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Review by Waldothe3rd See Profile

  • Location: Huntington Beach, Orange, CA, USA
  • Cost: $12 per month (24 month contract)
  • Install: about 3 days
Good Value for the money, International calling prices, Quality of service
none
An outstanding service with many benefits
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I have had two ViaTalk accounts for five+ years and have had nothing but fantastic service. I love the control panel where one can customize their phone system to their choosing. My wife uses it to call family in South America daily. I can only say, Keep Up The Good Work!

Follow-Up: I just got "reminded" that my review is more than 6 months old. Everything I stated above is still true, and ViaTalk continues to add service improvements. Well worth considering as a turnkey Phone Service Provider!

member for 15.1 years, 1434 visits, last login: 3.8 years ago
updated 12.9 years ago


Review by lesf See Profile

  • Location: Davidsonville, Anne Arundel, MD, USA
  • Cost: $16 per month (12 month contract)
  • Install: about 14 days
lots of features
not always perfect, mostly works
Good value for the money. Like any VOIP, if you want 100% perfection, keep your landline
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I have been a ViaTalk customer for probably 3 years now. I would say I am happy 90% of the time. I chose them for features offered, good price plan, and the ability for me to tweak with things if I wanted to.

I have had some problems but after submitting tickets to tech support, they tweaked my settings and things have been great. I know that VOIP is NOT perfect and I knew that when I switched from a copper landline. I did so to save a TON of money and I have. I am a FIOS customer and chose ViaTalk over the FIOS phone option mainly because Verizon's features and price come no where close to ViaTalk.

Order and install process was smooth, tech support has been okay. The forums here have been VERY helpful.

Only other comment is that the billing is flaky. If you want to purchase a 1 year plan, you pay for that up front, but the E911 and other federal/state taxes are not in that price. They are still charged to you on a monthly basis, so add those in when comparison shopping. Not sure of other voip providers bill this way or not.

Also.. SAVE all packing materials, cables, manuals etc that come with your adapter. If you cancel, you need to return it ALL or they will charge you for pieces missing!


member for 21.8 years, 679 visits, last login: 5.1 years ago
updated 13.2 years ago


Review by Toropop See Profile

  • Location: Vancouver, Clark, WA, USA
  • Cost: $17 per month
  • Install: about 3 days
Super inexpensive, awesome call quality, highly configurable, free extension line
Web interface can be highly confusing for those who aren't techies, phone adapters appear to be reused/recycled
Great value for the money!
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I'm still a n00b with the company, but I have to say that this has been a stellar experience so far.

I left Vonage after six years of service. Why? The price. More importantly, though, Vonage didn't allow me to block certain callers from contacting me, which was an important feature since I have the most awesome phone number on the planet, IMO.

I placed my order through the Web, received a temporary number immediately, and had the number porting completed before I even received the equipment three days later.

The phone adapter is a bit on the ghetto side. It was quite obviously pre-owned with a number of scratches, black marks, etc., on the outside. It is entirely possible that this could have been the postal service's fault since ViaTalk shipped it via USPS, and not UPS, FedEx, etc. But, hey, it works just fine.

The only real problems I had when starting service were the incoming call ring and the caller ID was misreporting the time people were calling me (I'm on Pacific; calls were timestamped in Central). I sent a trouble ticket, and the techs fixed the stuttering ringing problem and caller ID on the first try. ViaTalk FTW!

The best part about ViaTalk? Native English speakers. I'm not saying this in a prejudicial way, but Vonage does an excellent job of misleading people into thinking that their call center is in New Jersey. Really, their sales department is in New Jersey. Customer service centers are in India and Costa Rica.

Overall, I'm extremely happy with ViaTalk. Their phone system is highly configurable with too many useful features to list here. Also, my family tells me that they think the call quality is a lot better than when I had Vonage. No more echoes or the all-to-familiar 56K modem sound when speaking.

If anything changes with my service, I'll be sure to edit this in the future.

member for 22.3 years, 1107 visits, last login: 3.1 years ago
updated 13.3 years ago


Review by smunro622 See Profile

  • Location: Madison Heights, Oakland, MI, USA
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
easy simple install, great call quality
sometimes a delay in outbound calls ringing on the other side
create servce for the prepaid price
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happy with overall service, wish i had more config access to the pap device. prepaid 12mos service is great, techsupport seem to be quick in responsiveness

member for 18.1 years, 4048 visits, last login: 4.5 years ago
lodged 13.3 years ago


unknvoip
RIP goose
Premium Member
join:2006-07-25
Rochester, NY

unknvoip

Premium Member

Admin Password

Unless policies have changed, you can submit a ticket to CS and get the admin password to your ATA. I used to tinker with settings, but now I just use the service without feeling the need to mess with it.

