| [Packet8] Tell my why not to get Vitual Office Hi Everyone. I've read a lot here and posted many questions which got some great answers. Now I am about to take the plunge and get Virtual Office for my 3-person business. All three of us work mostly from cellphones or at home (though we do have one office in Chicago that gets used occasionally) and one of us is in San Francisco.
So P8's Virtual Office sounds nearly perfect, at $120/month for three lines of unlimited calling. I wish we didn't have to buy three full-price incoming/outgoing lines (we will never be using more than one line to call out at a time), but at $40 each it's not too bad, and there is a built-in auto attendant which is fantastic. On the downside, it seems the lines aren't so feature-rich (no call hunting or voicemail email notification.
Am I missing anything? Am I making a mistake? What should I worry about? |
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| hi bigapple,
im also thinking about a similar setup with my small business... the sales rep on the phone confirmed that its unlimited, even if used for 5000+mins/mo. i said in "terms of service" telemarketing is not allowed. He said for business plans it IS allowed. thats a big plus for me. plus you get the fancy looking phone too.
I was wondering if i can set the AUTO ATTENDANT to :
Press 1 for A (forwards to phone A)
Press 2 for B (forwards to a PSTN#) ?
hmmm |
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2 edits | boxero, that is exactly what I want to do with Auto Attendant. My guess is that when you press 2 for B (as in your example), you send the call to extension/line 2. Then you just set line 2 to forward all calls to a PSTN# or cellphone. |
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 P8SupportPremium
join:2004-05-24
Santa Clara, CA | reply to bigapplefan1
Re:(Packet8) Tell me why not to get Virtual Office We support Call Hunting/Ring Groups, Voicemail notification with audio file, and the ability to forward calls to an outside line as described above from the Auto Attendant.
A link to more information is provided below:
»www.packet8.net/about/virtual_office.asp |
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merriamPremium
join:2004-05-04
Gainesville, FL | You might have a look at »www.ureach.com. It's not VOIP but it does give you auto-attendant and call routing. |
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jniamehrPremium
join:2003-10-09
Roslyn, NY | reply to bigapplefan1
Re: [Packet8] Tell my why not to get Vitual Office Ive been looking into this for a while now, Im looking for a company who will give me a regular number, and charge me a flat fee per month instead of per minute charges and monthly charges... Am I dreaming? |
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| reply to P8Support
Re:(Packet8) Tell me why not to get Virtual Office Thanks P8Support! I'm surprised I missed the voicemail notification via email. That is excellent. I also see that I can set call forwarding to forward calls if no answer, which is enough 'call hunting' for me. This is really starting to look like a service we should use. But I still have two questions if you don't mind:
1. My company would get three lines for three people/locations. But as for me and my line: sometimes I work from home, and sometimes from my office. Can I buy an extra set of DTA/phone so I don't have to carry them back and forth from home to my office? I don't want to have to buy a fourth line, but I want all the functionality in both places. [I guess this isn't a deal breaker but it would be nice].
2. Someone on the the Virtual Office sales line told me that if I ever need to cancel Virtual Office, I can port away my number. That would really lower my risk of getting this service. But when I sent a follow-up email to ask for written verification (I just can't trust oral promises for something so important), no one returned the email. Don't you guys respond to Virtual Office sales and support emails [rhetorical question]? But more importantly, what is the answer? |
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1 edit | OK, it took a few days but someone at P8 did affirmatively answer my question #2 above. So far I have to say that P8 Virtual Office is looking pretty good. |
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P8SupportPremium
join:2004-05-24
Santa Clara, CA | In regards to Question #1 the short answer is no presently. You either have to buy a separate DTA and phone so you don't lose the feature functionality or forward calls from your present extension. We are researching what you are interested in doing as a future enhancement. No timeframe yet. |
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| After what can only be described as an unprofessional experience with Vonage, I am also looking into switching to Virtual Office after learning of it from this forum.
bigapplefan1: did you decide to sign up for the service? What has been your experience with it thus far?
I intend to call Packet8 later and ask some questions but this seems ideal, especially if I can incrementally add additional extensions around the country. Right now, we're just starting to add phone support to our customers, but we've got staff spread out around the US.
