Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Mon, 07/31/2006 - 7:01am
I had been using another ITSP since March, which in the spirit of keeping their secret safe (that they are terrible), they shall remain nameless, but about a week ago, I switched my outbound trunks over to VoIPStreet, and we haven't had ONE problem since. Call quality is great, no dropped or jittery calls, and NO service issues. Their support helpdesk is head and shoulders above the other experiences I've had.
Not to mention they're cheaper...but that's just a perk. Our company uses approximately 5000 outbound minutes per month, and 3000 inbound minutes...
Two thumbs up!
-Andy
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Mon, 07/31/2006 - 7:47am
VoIPStreet is by far the best VoIP Porvider that we have used (we've been providing VoIP services via Asterisk for over the last 1 1/2 years). Their call quality is second to none and their Customer Service is phenomenal! Our average peering time to them is 15-18ms...You will find this with no other provider! They have a great portal for allowing multiple devices or servers per location per account and they respond to their trouble tickets within "5" minutes during their normal business hours and I even had them respond that quickly on the weekends.
We use them as both our "Main" origination and termination VoIP provider and I can assure you that as of today, they are the "Best" in the business! :lol:
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Mon, 07/31/2006 - 12:58pm
We've been shopping around for a good while now for termination and origination providers. Voipstreet has been far and above the best service provider we've dealt with so far. Their customer service is like nothing I've ever seen before. Tickets are answered within minutes and are followed up on until the end. Voice quality is flawless and we haven't had a single issue with the service that was their fault or that wasn't resolved in minutes.
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Sun, 08/06/2006 - 6:36am
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Wed, 08/09/2006 - 8:09am
DID service is for inbound calls only, outbound service is US48 and Canada only and is 1.9 cents per minute.
See pricing page here:
http://www.voipstreet.com/pricing.html
All pricing is in US dollars, sorry for any confusion.
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Wed, 08/09/2006 - 2:10pm
ok, just re-read your website, you dont offer outbound calls outside of USA.
that's kind of dumb isn't it? means I wold need a second line for anythign else.
may as well use www.faktortel.net.au for my australian calls instead.
cheers,
Dean
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Wed, 08/09/2006 - 3:04pm
Well, the nature of Trixbox and Asterisk is that you can route calls how you want, when you want and through which provider for which type of call. I suppose some may think it's "dumb" for us to not offer International calling but as you can imagine, we can't be all things to all customers.
We wish we could be the ideal solution for everyone that comes upon our website, the problem is that everyone has different needs.
Many people using TrixBox and Asterisk push their calls out through multiple providers and are quite happy with the setup.
We are very careful with all decisions made when it comes to product offerings. Honestly, the reason we do not offer International dialing is due to the HUGE amount of "additional" fraud that we would have to deal with on a daily basis. Also, international calling means a MUCH bigger billing headache on our end due all the rating for each country that must be done.
Most of our customers resell our services and by from more than one vendor. I realize for an end user that our service may not be ideal but we are really a wholesale offering and not geared towards the individual end user. I understand that with a single ATA or IP phone, a customer may be restricted to one provider but certainly not with Trixbox.
Hope I have helped to clear up any mysteries as to why we do not offer International and hope you can understand the business reasons behind it.
On a final note, please keep in mind that there are many businesses and individuals that NEVER call outside the US or Canada, they could care less about International calling. In fact, they like the fact that they don't have to worry about employees, customers or their kids calling some off the wall place and costing them money. The restrictions are actually a feature to some.
With all that said, we will probably offer International at some point in the future.
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Wed, 08/09/2006 - 7:19pm
but why bother offering internation did's if you aren't going to allow calls to these countries.
basically you are saying my customers can dial me but I cant dial back.
if I'm going to have an account with anothe company for outgoing then I may as well use them for my Australian did as well.
I do appreciate what you are saying about fraud but thats just a case of good procedures and infrastructures rather than trying to do it on the cheap.
Dean
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Mon, 08/14/2006 - 12:15pm
I just set up an account last week and haven't run many minutes through yet, but I can vouch for their tech support. I was doing some troubleshooting and had turned off port forwarding in the router. This caused my TB to not connect. Not realizing this, I submitted troubleticket on Sunday afternoon at 4:33 pm CST and they responded at 4:40. We subsequently had several exchanges Sunday afternoon, evening, and Monday morning (ran into another problem w/ DID, see Help forum). They even offered to call me to help me work out my problem at my end!
[Update]
Voipstreet spent 1.5 hours on the phone with me and then another 1-1.5 hours after we hung up working on my computer. They could never get incoming calls to my DID to work by IAX, they did get it to work using SIP. Many thanks to Voipstreet for going beyond the call of duty.
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Sat, 08/19/2006 - 9:12am
I just setup with them today, there support is very good on the phone and with trouble tickets on the web site, still waiting on my did to be active, but on out going test to my cell the call was better than my pstn line on my spa-3000. I heard some echo om my cell but the person on the ext said it was perfect on that side. so far so good.
