ask them what the status is and I just get some generic "we're working on it" back.
They could do a lot better but I think they don't want to.
old post:
I have been using them for over a year now and I'm still with them. The price is what makes me stay. We're still mainly calling Switzerland and Brazil as well as some numbers in the US. Also this is our main number for incoming calls.
Incoming: Rarely have any problems to report here. Outgoing to US: Rarely have problems. I actually cannot remember the last time the call was bad. Outgoing to Switzerland: OK most of the times. Sometimes the latency is too large. Outgoing to Brazil: Currently a mess. Very bad noise on the line but only from the person calling. The callee never hears the noise.
Customer support is still inexistant. Whenever I report a problem I get the standard questions back about my setup and to ensure I'm using the right proxy etc. I guess that's 'cause I'm a BYOD customer. Once I convince them that it's a problem on their side they open a ticket with their "engineering" department and nothing happens ever since. I have never had any follow-ups with any of the tickets they gave me.
Bottom line still stands that you get what you pay for.
old post: I'm still using them. For calls coming in and going to the United States it's not bad. International call quality is a gamble though. Sometimes it's good - sometimes you can hardly hear the other person or they can't hear you at all. I still make calls mainly to Brazil, and Switzerland. Also beware of overusing. Read the postings on here and other forums about what happens if you use too many of their unlimited minutes.
old post: I have stayed with BroadVoice despite their problems in May. For a while I downgraded myself to BYOD light. Now since service is pretty much restored again I am back to the unlimited world plus plan. It doesn't work 100% of the time. There seem to be areas in Brazil that don't work. Also sometimes calls to Europe don't go through.
I guess you get what you pay for though. The price is very cheap and for that I'm quite happy with the service I'm getting. I have some pay as you go backup providers though when service is out.
old post: After the last week of horrible service I have to adapt my review. For one full week now I've been having constant problems with incoming and outgoing calls. Trying to call tech support either rings out into the emptyness, or I'm on hold for 15 minutes and then get cut off or don't get through at all
I guess at the end of the day you get what you pay for. It's really cheap ... and so is their service (at the moment at least). I hope they can get their act together.
old post:
I am using broadvoice.com from Switzerland. With a brazilian wife I decided to go for the world plus plan. Calls to Switzerland, USA, and Brazil are included in the flat rate. Calls to Switzerland take a long time until they are connected. Otherwise I'm very happy. Installing my device was easy and so far I didn't have to use tech support. The information on accessing broadvoice was sent to me a couple of minutes after I signed up. I'm using a grandstream with asterisk PBX. I have static IP with an OpenBSD firewall. My DSL is 1200/200.
ciao!
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of BroadVoice |
 | »next review in page (previous review)
Review by dkla  UPDATED: 3.1 years ago member for 6.9 years, 45 visits, last login: 68 days ago
Beverly Hills,Los Angeles,CA
$12 per month
about 1 days
"Good voice-quality, good features, low in-state and int'l plans"
"$1.50 RRF. 3% excise tax"
"Great rates... the company to beat!"
| Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: Value for money:
|
UPDATE 20 September 06
It has been a while since my last review and I just wanted to update my findings (especially after reading some other reviews about Broadvoice). Yes, service and support was a bit spotty before, but now I'm happy to report that I have been using Broadvoice for 18 months with almost 100% uptime and good (online and on-phone) customer service. They cleaned up their features and website and offer easy LNP number transfers now.
VOIP has grown up a bit, and so has Broadvoice. I would recommend them to anybody seeking a voip line. If you're doing in-state calls only, their $9.95 plans is hard to beat. Great for the casual home line.
----------------------------
UPDATE 15 March 05
Still no number portability, and they have been promising it for over six months now. I asked to suspend my account until they offer LNP but they said they won't honor my request.
My advice would be if you need to keep your number then do NOT go with Broadvoice.
-------------------------- Original Review:
I had already gone through Broadvox Direct and Packet 8 (see my separate reviews) but was still gung-ho on VoIP so I thought I'd give Broadvoice a shot. So far, my first few weeks with BVoice have been quite enjoyable-- they have a very good feature set and voice quality is quite good, and you just can't beat $10 a month for a full-featured phone line!
Ordering and shipping was easy-- I literally had my Sipura the next day!!! And I was using the softphone even before that!
I was a bit wary of BVoice because of the other reviewers ripping apart their Customer Support, but the few times I have called (even at odd hours) they have been quite helpful. Maybe because they were fellow techno-geeks like me and not minimun-wage dummies-- unfortunately as the company grows they will inevitably be forced in that direction...
The web portal is good despite its sparse UI, which is okay I guess when you think of how Yahoo and Google use minimalist UI's as well. At least everything is labelled correctly and under the proper categories. Not all features are implemented yet, but what I have seen so far is already more than the other carriers. Unfortunately the portal does not work great with Mozilla Firefox, so I have to switch to IE to get the CommPort portal working.
We'll see how my LNP process goes, but so far I am quite impressed-- a great $10 phone line (for in-state calls), definitely the best bang for the buck around.
