Dogfather
Premium
join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA
 ·Cox HSI
 ·Verizon FIOS
 ·Cox VOIP
·ViaTalk
·RoadRunner Cable
 ·MegaPath
·Verizon west (ex G..
·Time Warner VOIP
2 edits | Glad I cancelled
They were horrible. Their customer service sucked, reliability was horrible and then after delisting from the BBB and a sweet weekend long outage we were met with a hefty junk fee increase.
And the shame is, before they vacuumed up all the Sunrocket subs and poured on the junk fees service was decent. |
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hayabusa3303
Over 200 mph
Premium
join:2005-06-29
clubs: | WOW
Boy they really have gone to the dogs. But like in the other poster glad i left them a long time ago.
You get what you pay for. |
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bcronin
Premium
join:2004-03-27
Hyde Park, NY
1 edit | ViaTalk is Just Alright (with me)
ViaTalk continues to meet my needs. A lot of these complaints are trumped up nonsense in my opinion. Sure it has occasional issues, but I am not so dependent on my phone that these minor problems are a huge deal. Every time I've opened a ticket it's been addressed in a reasonable amount of time (sometimes within minutes). I guess the bottom line is that if you live and die by your phone and cannot afford occasional blips, you should stay with plain old telephone service (and continue to fork over obscene amounts of money to Verizon and the like). But the ViaTalk picture is nowhere near as bad as the fearmongers would have you believe. The whole BBB thing was bogus, just a bunch of rabid SunRocket refugees pissed off that a small company couldn't suddenly absorb tens of thousands of new customers overnight. As to the fees, show me any telecommunications service that doesn't tack on all sorts of miscellaneous fees (doesn't make it right, but it doesn't make ViaTalk any worse). |
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soccerdad62
Premium
join:2005-04-16
Saline, MI | No problems here...
I have no reason to doubt that some people are having trouble with ViaTalk, but my service has been without incident. I'm pleased with the call quality, don't get drops and like the web interface. Perhaps it's just luck (that would be a first!). |
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unknvoip
WWJID?
join:2006-07-25
Rochester, NY
·ViaTalk
| Incredible
Wow, it is amazing what commotion a small number of vocal people can cause. What is not clear from these posts is that these issues are not nearly as widespread as they sound.
I've been a customer for over 2 years and my service has never been more stable as it has been over the last few months.
Don't believe the negative hype. |
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XPAMD
Premium
join:2002-06-08
united state
·ViaTalk
| reply to soccerdad62
Re: No problems here...
Same here, I haven't had nearly the amount of issues some people report having. Mine are very rare.
I've been following the Viatalk forum since before I swithed to them. Recently they started moving to this new network transport system they're moving to. Previously subscribers were forced to go through their servers for all calls.
The reasoning for the switch to to deal with the very complaints that Karl posted in his News Blog. These problems having been going on for the past several months for various users and for the most part Viatalk has been very responsive.
I've had the newer firmware (newer than VT supplied with there adapter) for several months now and it fixed one issue in particular. And I have not had any issues directly related to it.
I do hope the folks that are having issues get their problems resolved very soon. |
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tmh
@comcast.net | Try Callcentric
Their service is pay as you go, and BYOD. You can cancel anytime.
I've used them for about 2 years and never had any problems. Montly bills average 10-15 bucks, depending on how much I use them.
tmh |
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LeftOfSanity
join:2005-11-06
Felton, DE | It must be!
I bet it's Comcast degrading thier service so the people will buy thier CDV!!!!!
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Aveamantium
join:2006-10-02
Loveland, CO |  They are working just fine for me!!
They have worked just fine for me as well! I don't know if they're quite ready for the less "techie" people but I think their latest updates will go a long way to solve this (no longer routing RTP through their servers). |
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jester121
Premium
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL | reply to hayabusa3303
Re: WOW
True. Besides, what other provider lets you come onto the forums and be insulted by the CEO of the company?  |
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ptrowski
Got Helix?
Premium
join:2005-03-14
Putnam, CT
clubs:
·VOIPo
·Metrocast Communic..
·AT&T DSL Service
·ViaTalk
| said by jester121  :True. Besides, what other provider lets you come onto the forums and be insulted by the CEO of the company? That's just an added bonus. |
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v35_pilot
Whoops, there goes another AMU
Premium
join:2005-12-12
Fayetteville, NY
·ViaTalk
·Verizon FIOS
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
1 edit | Article a bit too sensationalistic IMO and E.
I am also a two plus year current customer who has "stuck it out" and these days my service has been about 90% reliable. This article seems to imply that there is system-wide dissatisfaction but I don't believe that to be true.