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Sun, 08/20/2006 - 7:38pm
Quote:
VoIP-St wrote:
DID service is for inbound calls only, outbound service is US48 and Canada only and is 1.9 cents per minute.
See pricing page here:
http://www.voipstreet.com/pricing.html
All pricing is in US dollars, sorry for any confusion.
You mention in other posts that your service is only for wholesale. In my view, the rate of 1.9 cents per minute for wholesale is quite high.
What do others think including those who have praised their support on this thread?
-packetvoice
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Sun, 08/20/2006 - 8:28pm
I don't think they have claimed to be the cheapest. There is a tradeoff between being the cheapest and having good service. Sure, there are cheaper providers ($0.01 or even less), but they are typically not as reliable. For home use, that is ok, but for business, I need it to work. I'm still working on convincing people IP comm is a good choice. I don't need the end users complaining about call quality, that just gives IP comm a bad name.
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Wed, 08/23/2006 - 3:02pm
I've been using them for a couple of weeks now and can say for a fact that their tech support is awesome. They spent close to an hour on the phone with me helping get things set up (calls to my cell phone wouldn't work, but other numbers would). Did a fantastic job. Call quality is good too... Much better than Vonage.
My $.02
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Wed, 08/23/2006 - 7:00pm
I've had them for a few days now and I'm realy shocked at how good the sound is and the support, I made afew stupid mistakes like a space before my registration string form copy and pasting it in and they cought that and I had CID set for my sip ext that was over riding the outgoing CID Also it doesnt like 7 digit CID after setting it to 10 digit it works fine. As for the cost my outgoing is $0.01900 per minute and incoming is $0.01490 that right outa my account log. only problem is I was only going to use it for roll over from my pstn and long distance only but I realy like it better than my spa-3000, much better.
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Mon, 08/28/2006 - 2:57pm
I may have missed something but most responders seem to be new converts to voipstreet. How long have they been in business. Anyone have more than a few weeks or months experience. As a bulk rate provider the price seems a bit stiff. But then if I really knew I wouldn't be asking.
Also, about the website, where can information be found about minimum deposit requirements, mimimum usage (funds forfieture??), definition of service class, etc? Anyone care to fill in the details?
What has been the actual time to provision DID purchases?
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Mon, 08/28/2006 - 3:43pm
I am a recent convert also.. The quality compared to another provider is night and day.. Voipstreet being excellent (Hopefully they will keep up with their customer growth) - Some companies should stop accepting new clients if their network can't handle the load.... If they did that, they would be more likely to keep their customers instead of producing a mass exodus.
Ok, it took about 15-20 minutes to get a DID and set up on a IAX trunk. I did the 9.99 flat rate inbound with 1.9 cents outbound.. Each location is different, being AZ that was my termination fees. The website states it can take up to a month to provision a number.
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Mon, 08/28/2006 - 5:13pm
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Wed, 08/30/2006 - 7:37pm
Quote:
I may have missed something but most responders seem to be new converts to voipstreet. How long have they been in business. Anyone have more than a few weeks or months experience. As a bulk rate provider the price seems a bit stiff. But then if I really knew I wouldn't be asking.
Also, about the website, where can information be found about minimum deposit requirements, mimimum usage (funds forfieture??), definition of service class, etc? Anyone care to fill in the details?
What has been the actual time to provision DID purchases?
bocar,
Let me see if I can address some of your questions below, sorry for the delay but we don't monitor the forums for questions.
Quote:
How long have they been in business.
This is a question which does not have a simple answer. In short we have been in business and have existing customers as far back as 1996. These are actually web hosting customers which was the first thing we did in the old days. At that time we were known as Discount Internet Services. We have lost our first web hosting customer ever but we do have our second :)
Around 1998 or so we got into selling hosting and email services at the wholesale level. Most of our customers were resellers, not end users.
We had several different hosting service offerings including Muchoweb, SpaceResellers, MailStuff, HardRockHosting and a few others.
Somewhere around 1998 or 99 if my memory serves me right we decided to add dialup internet to our services due to quite a demand from our hosting customers. We launched a nationwide retail dialup service called LinkUp America.
In 2001 we decided to move into offer dialup at the wholesale level just as we did with hosting. This was our most successful offering yet and we did quite well. You can learn more about our wholesale dialup offering at http://www.YourOwnISP.com
A few years ago we realized that dialup Internet was not going to be the sexiest, most cutting edge product one day :-D So, we got going on research for our next product/s. We decided quickly that we would do something related to telephone services. Basically, we knew our services in the future would all have something to do with holding a phone to your ear. We didn't know what exactly though.