My main concern is how they will handle their "growing pains" but only time will tell on that one.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of BroadVoice |
 | »next review in page (previous review)
Review by MikeVa  Posted: 3.2 years ago member for 7.8 years, 168 visits, last login: 3 days ago
Rocky Mount,Franklin,VA
$22 per month
about 3 days
"Great value, tons of features"
"Some call techs are rude"
"Great value, overall great VOIP!"
| Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: Value for money:
|
After 2 years of service, I finally got a local number. Of course when I changed my primary to local, it screwed up the configurations of the phone adapter. I called tech service to have instructions emailed. Followed them, but did nothing. Called tech again and got a rude punk from MA and he was also no help. The MAIN problem was that I couldn't get a good IP address because of my router. Anyway, got a NY tech and he walked me through it to success! Techs are touch and go, but like any other company, you'll find a good one. Overall, Broadvoice is a great company, still in infancy that will become the leader in VOIP. They also have 911 added.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of BroadVoice |
 | »next review in page (previous review)
Review by jdec141  UPDATED: 3.2 years ago member for 4.6 years, 340 visits, last login: 2.3 years ago
Cordova,Shelby,TN
$13 per month
about 3 days
"Call quality is great. Easy to get in touch with customer service. Incoming Caller id"
"Was dropping calls initially. Caller id only works inbound. Porting took over 2 months."
"I'm really impressed with Broadvoice after spending a year with Lingo. So far so good!"
| Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: Value for money:
|
Aug 29, 06
Still very pleased. No major problems to report calls in/out great. Faxing no problem. About a month ago my sipura died. Called customer service and after checking it from their end sent me a knew one 2 day fedex at zero charge. I am extemely happy with the service. Also referred my sister to the service three months ago and we both just got our referral credit as well. I have had absolutely no problems with my number since it ported over.
May 2, 06
I decided to port my number that I ported to Lingo to Broadvoice after 10 days. There is no comparison between the call quality Broadvoice has over Lingo. It took 2 mos. and 25 days for the port to go through but it went smoothly. I called Lingo after numerous test calls to both my ported number and then my extra number with broadvoice. No problems. I have had absolutely no problems with broadvoice after March. I was having a few dropped calls here and there before March 15th or so but after they updated the firmware on the sirpura 2100 it has been perfect. I am still running it behind a linksys wrt54gs v2 with a static ip address and ports 5060-5063 open and 10000-20000 open and 69. I will say that 90% of the time i call customer service i don't have to wait over 5 minutes. Most of the time it is instantaneous. They have been very helpful. I've read a lot of horror stories from other people but I haven't had any of those problems. I was hearing the same horror stories from people on lingo too but I wasn't having any issues with them either. I am on Time Warner RR with 5000 down and about 350 up speed and I am using the linksys firmware with QOS set up for the MAC address of the sipura to be at the highest priority. One more thing. Faxing has been great. I have never had a fax not go through. With Lingo it was hit and miss.
I hope this helps
I give Broadvoice and A+++++.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of BroadVoice |
 | »next review in page (previous review)
Review by TheDreamer  Posted: 3.3 years ago member for 7.8 years, 1950 visits, last login: 2 days ago
Manhattan,Riley,KS
$8 per month
"Instant activation"
"Incorrect settings information...."
"A great deal."
| Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Value for money:
|
I got it....a DPH-540!
With no great surprise, I bought myself a D-Link DPH-540 WiFi VoIP phone. I picked it up from the post office today. And, when I got home from work...close to the first thing I did was signup with BroadVoice.com.
It wasn't so much that this was a VoIP provider that would work with the D-Link, but in prior research I found that they were one of the few that offered Manhattan, KS local phone numbers. The fact that they have a BYOD plan was the icing. ;D
Overall, the setup went pretty smoothly.
The first obstacle, was that it wouldn't register with my WiFi network and get an IP. That turned out to be my fault... I had forgotten to add its MAC address to my WiFi AP, to allow it to connect.
The second obstacle was a little bit harder to solve. And, required use of some reading and other diagnostics. Broadvoice had given the name of its 'proxy_ip' as "proxy-nyc.broadvoice.com". Some investigation reveiled that it didn't exist. And, further investigation eventually led to the discovery that it should've been "proxy.nyc.broadvoice.com".
The final problem seems to be with voicemail. I set up custom greetings, but so far it is greeting me with the system default one. I don't like it....since it should already be obvious to the caller whether I'm busy or wasn't available to answer, without the default system greeting telling them this. And, I prefer a more personal touch. Plus my mom likes to hear my voice 
Next thing is to see how it works on the campus WiFi network....which is largely the reason for a WiFi VoIP device. Wonder what the fate of my cellphone will be???
Actually, the next thing will be to find a case to wear the phone around....
20060814 Update: Nothing major to report, except that Broadvoice now has settings information on their web site for the DPH-541. Following the advice in here, I found that proxy.chi.broadvoice.com gives me the lowest ping time...so I changed my phone to use this. Otherwise, everything had been good with the service (wish I could say the same for the DPH-540....perhaps I need to get a different WiFi VoIP phone).