Is it possible to transfer calls to PSTN lines via the auto-attendent? Is the software required to configure it?
How easy is it to update the MOH? How many incoming callers does the system support?
Many thanks! |
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P8SupportPremium
join:2004-05-24
Santa Clara, CA | Here is a good link for obtaining all the information you might need:
»www.packet8.net/about/virtual_office.asp |
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| reply to bigapplefan1
said by bigapplefan1:
1. My company would get three lines for three people/locations. But as for me and my line: sometimes I work from home, and sometimes from my office. Can I buy an extra set of DTA/phone so I don't have to carry them back and forth from home to my office? I don't want to have to buy a fourth line, but I want all the functionality in both places. [I guess this isn't a deal breaker but it would be nice].
I don't have any experience with "virtual office", but with normal (residential) Packet8 you can easily "forward" (simultaneous ring) incoming calls to an "outside line" (either a normal POTS line, or a FWD VoIP line), in addition to ringing the DTA. As long as the "virtual office" also has this ability, you could:
1) Leave the Packet8 equipment at the location you plan to make the most outbound calls from (or the location you plan to spend the most time at, if outbound calls will be about the same).
and 2) Either "forward" (in reality "simultaneous ring") the line to a phone at the other location (possibly only on those days you will be "working from home"), or sign up with FWD (possibly buying an SPA-2000 to make this easier) and "forward" your Packet8 line to your FWD account.
Granted, this really only gets you "free incoming" at the "forwarded location" (instead of the full abilities of the Packet8 line at both locations), so it's really only 1/2 a solution. However, that may or may not be a problem. If most of your business is outgoing calls, this is obviously not going to help much. But if most of what you do is "incoming", you can simply decide which location (the office or home) you want the "full functionality" at, and do the "forwarding trick" to get incoming calls to go to the other location.
After all, you still have the option to "pay by the minute" to make an "occasional call" from the forwarded location. For example, »www.onesuite.com only charges 2.9 cents/minute to call any of the lower 48 states (via their 800 number). So you could easily use OneSuite.com for an "occasional" outgoing call (when at the "forwarded location"), and still be way ahead (cost wise) vs paying Packet8 for a full extra phone line (and without the "hassle" of carrying the equipment back and forth).... |
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| reply to bigapplefan1
Nice web site update The Packet8 has received a very nice facelift. I had not looked at it for months. It now looks very classy and professional.
Virtual Office does sound intriguing. My wife's business could probably use something like that. |
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craigg
join:2001-06-04
Princeville, HI | reply to bigapplefan1
Re: [Packet8] Tell my why not to get Vitual Office I think the most compelling reason for not using Packet8 exclusively is reliability. If you depend on your phone for your business then I would not trust most voip providers at this time. Think about how your customers will react when they call and your service is down. It is going to happen and with some voip providers more than others. You need a backup plan. Good luck 
said by bigapplefan1:
Hi Everyone. I've read a lot here and posted many questions which got some great answers. Now I am about to take the plunge and get Virtual Office for my 3-person business. All three of us work mostly from cellphones or at home (though we do have one office in Chicago that gets used occasionally) and one of us is in San Francisco.
So P8's Virtual Office sounds nearly perfect, at $120/month for three lines of unlimited calling. I wish we didn't have to buy three full-price incoming/outgoing lines (we will never be using more than one line to call out at a time), but at $40 each it's not too bad, and there is a built-in auto attendant which is fantastic. On the downside, it seems the lines aren't so feature-rich (no call hunting or voicemail email notification.
Am I missing anything? Am I making a mistake? What should I worry about?
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| reply to vonagepap2
Re:(Packet8) Tell me why not to get Virtual Office I've gone ahead and taken the plunge. It's not immediately clear from Packet8's web site that you need at least three extensions to get the VO package. With setup, telephones, and DTA devices, the whole thing comes at a hefty cost of ~$530 just to get started with a $39.95/extension monthly charge plus any virtual numbers.
So far Packet8 support by far surpasses Vonage (but really, a call center that spoke only Mandarin would be better than the 2+ hour wait times with Vonage). Techs are friendly and go out of their way to help. I've had two issues so far getting the system up and running, one of which was quickly resolved, the other pending further research (a word to the wise: make sure you enter in the correct MAC address the first time).