As we started toying with the creation of all sorts of different products, we knew that the one thing we needed for all these services was a good origination and termination provider. WELLLLLLLLLLL.... I won't bad mouth any companies in particular, it's not my style. But.. After a few years of going through more than 10 providers with nothing but miserable results, we knew the only way we would get what we were looking for was to do it ourselves.
VoIP Street is born :)
With the horrible customer service habits attached to anything related to VoIP, we knew we would do well. We have a track record for nothing short of Outstanding customer service and retention in all our past ventures. We know how to support wholesale products and customers.
OK, blah blah blah.. I know.. Bottom line, VoIP Street officially took it's first customer in on May 03, 2006.
We realize a new service may scare some people but everyone has to be born sometime :-) In any case, not many VoIP companies are old veterans really anyhow because VoIP is a fairly new technology.
We are not a new company, just a new service offering within an established company.
I think most of our customers would gladly trade the crusty no support attitudes of their previous providers for our "Newness" :-o
Quote:
Anyone have more than a few weeks or months experience.
Probably not..
Quote:
As a bulk rate provider the price seems a bit stiff. But then if I really knew I wouldn't be asking.
I can point out many providers who are more expensive and many that are cheaper. With that said we do not make any apologies for our pricing, we spent a lot of time looking at the market and positioning our pricing according to our business model.
Although we are a wholesale provider, we are not really going after the HUGE accounts at this time. We prefer to grow at a pace where we can control our quality. As our customers quickly find out, we are not just about the almighty dollar.. We primarily focus on and cater to the small to medium size integrators of PBX systems based on Asterisk, small VoIP Providers and many others who are looking for a company and offering they can build their products around.
Putting a Trixbox or any PBX in a business with all these whiz bang VoIP features becomes not so whiz bang, real quick when you hook a bad provider into that system.
Bottom line, businesses want their phones to work, nothing else matters if the phones do not work. Many are willing to pay a bit more for services and a company they can count on.
Quote:
Also, about the website, where can information be found about minimum deposit requirements, mimimum usage (funds forfieture??), definition of service class, etc? Anyone care to fill in the details?
We admit, our website leaves a bit to be desired and we are working on improving it.
To answer your questions.. There is no minimum deposit requirment, in fact upon signing up you get 20 free minutes of calling time to test the quality & support :)
There is no minimum usage required, just that you pay for what you use. Of course you must also pay the monthly fee on any DIDs you have attached to your account.
Funds forfieture, HA! I realize other providers do this but we feel that money in your prepaid account is YOUR MONEY. Call us crazy.. If you close your account for any reason, we will cut you a check and send it to the address on file within 30 days but normally sooner.
Not sure what you mean by "definition of service class"..
Quote:
What has been the actual time to provision DID purchases?
This varies by country/state/region/carrier. When you go to http://www.voipstreet.com/didlist.php and select and area, lots of details are shown including the time frame for each of the DID offerings in that area.
Time frame is pretty broad due to the way we get DIDs from the carriers.. The time frame is from Instant to 30 days. About 98% of the DIDs our customers order are provisioned in 1 business day or less. We have had only a few that have gone 30 days or even close.
I hope that my detailed response has answered all your questions as well as demonstrated our commitment to customer service (even before you are a customer). I suspect it's also demonstrated that I am out of word tokens on this forum for the rest of my life.
Now to see if the forum software will even accept a post of this size :-o
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Thu, 09/07/2006 - 5:15pm
You are correct, our general voicemail box was full and that has been corrected. I do apologize for that..
Normally a voicemail can be left and we do return calls right away.
We are not honestly real big on having folks stand by and wait for phone calls on the sales/marketing side of things. We normally get voicemails or form submissions from our contact page which we respond to in a VERY timely fashion.
I am sure many on the list here will vouch for our speedy response times and overall quality of service and support.
If not for the voicemail box being full I am sure you would have had a pleasant experience just as everyone else that contacts us does.
Stuff happens and we are not above making a mistake, a full voicemail box was not a good thing and we will try to keep a better eye on it.
As for support once you are a customer, we offer support using our web based helpdesk system. Most issues are responded to by a human in less than 10 minutes. Typically you will see responses in 3 minutes or less during normal support hours. Again, I am sure many on the forum here will confirm this.
Please feel free to fill out the contact form on our site or call me with any questions you may have. My mailbox is not full :)
Todd R.
(888) 853-1820 x205
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Mon, 10/02/2006 - 8:28am
BTW, Hello. This is my first post, yet thousands read. I have Trixbox up and running at my home, with a single fxo, and a mix of sip and fxs inside.
To get back on topic... I read about many providers, and recommendations. Of all, the feedback about VoIP Street was positive. I also read of quick service, and, very quick support.
I emailed in a question, and was greeted with a quick and accurate reply. -Impressive, Thank you Todd.
So, with some study, I opened up the appropriate ports, and did all my prep work to add a SIP Trunk from VoIP Street. It was after business hours last night when I was ready, but I put the order in.
