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bigapplefan1
join:2001-05-18
Chicago, IL

bigapplefan1

Member

[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?
boxero
join:2004-08-18

boxero

Member

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
bigapplefan1
join:2001-05-18
Chicago, IL

2 edits

bigapplefan1

Member

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.

P8Support
Premium Member
join:2004-05-24
Santa Clara, CA

P8Support to bigapplefan1

Premium Member

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/vi ··· fice.asp
merriam
Premium Member
join:2004-05-04
Gainesville, FL

merriam

Premium Member

You might have a look at »www.ureach.com. It's not VOIP but it does give you auto-attendant and call routing.
jniamehr
Premium Member
join:2003-10-09
Roslyn, NY

jniamehr to bigapplefan1

Premium Member

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?
bigapplefan1
join:2001-05-18
Chicago, IL

bigapplefan1 to P8Support

Member

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?
bigapplefan1

1 edit

bigapplefan1

Member

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.

P8Support
Premium Member
join:2004-05-24
Santa Clara, CA

P8Support

Premium Member

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.

vonagepap2
@levtwn01.pa.comcast.

vonagepap2

Anon

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!

P8Support
Premium Member
join:2004-05-24
Santa Clara, CA

P8Support

Premium Member

Here is a good link for obtaining all the information you might need:
»www.packet8.net/about/vi ··· fice.asp

DracoFelis
Premium Member
join:2003-06-15

DracoFelis to bigapplefan1

Premium Member

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)....
claudeo
join:2000-02-23
Redmond, WA

claudeo to bigapplefan1

Member

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.
craigg
join:2001-06-04
Princeville, HI

craigg to bigapplefan1

Member

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?


vonagepap2
@levtwn01.pa.comcast.

vonagepap2 to vonagepap2

Anon

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.

P8VO-Customer
@12.45.x.x

P8VO-Customer

Anon

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
TBU8
join:2003-01-26
Memphis, TN

TBU8 to bigapplefan1

Member

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?
ieee1394
Premium Member
join:2001-08-25
Corte Madera, CA

ieee1394 to vonagepap2

Premium Member

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.

P8Support
Premium Member
join:2004-05-24
Santa Clara, CA

P8Support to P8VO-Customer

Premium Member

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!
jcsoto1976
join:2004-06-07
Succasunna, NJ

jcsoto1976

Member

I currently have Virtual Office and I am extremely happy with the service and product. The only problem is that they need more tech support employees. Other than that this service has provided me more flexibility and the auto-attendant is great. If you have any questions please e-mail me.

P8VO-Customer
@12.45.x.x

P8VO-Customer to P8Support

Anon

to P8Support
P8Support,

Maybe you could give us some support on the subject then?

If an external caller calls us on any of our P8 VO phones, directly or via the auto attandant, and we push the big hold button right next to the handset, expecting them to hear industry standard hold music, they hear nothing... Silence... As if they were hung up on. It's almost like a second mute button.

I'd like to customize ours just so that it works!

If you can't tell, we are feeling a little misled and quite annoyed about this. "Music on hold" is on your feature list and you show a picture of a nice Nortel 390 phone with a hold button. The phone arrives, we call from a POTS line, test the hold button, but no music.

Neither of the virtual office techs (Edwin or Arturo) we've worked with could get this to work. Is there someone special we need to speak with over there to get this working?

Even the most basic $500 analog PBX supports music on hold. Why can't our high-tech iPBX?

Please help!

Alex
P8VO-Customer

Shibumila
@adelphia.net

Shibumila

Anon

I use P8 Virtual Office, and our Music on Hold works perfectly. We had to do nothing to enable it. The music they choose is a little dorky, imagine Bugs Bunny on a beautiful morning type of music.

Joe
bigapplefan1
join:2001-05-18
Chicago, IL

bigapplefan1

Member

I went ahead and got Virtual Office a couple of weeks ago. I agree with everything others have written about it. Service is good but with dropouts now and then. Customer service is very good over the phone, though email can take more than 24 hours.