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of BroadVoice |
 | »next review in page (previous review)
Review by javierm  UPDATED: 3.3 years ago member for 5.2 years, 6 visits, last login: 313 days ago
Reno,Washoe,NV
$19 per month
about 1 days
"Very good service and price. Great variety of plans."
"Some issues with service but tolerable."
"All in all, great service and good price"
| Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: Value for money:
|
[around 08/30/05]
I have been follwing VoIP technology for some months but somehow needed a good reason to jump on the bandwagon. This august I moved to a new state to start a job and thought that was the reason I needed to try VoIP. So I read a bit about which ATA's were good for me and ended up buying the Sipura SPA-3000 (on voxilla) for it's flexibility. I also read reviews here and went ahead and signed up with VoicePulse.
I tried VoicePulse for a while but didn't like them locking the device I had bought. I also didn't like much that they didn't have a local number in my area. At the beginning I thought this wasn't going to be a problem because I am using DSL in my new place. But it turned out to be impractical. Since I still had a month to try BroadVoice with my voxilla purchase I decided to try them out.
I was lured by the good plans they have, the ability to change plans at any time with no penalty, their international rates, unlocked devices and that they had numbers in my area. I don't know why I went with VoicePulse in the first place. So I signed up with BV and didn't receive an email confirmation. Weird I thought. I email the tech support asking if the signup process was ok and they just give me instructions for installing my device. Oh well, no biggie. I followed the instructions on their website and had a dialtone two minutes later. I made a few calls to test it and liked the clarity very much. VoicePulse's was good as well.
I've been with them for about two weeks and during that time I have made several calls to Venezuela, Spain and within the USA. Clarity was very good in all the cases. So far the service has been reliable. One time it happened that for some reason when I called I couldn't hear the person on the other line. I reset the ATA and it went away. I haven't used all their services but I can say that caller ID and call waiting work as they should.
I'll update my review as I have more experiences with the service but in the meantime I'll recommend it to anyone having a solid internet connection to pair it. BTW, my setup is the following: Internet (3Mb/387Kb) DSL modem router (ATA & PC) analog phone (connected to the ATA)
[Update: 11/10/05]
I've been using the service for a good couple of months now and I've got nothing new to report. Everything has been great just like the first time. Good clarity and and good service. I haven't had a time when I've picked up the phone and haven't been able to place the call. I'll restate the fact that you need a good connection to enjoy the service. I can browse and chat fine while talking, but heavy downloading is a no-no. With the free plans to several contries and cheap rates I've found myself calling more often than writing emails. What can I say I'm lazy like that. But at least I'm writing this review... 
[Update: 07/26/06]
I'm still happy with the service. After month of using it I can still recommend it to others. There are some issues but I think they are easily surpassed by the benefits. The main issue I have now are:
- Sometimes calls get dropped after 1 minute for no apparent reason. After waiting some time the problem goes away. This may happen about 2 times per months and it's annoying.
- Echo on the line. It used to be worse but sporadic and now the problem is mild but more frequent. I prefer how it is now.
- Sometimes calls have a hard time getting through. After a while (2 to 5 times) most calls go through. I don't remember not being able to call somebody because of this so it's not that big a deal, just an annoyance.
Since my last review I have made some trips while taking the phone with me. The service worked just as from home, this allowed me to stay in touch much more than before which is one of the big advantages of having this kind of service. Overall I'm still satisfied with the service and proof of that is that 1) I'm still using it as my main phone line and 2) I have 2 other people sign up for the service. On one of those (my dad) the phone is able to receive calls from only very few people regardless of geographical lcation. That makes me suspect that it's an issue with the center that converts voice to ip calls. I haven't bugged the tech support with this so I won't complain that it hasn't been fixed. I'll post another update telling how they handled this.
I've tried faxing from that line and it works. It may now work at first time but it always works. Remember that the line is not rated for fax use so this is ok.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of BroadVoice |
 | »next page (previous review)
Review by im_chandave  UPDATED: 3.3 years ago member for 4.3 years, 1375 visits, last login: 10 days ago
Cleveland,Cuyahoga,OH
$12 per month
about 1 days
"Cheap unlimited in-state + unlimited incoming"
"DTMF still must be inband instead of supporting RFC2833"
"Good value if all you need is incoming and outgoing to the same state"
| Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: Value for money:
|
I've only had 1 outage the past 6 months and sound quality is good (even when BYOB device is in Asia).
Only real complaint so far is the lack of any announcements/"Service Notes". They don't really provide very much information about outages or maintenance schedules. I have to look elsewhere for indications that there might be problems.
Edit: 2006/07/24. After being with BV for almost a year, I had my first major problem with them. The DCA proxy died but they failed to inform anyone. Instead, they setup DCA2 and expected us to figure it out ourselves. No problem. Did that. But, it turns out that the configuration was not entirely moved over to the new proxy. I told BV the problem, even provided SIP dumps indicating the problem. Their reply was that they could not support BYODs and dropped my problem. I ended up switching to another proxy that gave me DTMF problems. I finally switched to ViaTalk and canceled my service.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of BroadVoice |
 |
|