To my surprise, when I checked this morning, my account had already been setup, and was ready. I set the trunk up, and, was registered. I tested calls out on the trunk, and, they sound great!
So, I added funds, grabbed a DID (Instantly Provisioned!) and now in/out are great.
My next step is to grow this solution within my personal network as I have friends/family in some remote areas which are still prime for IP communications over the Telco charges for LD.
Thanks VoIP Street!
PS, If anyone is having some real trouble setting up the Polycom 301 or similar, I FINALLY got it done by central provisioning. Let me know and I can get you a kickstart the right direction.
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Thu, 10/12/2006 - 2:55pm
I've been using Voipstreet for a couple of months now and they are great. Call quality is excellent. In fact, they just finished porting all of my numbers over from vonage and things went very smoothly. Great service, great quality, good price. Can't ask for much more than that! :-D
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Fri, 10/13/2006 - 9:42am
Please forgive the dumb noob question...I'm still trying to figure this all out ;)
I have been working with 1 sip provider that will remain nameless as their support really sucks, and after having my fill I started looking @ voip street because of the reviews of their excellent support. Then I started doing the math on switching to them…
Hopefully someone points out a flaw in my thinking...
Here's the scenario...
small business with 4 pstn lines @ $50 each….
the business is open from 8-5 Mon-Sat…thought it’s not uncommon for sales to stay late if the phones are busy.
The business is seasonal, so depending on the weather or the weather forecast, the phones go berserk.
Currently it’s not uncommon for customers to complain that they tried calling over and over and kept getting a busy signal (ie…we need more lines, and we know that.)
So all that being said…
if the cost per min = $0.019…
open from 8-5 = 9 hours
9 hours x 60 min = 540 min per line/per day
540 min per day (per line) * $0.019 = $102 per line, per day if 100% utilization
$102 x 4 lines = $408 per day
$408 per day x 24 working days per month = $9,792 per month for 4 lines if fully utilized.
If we’re hearing complaints about busy signals (several time per day) then the utilization is somewhat high. I’m sure it’s not 100%...I’m going to go WAY low and say 60% utilization…
so…
60% of $9,792 = $5,875.20 per month for phones.
compared to $200 per month for PSTN lines???
I HAVE to be missing something, right?
There are tons of positive reviews for VoipStreet…but how can any business afford using them (or any other similarly priced service)?
Thanks for any incite!!!
Tfunk
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Fri, 10/13/2006 - 11:34am
Someone step in and correct me, but the per-minute rate is on outgoing, rather than incoming calls in a flat rate DID.
If I recall correctly, how the telephone settlement system works is that the calling carrier pays for the right to terminate a call with the receiving carrier. In other words, if you were a Carrier and your customer called me, you have to pay me for the right to terminate your calls on my network.
This works the other way, too. If my customers call you, I have to pay you for the right to terminate calls on your network.
Therefore, incoming calls are "free" to the called party, subject to any terminating carrier per-channel charges.
Believe it or not, I have a former classmate that is way into the whole telecomm carrier settlement process... she's more boring at parties than a patent attorney....
If you are not in a flat-rate DID, you are correct that a PTSN may be more economical.
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Fri, 10/13/2006 - 12:51pm
No doubt voipstreet has many positive qualities. Cheap is not one of them. Reading the forum posts from acknowledged voipstreet reps indicates they are a bit proud of that and expect their service quality to cover for that. May well be.
One nice feature of the metered DID's is they are said to be unlimited channels with a 20 soft limit.
Long haul, I would object to the 60/15 billing increment.
They are on my short list but will have to come off on price a bit. They say (earlier in this thread) they are primarily wholesale and not targeted to individual users. That could account for the pricing.
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Fri, 10/13/2006 - 3:15pm
Just to put my $0.02, but VOIPStreet has the best customer/technical service of just about anybody I've ever dealt with. I'm a fairly new customer and I'm still working some kinks out of the my connection w/ them, but I get responses to my tech support requests often in less than 5 minutes. I was back and forth with a rep last night until almost midnight. Absolutely amazing. It looks like the problem I'm having is on my end, and maybe I'm used to companies treating the customer like dirt but they actually told me:
"the ultimate goal is to get your systems to work properly with our service" and were going to setup a test setup identical to mine on their end to try to track down the bug. Maybe a little more expensive, but worth every penny as far as I'm concerned.
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Wed, 10/18/2006 - 10:43pm
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Thu, 11/23/2006 - 9:43am
I'm very interested in the services that voip street provides, however they seem to have gone out of business... Their phone number (from their website) has an operator telling me the number doesn't exist and their fax number ends up on some guy's answering machine... They do not respond to their "contact us" forum on their website... I've been trying to get a hold of them for days now.