The Hold music does not work for me either; I just tested it from an outside line and got nothing. It isn't really an issue for us though.

One thing I would like is to be able to have "simulaneous ring" instead of just forwarding. I can't figure out how to do this, or if it is even possible with VO, though I haven't call Support yet. How lame would it be, though, if the cheaper residential service has it but not VO?

It would also be nice if the Virtual Office voicemail picked up when the forwarded number doesn't answer.

P8VO-Customer
@12.45.x.x

P8VO-Customer

Anon

Shibumila - Your callers get music on hold just by pressing the HOLD button next to the handset? That dorky music comes on if we use call waiting to pick up a call, start a 3 way call, or start a call on another line. Making it almost ironic that when you push the hold button, the hold music won't come on.

If you don't mind, please verify that we are talking about the same thing, (the hold button next to the handset), and test it by calling from a POTS line and putting yourself on hold with it and putting the handset on the hook. If you do have hold music, then we can lay into tech support to fix ours.

bigapplefan1 - We have our auto attandant setup with ring groups to do a simulaneous ring of certain extensions depending on which option was selected. The first one to pick up the call gets it. You might want to look into that option if it fits your situation, as it has worked great for us.

P8Support - How about a reply to my post from 9/23 ???

Best regards,

Alex
P8VO-Customer
NoVaVoiper
join:2003-10-21
Arlington, VA

NoVaVoiper

Member

It sounds to me like the Music On Hold feature is a system feature, while the hold button on the phones is a local hold. I am not a VO user, however, so I wouldn't know for sure. Seems like a flaw in the integration design.

P8VO-Customer
@12.45.x.x

P8VO-Customer

Anon

P8Newbie,

My bet is you are correct. They have something fouled up somewhere.

The phones they ship are fully programmable Nortel 390 phones with all the button functions reprogrammed as macros for their system. For whatever reason, our hold button seems to have been left programmed like the hold button you get on any old $30 office phone from Walmart.

That should have been reprogrammed with a system hold, or one of the 6 other programmable keys could have been as well. They could have even just used the flash as a hold. We've had an analog based PBX for years that did it's hold that way and it worked fine.

Regardless of all the speculation.... The real issue is that they advertise music on hold, and a hold button... On their website and in their PDF files, but sadly the feature does not exist.

Packet8 is clearly false advertising!

The continued lack of a reply from P8Support on this thread even furthers my theory.

Best regards,

Alex
P8VO-Customer
Sasa
join:2001-09-22
Universe

Sasa to bigapplefan1

Member

to bigapplefan1

Re: [Packet8] Tell my why not to get Vitual Office

Couple of quick questions about VO :

1. - I would need all 3 extensions to be at different locations. Is it possible to receive a call on the ext. #1, put it on hold, & then transfer the call to ext.#2 or #3 ? (as if all extensions were in the main office, when in reality they could be in another state ?) Would this work - and most importantly be transparent to outside party. We are all located in different locations. It is important to us that the client doesn't know that other workers are not in the main office.

2. - If I am able to transfer the call to an ext. in another location, but my co-worker doesn't pick up the call (because he is not in the office) - what happens to that call ? Does it come back to me (to the ext. that originally transferred the call), or could it be programmed to transfer the call further to that workers cell phone - so that they would still get the call (even if they are not in the office) ?

3. - Auto-Attendant - How efficiently does it work ? (When caller presses 2 and it dials a cell phone of one of our workers ?) We have a stand-alone voicemail system doing the same now with regular POTS lines, but caller hears click (when VM simulates hook-flash), then it is dead silence (while VM dials the cell.#) to the caller. In the mean time when we get the ring to our cell.# & pick-up the call we hear a click first (system sends hook-flash to connect the calls), then also 1/2 sec. of silence before the calls are actually connected. During all this (fairly fast, but still some time) caller doesn't hear anything, so it is not the best feeling for the customer. (This POTS VM System uses Centrex 3-way calling/call transfer to do the transfer). This is the best way that regular Verizon POTS line can be used for Automated Attendant transfer.