As a con, you mention a delay on outbound calls. By chance, are you using 7 or 10 digit dialing for those calls? If so, hit the # key, the system is waiting for more digits and the # will tell the ATA you are done dialing and to connect the call.

smunro622
Premium Member
join:2006-02-15
united state

smunro622

Premium Member

Re: Admin Password

tried it before and its hit and miss, honestly the wife still wants a house fphone and i refuse to pay$30 a month when we do not use it. I plan on going to the $10.95 a month when my contract is up as i have used around 2500 mins a month for the whole yr






Review by mathfaster See Profile

  • Location: Upland, San Bernardino, CA, USA
  • Cost: $16 per month (12 month contract)
  • Install: about 5 days
Prompt, courteous customer service
Too many requests for things that could have been done right the first time
Good service at a good price
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Update 11/6/10:

Have now had Viatalk for almost 4 1/2 years. I have had very few issues with the service. Maybe once or twice the network has been down in this time and the calls were forwarded to my business line. My only complaints about Viatalk have been lack of upfront communication when they change prices. Like the addition of taxes when renewing yearly service, etc. I am locked in for another two years as I took advantage of some renewal deals earlier this year. Viatalk has a couple of features I really like. The ability to block unwanted calls in a variety of ways and the ability to shut down incoming calls during the night are the two I use most.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------

Changed to Viatalk after 9 months with Vonage for the following reasons:

1. $174/yr for 14 months (12 months $199 + two free months + DSLREPORTS $35 off coupon) for unlimited calls. I was paying Vonage roughly this amount for 500 minutes/month. With the $40 fee from Vonage for terminating prior to 12 months and the overlap time to port my number, the cost will be pretty much a wash with Vonage except I'll have unlimited calling.

2. Vonage hasn't added a new feature since I signed up with them 9 months ago. Viatalk offers Outgoing Caller ID and name. Vonage does not. Plus many other features Vonage does not have like Do Not Disturb.

3. Customer support is in the US. Having had most of my colleagues jobs outsourced overseas in the last year I felt this was a plus.

Signed up on 4/21 just before the big sale. Was provisioned on 4/24 and got my Sipura 2002 adapter on 4/26. Plugged it in and it worked. Sent in my first ticket as my billing date did not include the free two months even though I had included the terms of the offer in the signup form. Got a reply back that billing date had been corrected but billing date was not showing correctly online. Submitted another ticket and billing date was now correct.

On 5/8 during a call the Sipura 2002 stopped working. Called in to support and they determined that adapter was bad and they would be shipping a new adapter. After a week called phone support to get a tracking number (and to get a date my number would be ported on ) for the new adapter as none had been received to date. Received new adapter (Linksys) nine days after problem. Once again plugged it in and service was back. Submitted ticket to get credit for the time service was out. Received credit for more than the time of outage.

On 5/19 (the date they said my number would be ported) received email saying number was ported and it would be 3-5 hours before it would take effect. Recycled the adapter the next morning and could not place a call from my cell to the ported number. Called phone support and they said it was because the routing was in error and would be fixed by the end of the day. 5/21 placed call again to ported number and the incorrect routing had been fixed.

Overall I am happy with Viatalk's service. Their customer support is there when you need it and is very prompt and US based. I placed and received enough calls during my first two weeks to get a feel for their reliability and quality (over 500 minutes of talk time).

member for 18.5 years, 1404 visits, last login: 7.3 years ago
updated 13.3 years ago


Review by jubangy See Profile

  • Location: Corry, Erie, PA, USA
  • Cost: $30 per month
  • Install: about 12 days
Price, features
getting a few issues "ironed out"
In all honesty, for the money vs features hard to beat
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I was a via talk customer a while back not sure of the year, but had cancelled and went with vonage due to reliability issues. Fast forward to 2009-2010, I switched back to via talk again as I missed several of their features, especially around election times .

Well, we had a few bumps in the road, one was where many of our friends/family could not call our number directly, as it just started coming up disconnected, a quick work around was to point our google voice number to the vt number all was good, however vt did manage to get it squared away no idea how. The other issue was that one family member every time they called from their house number we could not answer it on our vt line it would disconnect them. It took some patience but vt did step up to the plate and take care of it it seems as of tonight all has been working. I originally got upset that we were getting billed normally for service that we could not use, and that we apparently got charged for shipping on a replacement ata, but again it seems they stepped up and gave a free month of service and priority support, so with a little patience and communication, it seems they are making the attempt at doing whats right and honestly we could not be happier. Their features and price is hard to beat truthfully. Yea there are cheaper alternatives but when you compare all of via talks features with others, it is plain to see the difference. So, as long as the service works at least 80% of the time, and the few important numbers we have can call in and we can call them, we are happy and honestly besides those 2 issues, the service has actually worked pretty good we have had no issue with outbound call reliability at all. Of course some people do not realize when they are posting on their isps forum as well as their voip providers, that more then likely they should get their internet issues under control first

And by the way the day of this review more feature were released how many voips can say that?

member for 19 years, 625 visits, last login: 299 days ago
lodged 13.4 years ago


Review by CajunWon See Profile

  • Location: Cary, Wake, NC, USA
  • Cost: $15 per month (month by month)
  • Install: about 3 days
BYOD available & Well attended external support forum
Self inflicted issues related to my equipment
Works and passes WAF test
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VOIP is still not for the masses. You must be willing to either learn of user work-arounds or call for occasional technical support otherwise stay away from VOIP (imo).