Anyone have an idea if they are still providing service? This whole thread talks about how awesome and fast they are to respond to customers, I don't seem to be experiencing the same reaction.
Any feed back would be great.
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Thu, 11/23/2006 - 9:58am
Well, I can tell you for sure that we are still very much in business..
I think your experience may be a bit of bad luck and a bit of us just being really busy.
We have been getting phone calls every day on the number on our website without issues. So, I can't account for you having trouble with our main toll-free number. We also have a local number on our website, both of which seem to be working fine. It's possible that there was some sort of hiccup when you called on the calling or receiving end, not sure.
Our fax number, that's odd.. We don't normally receive customer inquiries, just port forms on this fax and it is in a bit of a beta mode so possible something wasn't right there as well. We are like the carpenter who has the house in need of repair, we tinker with our internal phones and IVR's a lot because we beta test on ourselves :) At times, it can be a problem to use our own numbers as beta test but it sure beats doing with real customers. Sorry for the trouble.
Hmmm, contact form.. We have been really busy and it's possible your contact got lost in the shuffle.. We do have some things to get organized on our initial customer contact, sales and marketing side. I do apologize for that but will say this.. We spend most of our time focusing on our existing customers and less time doing what we should to acquire new customers.. Our existing customers will attest to this.. Once you are a customer you will appreciate this as most companies do the opposite and worry about make a new buck instead of taking care of the existing customers that already put their faith in them.
The best method of contact is our contact form so please try again or feel free to use any method on our contact page. Again, I do apologize for any trouble you may have had and I am certain you will be happy once you get setup as a customer.
If you have any questions please direct them to us directly rather than responding here in the forum. We do not monitor the forums regularyly for questions. Just happened to catch this post and wanted to be sure you concerns were addressed.
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Thu, 11/23/2006 - 12:08pm
Just a quick note to let everyone know at least part of what happen with akennedy trying to reach us.
akennedy was dialing our US only toll-free number found on our contact page but he was calling from Canada.
Pasted from our contact page:
Phone:
From within the US: (888) 204-VOIP
Outside the US: (302) 724-4351
So, that explains the phone issue he was having.
As for the contact form, as far as we can see the only contact form submission we got from akennedy was 1 hour and 15 minutes before the end of the business day yesterday. Although we have been known to answer contacts request as late as 3 or 4 am, sometimes we get busy and answer new inquiries next business day.
As for our fax number, if you call it with a phone instead of a fax it will pickup as voicemail which really is not the correct voicemail box because we never intended for it to be called by anything other than a fax machine.
Hopefully, all those that read this can see our commitment to customer service based on the fact that I am hear responding in the middle of the holiday activities :-D
Anyhow, I think we have akennedy all squared away and have responded to his second contact request (even though we are closed today for non emergency issues).
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Fri, 11/24/2006 - 1:45pm
An update on my situation.
As you can see, soon after I posted, VoIP-St contacted me by email and without delay I had an account setup with them. I am now able to call US and Canada through VoIP-St. (the quality is excellent!)
Quick and easy to setup! (even when you're as impatient as I am :-? )
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Sat, 11/25/2006 - 7:06am
Well, this may not be a direct voipstreet problem, but they are the only ones I can point at, so here goes... My main business DID number that was ported to them a little over a month ago somehow got rerouted to someone else ten days ago and I have no idea how it happened. It seems that the last call received on that number (by looking at the VOIPStreet logs) was on November 14 and here it is the 25th and my number is still being answered by some unknown person's or company's phone system. (The caller gets a message that the call is being recorded for quality purposes, then it hangs up.) I didn't know it happened, because we have several business numbers coming in on VOIPStreet plus one POTS line from our local phone provider and we have been receiving calls all along, but come to find out, it has only been on those other DIDs. Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, nothing can be done until at least monday, if at all. (I sure hope I can get my number back, and quickly, or I may just as well close my doors and go out of business.)
I understand that there are other companies and people in the middle between my phone number and VOIPStreet, and I think this could probably happen with any VoIP trunk provider, but I really think there needs to be some controls put in place that would notify someone immediately when something like this happens. I cannot see why I should have to call each of my DIDs on a daily basis to see if they work that day. This also demonstrates a problem with hanging your hat on the little guy. They obviously do not have enough pull to get things done outside of the normal business day. I hope they can get it done during the normal business day on monday. Now I'm wondering who I can go after for interruption and loss of business! Maybe the old standby POTS line is the best bet.
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Sat, 11/25/2006 - 6:20pm
I would like to assure hcrane and the rest of the forum that we are and have been doing everything within our power to get his number restored.
The bottom line problem is that the carriers LNP department is closed and there is simply nobody to help no matter how loud we scream..