Call quality is excellent and with the exception of one 10 second glitch where the other party couldn't hear me, calls have been reliable. There was a system-wide outage tonight, but once that was resolved, things came right back up.
The phones are difficult to get used to and are basically a standard analog phone pre-programmed to enter in dialtone codes when softkeys are pressed. Placing a call on hold involves one of two buttons, each performing a separate function--one placing the call on hold like any standard phone with a built in hold button and the other placing the call on hold and giving a new dial tone. On one occasion I managed to lose a call testing between my local POTS line and the Packet8 line. Calls waiting on the park extensions are not displayed on the phone which is a disappointment. That information needs to be relayed by some other means.
I'll continue to evaluate the system once I'm able to get the one dead extension (with the invalid MAC address) up and running, but so far, the VO is promising. |
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| Yes!
And I thought we were the only ones having issues with this....
The music on "hold" they claim as a feature on their website and in the PDF file really just doesn't exist.
We've had several calls in to several different techs, some said it just can't currently do that, others suggesting pressing the softkey "New Call/Hold" button, then after dial tone, putting the dial tone on hold with the real hold button.
Thats just unreasonable. It's listed as a feature in several places, yet when you push the hold button, there is no music. The 2 button work-a-round sort of works, but as mentioned above, it's very easy to lose calls that way. Plus who wants to have to train an an entire staff on how to put someone on hold?? Regular working 1 push hold buttons have been giving out music for decades, you'd think they could get that right.
While I'm at it... Has anyone tested their call parking? On our VO setup, if you park a call, it just goes to silence, as if the person was hung up on. When someone picks it up, it rings for a second then the people are connected. Their manual states that while a call is parked they will hear ringing.
We've emailed them asking for ringing, music, heck... ANYTHING... hoping we could use the call parking as a replacement for their non-existant hold button problem, but alas, that doesn't work right either and unfortunately they have done nothing to resolve either of these major issues for us.
I do want to mention that other than the above 2 issues and a very lengthly setup time (2 weeks +) on the auto attandant, the virtual office has been great.
I was a personal P8 customer for a year, and the VO lines seem much clearer and more reliable. Once setup, the auto attandant works great. We've had no down time. We have our lines split between 3 different locations and it is just the solution we were looking for.
VO Techs said the auto attandant could handle 99,999 call instances. Heh, now to get all those slots full of sales calls...
In summary:
- Excellent call quality
- Very good auto attandant/ring group features
- SLOW auto attandant setup (at least 2 weeks!)
- NO NO NO Music on hold
So if you don't need music on hold (or don't mind messing around with a bunch of buttons and possibly dropping the call when you need to put someone on hold) I would recommend the service.
Cheers,
Alex
P8VO-Customer |
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TBU8
join:2003-01-26
Memphis, TN | reply to bigapplefan1
Re: [Packet8] Tell my why not to get Vitual Office Thanks for those reviews, I am really interested in this product! Do the tech's mention that an acceptable "hold" solution is possible with time/effort? |
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ieee1394Premium
join:2001-08-25
Washington | reply to vonagepap2
Re:(Packet8) Tell me why not to get Virtual Office said by vonagepap2:
With setup, telephones, and DTA devices, the whole thing comes at a hefty cost of ~$530 just to get started with a $39.95/extension monthly charge plus any virtual numbers.
I don't think those costs are out of line. Typically, you would spend at the very least $100 per phone with any PBX. Then there's the cost of the PBX itself. Still, if it were my dime, I'd go the PBX route and possibly consider either an Asterisk solution with IP phones or for an analog/hybrid VOIP PBX solution like the one now offered by talkswitch. It's always better to get a system that does what you want and performs the way you want it to than subscribing to a hosted service from someone else and hoping that they will improve it to meet your expectations. |
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P8SupportPremium
join:2004-05-24
Santa Clara, CA | reply to P8VO-Customer
Music-On-Hold is a feature that is typically only played for external callers as an industry standard. It is not played for internal callers. Music-On-Hold is also customizeable via recording your own audio files. Call our Virtual Office Support line for more details! |
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