My first VOIP experience was very positive with SunRocket (SR) for 18 months (total/net cost of $199). However, returned from a mid July vacation to find the phone service was dead, found that SR had closed its' doors stranding nearly 200,000 without phone service. I quickly restored service on a forgotten proxy server which worked well for 1.5 weeks, then only outbound service until mid August.

Signed-up with ViaTalk (VT) on the day I discovered SR was out of business. I had 2 ATA (internet phone adapters), so signed-up with VT BYOD (bring your own device) monthly service. I then locked-down both ATAs with custom password. I was live with a new VT # 3 business days later with the same good phone quality as with SR. Setup call-forwarding so I (hopefully) wouldn't have to give out a temporary number.

3 minor issues:

1. LNP/Port: I wanted to keep my same phone# & knew the VT number would be temporary so I grabbed a GrandCentral number. This was in-case my old number stopped forwarding before the Port occurred. The Port took 3.5 weeks (my fault but in line with the 20 day expectation), 4 days after the old number stopped forwarding, therefore I did have to give out the GrandCentral number (which I plan to keep as a second number).

2. DTMF: I performed a factory reset on the adapter I used for VT which disabled touch-tone passing to automated phone systems. I hadn't read the manual, but quickly found the solution on this forum.

3. I masked this whole event from 'the boss' for 3 weeks. During the 4th week I instructed her to give out the GrandCentral number to important contacts. This would not have been necessary had the Port taken just 4 less days.

This whole event has been a worse case VOIP scenario. If the above are not minor issues to you, then stay away from VOIP and stop slamming your chosen provider on the forums (imo).

btw:

5(best) rating to Tech Support -I've seen the +/- threads/posts but I've not had to contact them. Apparently their support is top notch yet contacting them is difficult.

4 to phone quality -I had 1 issue when it took an hour to restore service after selecting an alternate proxy server (prior to 8am on a Saturday).

& I'm not an SE -I've only received 1hr of a 3hr DOS class in 1987, so if I can do this anyone can.

6 Month Update: All is well with ViaTalk service. I haven't looked into my ATA for months. VT did just increase the monthly net price to $17.45. WAF still under repair from SR incident, prior to which she had noticed only positive change from POTS. Still use GrandCentral for half incoming calls to remain prepared for quick change of service if required.

Over 1.5 years now: All remains well with Viatalk. Less and less new threads on the support forums indicates they are having less issues. Seems they have returned to service levels reported prior to the Sunrocket melt-down. VT500 is now ~$20/month after fees.

With the help of DSLR virtual friends (mazillo, dcurry, dogface05, to name a few) I now have a fully functional 2nd line. Rings with and has same features as line 1. I do this through Gizmo5, so line 2 does have a separate number, but transparent in this setup. I can receive a call directly to line 2, but it is a number from another state so not likely.

2.5+ years with Viatalk (VT). All well with this service. Have had a handful of outages over the past year. But very manageable with G5 & GV as backup providers.

3+ years now: Service is rock-solid. I only look at the ATA on occasion to see real-time latency and packet loss -always just over 30ms and 0-2 packet loss per 15 minutes. Net cost is just over $20/mth, which I feel is fair considering feature enhancements though a bit high compared to other providers for my usage. MagicJack is the big surprise with low cost and improved quality, CallCentric and Future9 round out my top 4. fwiw: U-Verse phone is at the bottom of my list due to high latency and packet loss (as reported by neighbors).

member for 18.2 years, 1721 visits, last login: 105 days ago
updated 13.5 years ago


Review by bryank See Profile

  • Location: Plainfield, Will, IL, USA
  • Cost: $12 per month (12 month contract)
Price, Quality, Support, & FEATURES!
Minor issues, described below
Worth every penny
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** UPDATE July 17, 2010 **

Still having excellent service from ViaTalk after 5 years of being with them. I love all the features they offer with their VOIP plans and the cost is so low; it's GREAAT! Hopefully we get another great 5 years to come...