Because I don't think it's appropriate to discuss our customer's issue here on a public forum, I will just say that the problem is related to a disconnect order for this DID being placed with our carrier from someone other than us after the DID was successfully ported to VoIP Street. We do not know much more than that at this point and we think it's totally disgusting that any carrier gets to take days off from things as critical as LNP. :-o We do not take the day off for anything when it comes to emergency issues and have been working with our customer to keep him informed, even on Thanksgiving day between turkey and personal family activities.
As for us not having enough pull with our vendor, well I am not sure who does really have much pull when it comes to carriers that think they are bigger than God.
The unfortunate part of our business (as well as all ITSP's) is that we must rely on carriers, there is simply nothing we can do when the carrier or multiple carriers mess up a DID except kick and scream until they fix it. We kick and scream louder than anyone when it comes to our customers having a DID issue. Outbound is simply because we just re-route to another carrier almost instantly.
So, no matter how well we run our operation and support our customers, one mistake from one of our carriers and we look like a bunch of, well, insert your choice of names here..
In closing I will say that these sort of issues can and do happen with any ITSP. The question is, how loud will your ITSP scream to the carrier when they do happen and will they keep you informed as the situation progresses. Additionally, how does the ITSP conduct the rest of it's business outside the ocassional carrier issue which can't be helped..
I don't blame hcrane for posting or for being upset, we just as upset with our vendor regarding this situation. Basically I just wanted to make sure there was a response from our company regarding the matter.
Hope all those in the US had a happy Thanksgiving!
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Tue, 12/12/2006 - 5:46pm
Jim,
We have activated all accounts which signed up over the weekend including one or two with names like Jim and James.
Not sure exactly what your name is or your company name is but if you would go to our website and fill the info into the contact form, someone should respond to let you know about your sign up.
We actually activated all signups as we always do on the same day. Once in a while we may activate a signup next day but usually only when it comes in very late at night. Signups are activated on the weekend as well.
Please do not respond here because we do not monitor this forum for support or sales questions, we do this through our website and the contact form. Just want to be sure we don't miss your questions..
I am sure if you can get the info into the contact form below tonight, you will get a response tonight.
http://www.voipstreet.com/contact.html
Either way, sorry you had trouble and I am sure we can get you squared away tonight once we have more info on your signup.
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Sat, 12/16/2006 - 8:58am
Recommendation from a Cynic
I have worked for several well known national and local telecommunications carriers and service providers over the past 20 years in senior engineering, product development and product marketing roles. I have been involved in designing, implementing and managing carrier class voip network deployments in addition to overseeing the trouble management post sales support process.
With this background in mind - I would say that I am one of the most demanding customers a voip provider could have. I have a very low tolerance for error and I have a very high expectation of service, support and value.
I have been a Voip Street Customer Now for a little over a month and Yes, there have been some minor blips - Yes, they charge more then the competition - Yes - everything is not utopian and Yes - there are some things I would like to see a little different - BUT !!! Here I am typing a recomendation for VOIPSTREET.
Why may you ask ?
1) When I pick up my IP Phone to make a call - it always goes through.
2) When someone calls me - whether if it is one person or 10 people dialing the same DID - they reach me.
3) I have very low jitter - no echo - and basically - the experince is that of a toll quality call.
4) When I have a problem - I send an email - or call support - and yes - sometimes It takes them 15 minutes or 30 minutes or 1 hour to email or call me back - BUT GUESS WHAT - That is a better response time for customer service then most wireline based carriers out there today . . . I know firsthand.
Most Business class SLA's call for a 4 hour window - even if the customer has 50 T1's or DS3's with the carrier . . . and I can say from first hand experience that VOIPStreet support rivals and in some cases exceeds the performance of most wireline carriers out there today - except the one that I work for - of course ((wink)).
Is there a slim chance that there might be delays with porting numbers over from another provider - Yes - but that is the very nature of this business - whether you are dealing with AT&T, MCI, Verizon, BellSouth, SBC, Qwest, Sprint, Time Warner, a Greenfield or another voip provider such as Vonage, etc.
I have had service with almost every voip service provider in the US market space over the last 6 Years - both for personal use and for market research purposes. Up to this point in time - I would only recommend 2 VOIP providers to date - Teliax and VOIPStreet - and I currently have service with both of them.
You have to look at the value proposition and determine what is important to you. For me - it is call quality, reliability, scalability and customer support.
At the end of the day - it may cost a little more - but I would say that it is worth it.
If these things are not important to you - then there is always Skype . . . .
And by the way - VOIPSTREET - I want free service for life in exchange for this testimonial ((GRIN))
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Thu, 12/28/2006 - 12:43pm
Eric,
I am sorry if we somehow missed a call or email from you. We have an overwhelming number of people contact us each day and sometimes an email or call back slips through. We are trying to improve our process for tracking and getting back to people.
Once you are a customer you will use our ticket system which is well organized and all issues are responded to within minutes of submission.
Please fill out the contact form on our website and I will personally keep an eye out for it today and be sure to email or call you back with answers to your questions.