I am definitely more satisfied with the service now than I was six months ago (as discussed in my most recent review update) and I am looking forward to the improved reliability promised by VT's CEO as these upgrades roll out. Time will tell.
edit: removed ambiguous wording of one sentence. |
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Cogdis
join:2007-03-26
Floral Park, NY
·Verizon FIOS
·RoadRunner Cable
·Teleblend
·ViaTalk
| reply to unknvoip
Re: Incredible
Funny, I used to be one of those voices. Viatalk was terrible compared to my other voip service for a long time, but I haven't noticed any problems in months. I figured they had finally stabilized. I'm considering updating my reliability rating in my review, but I'll wait until I see how this upgrade goes. |
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pende_tim
Premium
join:2004-01-04
Andover, NJ | Working for Me
I have had occasional problems over the past 2 years but overall it seems quite stable recently. I am not on the new system yet.
--
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits. |
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voipdabbler
join:2006-04-27
Kalispell, MT
| I'm satisfied with ViaTalk serviceas well.
I'm in my 3rd year of service with ViaTalk. I'm content with their service and customer support. I've had a few glitches, but nothing excessive. Nothing works 100% 24/7, 352. Even POTS have problems--just look at New England's recent outages. (I also have an elderly aunt and uncle back east who just won't tackle VOIP and whose POTS copper lines have been consistently cutting out on them for the past 4 months. Their last POTS outage lasted more than 48 hours and frightened them since both have had health issues--yes they do have cellular but I'm not sure how good the reception is inside their house. The last TELCO repairman who came out actually spotted some issues in the TELCO equipment on their block and replaced some parts. He was the first repairman to actually look at the company's equipment that their phone line ties into. Hopefully, it will fix the issues with loss of service.) |
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kyler13
Is your fiber grounded?
join:2006-12-12
Arnold, MD
| The sky is falling
Viatalk has been fine by me going on 17 months. I continue to receive and make calls just like it's a landline. I've had a handful of hiccups spread across those 17 months, and nothing that has completely knocked out my service or has lasted more than a day or two.
So I ask, where is the headliner that says "ViaTalk Customers Enjoying Great Service"?  |
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espaeth
Digital Plumber
Premium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
·voip.ms
·Vitelity VOIP
·Callcentric
·VoiceStick
·ViaTalk
·Comcast
·Embarq
| Using the PAP2 leaves you at the mercy of customer routers
I suspect what causes most of the issues for Viatalk customers is that the device of choice for ViaTalk is the Linksys PAP2, which sits behind customer broadband routers instead of having an integrated router/ATA like other providers. We've seen over and over again that the NAT abilities of all consumer broadband routers are far from equal. |
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sporkme
drop the crantini and move it, sister
Premium,MVM
join:2000-07-01
Morristown, NJ
·Optimum Online
| reply to Dogfather
Re: Glad I cancelled
I tried them for a few weeks. They made Vonage look good.
We're trialing these guys at work for possible resale: »www.onsip.com/
I've been happy with that and the pricing actually works out cheaper than vonage unless you use more than a few thousand minutes/month. It's a BYOA plan, but they gave me a Polycom for testing - very nice phone, much better than the Cisco garbage our other reseller pushed on us. |
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koam
Pink Pecker
Premium
join:2000-08-16
East Puddle
clubs:
·Shoreham Telephone
·ViaTalk
 ·surpasshosting
| problems keep returning
It would be hard to deny that there are nagging problems that just keep coming back at VT of late. All you have to do is check the VT forum and see just how many people have been affected. I will say that the VT guys do try to work the issue - it's just that they are demonstrably ineffective at preventing the same issues from coming back every few months. Most often they are blaming some supplier...so they get the supplier to fix it - which only lasts until it happens again. Or they go to a new supplier and find that the old problems happen again there.
Issue prevention is the issue.
--
YOU can help reduce poverty, sustainably.
»www.kiva.org/lender/kenandart
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koam
Pink Pecker
Premium
join:2000-08-16
East Puddle
clubs:
·Shoreham Telephone
·ViaTalk
·surpasshosting
2 edits | can't reach customer service ?
I haven't really tried reaching customer service and haven't noticed that as being the big issue. Of course the link in the article above in the last sentence links to a thread that is unrelated to this topic. The link is to a thread that documents the fact that users of VT could not dial ANY toll-free number and get through with any reliability earlier this week. Of course, we don't expect the author to understand this (we have very low expectations on the weekend here).
You can decide for yourself whether it's worse to be unable to reach customer service or to be unable to dial any toll free number and simply get through. But the last sentence of this five-sentence article is botched.
--
YOU can help reduce poverty, sustainably.
»www.kiva.org/lender/kenandart
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