Can Packet8 VO do this better ? Is the caller able to hear Music-On-Hold while transfer is occurring ? If not, how fast does the transfer occur ? We would like to make the time that outside caller waits for any Automated Attendant to transfer the call to our cellular phone as short as possible.

4. - Can our Verizon (Business) numbers be ported (via LNP) to Packet8 Virtual Office? This would be the final (& very important thing), so that we wouldn't have to keep POTS # (at least 1 main line), and just use it to forward all calls to Packet8 VO.

I would greatly appreciate if any of the present VO users could answer my questions. I called Packet8 VO Support. They said someone would call me back - and nobody even did.

These are the only things we need in order to make our office look (& sound) bigger than it actually is. It sounds great, I just hope it works good. (I had their residential service for a while. It was not good. Changed it to VoicePulse and have been very happy).

Thanks in advance.

Sly
Premium Member
join:2004-02-20
Tennessee

Sly to bigapplefan1

Premium Member

to bigapplefan1
Packet8 announced that toll free numbers, virtual numbers and switchboard console are available for virtual office users.

"Virtual Phone Numbers allow Virtual Office subscribers to provide local inbound telephone numbers from areas outside of their main number or extension DIDs. Subscribers can select Virtual Numbers from all United States area codes Packet8 supports for a small monthly fee of $4.95 per number and a one-time activation fee of $9.95. Adding Virtual Numbers offers benefits such as enabling an enterprise to show a local presence in a geographic area without physically residing there and facilitating a cost-savings local calling capability for an organization's customers or colleagues.

The second new Virtual Office service is Toll Free Numbers, an inexpensive way for Virtual Office subscribers to offer clients the ability to contact them at no charge regardless of their location inside the United States or the company's location worldwide. Packet8's Toll Free Service Plan involves a flat monthly fee of $4.95 including 100 minutes of inbound toll-free calls and an industry low of 3.9 cents a minute thereafter for inbound calls. A one time $9.95 activation fee per number applies.

Finally, Virtual Office users can now expand the functionality of their system with Switchboard, Virtual Office's Operator Software Console Application, available for $19.95 per month with a $9.95 activation fee. Switchboard improves the efficiency of an operator's call management by providing a receptionist with a graphical overview of the users on the virtual office service and a simple way to manage an organization's telecommunication activity. Switchboard works on a PC in conjunction with the Internet and the Virtual Office telephones. Additionally, Switchboard enables operators to have:

-- Direct status view of extension's status: DND, On-line, idle -- Click to call, click to transfer call control -- Direct transfer to extension and voice mail -- Supervised transfers

The Packet8 Virtual Office service costs just $39.95 per extension, per month. For initial set-up costs, subscribers pay only $99 for the equipment (special business telephone and broadband adapter), $14.95 for shipping and $39.95 for activation."-PRNewswire

P8Support
Premium Member
join:2004-05-24
Santa Clara, CA

P8Support to P8VO-Customer

Premium Member

to P8VO-Customer

Re:(Packet8) Tell me why not to get Virtual Office

On the current Packet8 Virtual Office phone there is a button named "Hold". This is a phone feature that does not send any sequence keys to the VO server. It is local to the phone and mutes both sides of the call. This button will be renamed as "Mute All".

There is pre-programmed soft-button named "Hold/NC", meaning a call can be put on hold to allow making a New Call (NC). In this case it sends some sequence keys to the Virtual Office server and it plays MOH to the remote side while it plays dial tone locally so a new call can be placed.

We will implement in the future the possibility to put a call on hold while it plays music on hold to the remote party and not playing dial tone on the local side.

In the interim a customer may contact us to request the following behavior change to be made. The local party puts the remote party on hold by pressing "Hold/NC". While the remote party hears MOH, then the local party hangs up, the default behavior is that it will immediately ring to remind that there is a held call, instead we can delay the ring back by "x" seconds.

Music On Hold also plays on call transfers and while the first party in a conference is waiting for others to join.