Happy Holidays!
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Tue, 01/02/2007 - 6:38pm
well I love em! From the get-go everything went better than expected. after a week or 2 I had enough confidence to port my vonage numbers over ..... well ..... still waiting for the porting thing to happen .... sometimes this is out of there control ... not pointing any fingers. All in all I love the service and plan on implimenting Voipstreet with 3 prospective customers.
Its great to find a compentent tech support group but a real pleasure when they also have a sense of humor! luv ya! :-) Keep up the good work.
Re: Who is using VoIP Street? How would you rate them?
Wed, 01/03/2007 - 10:48pm
Having started this thread a long time ago, I see we have hit on a popular issue:
VOIP provider quality and reliability.
We have just started using VOIPstreet, based on the great feedback in this thread.
True to form, their Tech Support is the best we have come across, and the voice quality is excellent.
The list of providers we have experience with are:
The winners:
VOIPstreet - US DID's and US Termination, IAX
JunctionNetworks - International Termination and Backup to VOIPStreet, IAX.
The loosers:
Netlogic.net - Pricey, and support is slow and nasty, DID's slow, and CID's wrong.
Teliax - Great except when they break, then you are dead for days with no help.
Voicepulse - Excellent, except their Gateway is on the East Coast, High Latency
Commpartners - SIP only, and charged $200 for IP change, when they said free.
LiveVOIP - Always had trouble with these guys, RIP.
Sell VOIP - Can anyone get Tech Support from them?
voipstreet
Wed, 10/10/2007 - 8:00pm
Voipstreet is absolutely awful. They have absolutely no communication skills and are VERY unfriendly. Call billing or sales after hours and you will be on hold....indefinitely. They do have hours of operation but don't make them available anywhere on their site. Call after hours? You'll be told that your in que and that you should continue to hold. No message saying "our hours of operation are.....please call back tomorrow". These people have no common sense. Make a friendly recommendation about them posting some of this information on their website....no reply. Like talking to the wall.
Want a vanity number? There are no instructions posted on how to go about that. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow is a very common theme with this company. Once you do figure out how to get a vanity number (by putting in a help desk ticket) your number will be gone by the time they respond to you. Even then your told.....tomorrow. One of the little unfriendly schleps who works there named Ari told me he would "get back to me" on a question I had. He never returned my call. Nearly a week has gone by and I still don't have a DID of my choice. If you can't do vanity numbers, don't waste my time by telling me you can. ATT is the DID provider that they sent me to. They haven't had 800 numbers available in quite some time. I know this because ATT SAID SO ON THE PHONE.
Seems like the staff at voipstreet could have told me that when I TALKED TO THEM ON THE PHONE AND REQUESTED ONE.
Don't waste your time with voipstreet. Total amateur night.
Billing Voipstreet
Thu, 10/11/2007 - 4:56pm
Want your money back from voipstreet? Good luck. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. No information posted about when billing, sales or provisioning is available. Just a call que telling you your call number 5. For people who are supposed to be knowledgeable in phone systems, it sure is funny that they can't configure their own phone system to alert callers to their hours of operation. How about posting the hours of operation on your website guys? Gee what a concept. Total amateur night. Oh yeah, that 5 to 15 minute response time they claim on their website is total garbage. They still haven't responded to my request to have my balance credited to my card.
Don't hold your breath
Thu, 10/11/2007 - 12:33pm
They claimed they'd call be back about provisioning an 800 number and never called me back.
Ticket Number 2xxx
Customer Number 2xxx
Company AccureIT Consulting
Status Open
Date/Time Submitted Wed - Oct, 10th 2007 - 02:46:13 PM (Central Time)
Priority Normal
Department Billing
Subject I need an 800 vanity number...
Account Type Term Orig Only
Description
I checked out the ATT link that was sent from the last ticket I opened. No 800 numbers available. Ari told me you might have other providers that do have 800 numbers. Any ideas?
Thanks,
J
Updates
Date: Wed - Oct, 10th 2007
Time: 02:53:44 PM
Who: Customer Support
We will forward this to our DID department to see what they can uncover.
Date: Wed - Oct, 10th 2007
Time: 03:44:22 PM
Who: AccureIT Consulting
I just called ATT business dept. Apparently the reason no numbers have been available was because somebody order 400 toll free numbers and basically cleaned them out. The order got canceled and are now available. There are no 800 numbers and haven't been for quite awhile apparently. Can you provision an 888 number for me? 888-2xx-xxxx is available right now. Can you grab that one for me?
Sorry to be such a pain.
J
Date: Wed - Oct, 10th 2007
Time: 05:08:42 PM
Who: Customer Support
Again, we will forward this to our DID department, however, they will most likely get this ordered in the morning.
Date: Wed - Oct, 10th 2007
Time: 06:00:46 PM
Who: AccureIT Consulting
Gee thanks. The number is gone already.