** UPDATE September 7, 2008 **

So I have been with ViaTalk for about 3 years now and I have been 1000% satisfied with their service. Quality is on PAR with all other VOIP providers and service reliabilty is outstanding. The only gripe I have, but all VOIP providers are doing it, is being charged an e911 fee. So I pay 11.95 a month (or $143 a year) and with the e911 fee, I am up to $14.95 a month. I can't complain because it's alot cheaper than the $50 a month I was paying for POTS, cheaper than the $40 a month for Comcast Digital Voice, and any other VOIP on the market such as Vonage.

I am now in the process of getting my parents away from their $50 POTS line to ViaTalk; and yes, I do love my parents!

**ORIGINAL REVIEW**

---

Well I am coming up on my year of service with ViaTalk and I think it's time to post my results about them. I am happy to say that it has been an awesome experience and I recommend them as a VOIP provider for whoever is in the market for the new technology.

Before ViaTalk I had Vonage, which was great, but their cost was too high with all these extra fee's and they had no calling features. Like most people, we receive many telemarketing calls at the worst times of the day. So looking around the web, I found ViaTalk and noticed all the features they offered for the phone service; boy was I amazed! They had the two main features I was looking for, "anonymous call block' and 'custom call routing'. With each of these features, I would be able to block calls I did not recognize or calls that had no caller id information. To this day, I keep filling up my custom call routing list with numbers that seem to call wanting to sell me something.

In addition to those features, I like the flex ability I have within my control panel with features such as 'Call Broadcast' (Call specified numbers with your recorded message), 'Custom Caller ID' (Make the name appear as you wish), and 'Call Hunt' (Call up to five different numbers when receiving a call on your VT line). I can go on and on about all the features of ViaTalk, but you just have to experience them yourselves to appreciate them.

Unlike other VOIP providers, ViaTalk allows you to bring you own PAP device at a reduce monthly cost. This was great because I had Vonage which used an adapter that will work with ViaTalk. The problem I had was my PAP adapter was locked and set to only work with Vonage. But the internet is a great thing and I found step by step instructions to unlock the device to work with any VOIP provider.

Somethings that I found bad about the service...well sometimes when I dial a number, I will not hear ringing in the handset, but if I wait on the line, the other side will pick up. Support can never find the solution for that. Another problem, sometimes incoming calls will not display a Caller ID tag, instead it will just say 'NO DATA', but if I go into the call logs after the call is complete, the Caller ID info is there. Support cannot find a solution for that.

The call quality of ViaTalk is the exact same as I had with Vonage. Granted it's not the same as a POTS line, but for as little as we use our phone and the cost difference, I can deal with it. 95% of the time the call quality is crystal clear and no issues, but sometimes we can get a little break up that last only a couple seconds. We have never had a dropped call....



member for 24 years, 6201 visits, last login: 28 days ago
updated 13.7 years ago


Review by dnuijten See Profile

  • Location: Houston, Harris, TX, USA
  • Cost: $16 per month (12 month contract)
  • Install: about 10 days
Great features, low cost
Tech Support, but it has gotten better over the years.
Good VOIP service for the price
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This is a good VOIP service if you are a do it your selfer with tech. stuff. Sometimes hard to reach Tech. Support. The best feature is the custom call block.

6/22/2010 Still using Via Talk with no problems. I mainly use the home line for calling 800 customer support numbers where I expect long hold times and dont want to use my cell min. Just switched to Clear for my ISP and Voip works ok. Sometimes call are choppy, but still usable. Faxing works well the little I fax on Via Talk, maybe 1 fax every other month.

member for 19.1 years, 241 visits, last login: 11.4 years ago
updated 13.7 years ago


Review by spal See Profile

  • Location: Ventura, Ventura, CA, USA
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
Call Quality ,Features
Billing
Good Deal for the price
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After many years with Lingo, I switched to Viatalk last year.My experience with the company is for 5 months , but I am very satisfied with Viatalk. Sometimes I need to have little things in life , like CNAM entry(i.e. when I call somebody,my name has to go out) or Call Routing(800 numbers should go to voicemail) etc. Viatalk provided all the little things I needed and definitely exceeded the expectations.

The only concern is the Billing - I am not talking about Billing charges - I am sure those charges they have to charge( by regulation) - but a formal monthly bill would be nice to have a snapshot of the charges - you can get them from Transactions in bits and pieces , but one printable Bill is expected there.

The other thing I would suggest to streamline the billing cycles for add-ons ( like virtual number,VT World etc) - all of them should follow the same cycle ,maybe, with partial charges in the first month - that will alleviate the charges at different times.

Apart from that , it is A+++ voip provider.To make thing easier , I got their ATA - so everything was configured correctly for me - features I can turn on or off from Control Panel without any problem.

Call Quality is very good - Simultaneous Ring works perfect - Network Outage Forward works - in general I am very happy.On top that I feel it is a dynamic company in the sense that some features are being added - they are not satisfied with age-old features - something is on the go.

I really wish them good luck ..

member for 13.9 years, 82 visits, last login: 11.5 years ago
lodged 13.9 years ago