Date: Wed - Oct, 10th 2007
Time: 06:03:08 PM
Who: AccureIT Consulting
You know. I don't think your system will allow me to pick my own number. By the time you respond, the number is gone. Your system of choosing vanity numbers is...undocumented on your website. I find this to be a complete waste of time.
Never mind a vanity number. Close this call.
Date: Wed - Oct, 10th 2007
Time: 06:11:36 PM
Who: Customer Support
closing
Date: Wed - Oct, 10th 2007
Time: 06:28:58 PM
Who: AccureIT Consulting
Nobody to answer the phone. Daily excuses about tomorrow, tomorrow tomorrow. No information on your website regarding how to go about provisioning a vanity number. Ari told me yesterday he'd call me today. No phone call Ari.
Please credit my debit card NOW, not tomorrow. I done with the games.
J
Date: Wed - Oct, 10th 2007
Time: 07:10:14 PM
Who: Customer Support
This ticket has been re-opened at the customer's request.
Hello, I apologize for your frustration regarding this issue, however our DID order department and Billing department are only available during business hours EST. I will assign this ticket to billing department for review tomorrow morning.
Date: Wed - Oct, 10th 2007
Time: 07:26:02 PM
Who: AccureIT Consulting
"however our DID order department and Billing department are only available during business hours EST"
Okay, that's reasonable. Is it also reasonable to expect that this information would be posted on your website? I called your toll free number and was in que for 30 minutes to talk to billing. But nobody answered....because nobody was there. No mention of office hours. UNBELIEVABLE! I made some recommendation to Ari the other day about posting info on the procedure for getting a vanity number. Friendly observations. Positive criticism. He had....no reply. Like talking to a wall. Very unfriendly. Very cold. Unreal. I really tried with you guys.
J
Date: Wed - Oct, 10th 2007
Time: 07:37:53 PM
Who: Customer Support
I apologize for the difficulty reaching us and the cold manner your suggestions we taken in. We are working to update our website, and would appreciate any input you have at support@voipstreet.com.
Date: Thu - Oct, 11th 2007
Time: 12:34:59 PM
Who: Customer Support
We attempted to contact you at the phone number provided, but you must not have been available. The 888 number is available, whenever you do a search for them, any results that show will not show for anyone else for a certain amount of time, they basically hold it for a certain amount of time. We could order that number if you still want us to.
Date: Thu - Oct, 11th 2007
Time: 01:28:06 PM
Who: AccureIT Consulting
Your customer support staff his HORRIBLE. They don't want to give their names or route you to the dept. of your choice without harassing you about "what's it about". I told Tim this morning that I wanted to talk to billing. I asked him if he was in billing but WOULDN'T answer. He kept asking me what it was about. He's now claiming I didn't give him a chance to answer. If I didn't give him a chance to answer, why did he have a chance to continue to ask me what the call was about?
I had to ask Tim for his name several times. Frankly, it sounded like Ari with whom I've spoken with on the phone several times. Credit my card back. This is ridiculous.
If you want a number of your choice.....
Thu, 10/11/2007 - 5:09pm
It took 7 days of back and forth calls to "get" the number of my choice. I'm dumping them anyhow. The whole experience was a nightmare. Their site is not very informative and I've had a lot of excuses about how new they are. Post your hours of operation on your website. That's not a new concept. Post instructions on how to go about provisioning a "vanity" number so that it can be done quickly. Configure your IVR to let people know when they're calling after hours rather than telling them their in que. Tell people when they call and want an 800 number that there are none available and haven't been in quite some time. Stop wasting peoples time. Return calls when you claim your going to......etc etc etc. And most important, credit peoples credit cards back in a timely fashion when they decide to quit your service. Or at least tell them when they can expect to get their money back.
Voipstreet posts hours of operation on homepage!
Fri, 10/12/2007 - 12:59pm
I guess Voipstreet is reading these posts! Woke up this morning to login to my account and see if they had proceeded to credit back my account. I found myself locked out. Big surprise. Even more surprising was that they've actually posted hours of operation on the website. Good going! I checked my email to see if they had emailed me on the status of my credit card being credited. Nothing. Par for the course for these guys. I had to actually call and see what the status was. Couldn't even send me an email to tell me they were processing my money back to my bank? How professional.
I've had them for a year now
Wed, 10/17/2007 - 4:21pm
I've had them for a year now and have many customers using them, Only a few down times like when they changed over there network and a dtmf problem that lasted less than 20 min. there support has always been fast, just a day ago I switched a customer that does about 5000 min a day with them over to g729 and I made a mistake on my end that they cought and helped me fix. So far there the best I've seen.
Was good service...seems
Thu, 04/03/2008 - 11:29am
Too bad if they are going downhill
Wed, 05/07/2008 - 7:46am
Member Since:
2006-05-31