Phone.com

They tell me that they are in a years-long process migrating from an open source to a commercial VOIP server. This may be way they have glitches they can't or won't fix. CS asking me to document problems, or else tells me to use poor practice configuring their system, until I give up. Examples are a defect that would not ring all numbers a forward to a virtual extension that mixed real and virtual extensions. They insisted that I instead duplicate the same numbers in several places in the system, which is obviously poor practice. I guess it was fixed, though they didn't bother to notify me. For almost a year, I've been reporting that calls cut off if the ring time expires after answering, if the call announcement tag is playing ("call to customer service"). They can't seem to understand this, and two days after providing detailed instructions to reproduce the error, including call logs, they are asking for the same thing again. Very frustrating. Also, I echo the experience of billing errors.

I've been a phone.com customer since January of 2012. In that time they have gone down several times. When the service goes down, it can be offline from a few minutes to a few hours. To make things worse, their customer support team disappears when there's a problem. I believe they use their own phone system for customer support, which would explain why it doesn't ring, or rings busy when there's an outage. I'm extremely disappointed in Phone.com, and am actively shopping other vendors.

I ordered phone.com based on the reviews. Everything went well until there was a problem that needed to be resolved. The ATA that phone.com sent had a problem and it was not able to make my analog phone ring properly. After nearly 2 weeks of dealing with customer support, I gave them a choice. Either send me a new ATA or I will terminate service. The customer support person insisted that more troubleshooting needed to be done before they could replace the ATA. I again told them that I would only accept a new ATA as a solution. Even after the ultimatum the customer service person stuck to the original position that they would not replace the ATA.

I fired them! I now have Vonage and am quite happy.

Avoid these people. They have little to no customer support to assist in the event of a problem.

I used Phone.com for 2 years.  The service suited my needs; however, customer service was difficult to reach.  When I finally decided to cancel service, there was no way to do so from the control panel.  That being the case, I called Phone.com customer servce.  After waiting some time to speak to someone, I was told my account was cancelled.  Come to find out, it was not.  I was suppose to confirm via email which defeats the purpose of calling.  I was charged for another month.  I tried calling customer again but hung up after waiting 20 minutes.  After sending an email to support, I promptly received a response indicating that my account is cancelled; however, I will only be credited a portion of the monthly charge.  In my opinion, this is a disappointing business practice which overcharges customers.  

With the number of different VoIP providers today besides phone.com, I would recommend you look elsewhere.  

Absolutely terrible for a business.  Outages are common, and God forbid it happens on a weekend you can't get anyone to help.  There recently was an outage, and their tech people said they fixed it, but it wasn't fixed.  Customer service people didn't believe me that there was still a problem.  When I tried to escalate the issue becuase my business couldn't operate until the issue was fixed, I got passed to 3 different cust srvce agents who would not escalate the issue.  2 days and $10,000 in lost revenue later I am still waiting for help!  DO NOT USE THEM IF YOUR BUSINESS DEPENDS ON YOUR PHONE/FAX SERVICE!

The only reason I might leave Phone.com is this issue of counting incoming calls against my plan (many others count only outbound calls). I don't use my land-line for much. Virtually no outgoing calls, and only a few incoming calls (so I use the metered minute plan to save $$$). However, unless I keep on top of my call logs and actively block all the telemarketing idiots that incessantly call my number, I sometimes risk going over my minutes allotment (more than 50% of my minutes, and sometimes as high as 90%, go to incoming unsolicited sales calls every month. I guess that's what I get for having the same phone number for twenty years). Given the fact that many other VOIP carriers do not count incoming calls against their plan minutes, does make me consider changing VOIP providers...

But, then something comes up and I need their help....and the experience always reminds me of just how great their customer service is. In my experience, its hard to find -- almost impossible in fact -- a company whose "customer service" isn't merely a euphemism for emotional rape. I haven't had an inordinate number of issues with my VOIP service with Phone.com, but the two or three issues that came up every year are always fixed promptly by their staff, and my experiences are not merely adequate, but are so good I have to rave about them a bit (when I call them on the phone only; its not so great when you contact them through email). Rarely do I experience much of a hold queue. I have never had to endure any forwarding of my issue through some silly hierarchy within their customer service department. The person I spoke to always had the power to solve both my technical and my billing issues right over the phone, and I have never encountered anyone with inadequate speaking and/or communication skills for this kind of support. In short, their staff is not simply adequate, but inordinately well-trained and professional -- what everyone expects but rarely experiences.

If I simply went with their unlimited minutes plans (at twice the monthly rate), my complaint here would be moot and I would definitely give phone.com the highest of recommendations. But for those of us who are frugal and/or on a budget, my issue here might be worth their consideration.

Phone.com has always been reliable and so easy to use. The price is very fair for all that you get, and it gives our business phone system a lot of options. Their tech support is very helpful. Whenever I have had a problem, they have always been able to fix it for me quickly.

You Rock Phone.com

Lou
Paradisegetaways

We have experienced almost constant technical and billing glitches with Phone.com. We found out (fortunately through a non life-threatening situation) that 911 did not work on our Phone.com phone. That took about a week to fix -- too long. After we fixed being able to dial through to 911, it took another week to make sure that 911 showed the correct address for our phone. We get constant comments from people trying to call our home phone that they could not get through. They get weird voicemail recordings, beeps and other strange technical manifestations. Phone.com would straighten these things out, but the inconvenience of constant onslaught of problems was beyond frustrating. Phone.com also continually billed us over $68/month for a package that was supposed to cost about $23/month. I would contact them and complain, they would apologize and say they fixed it, but the overcharge would show on my next month's credit card bill. The big savings isn't worth the frustration.

Phone.com has been a reliable service from the start!!
I recommend this service for all users!! This service is clear with no interuptions, very pleased with connection.

I was so sick of paying AT&T $40+ a month for getting mostly 800# calls and being charged a lot of money for local long distance, that I went into the voip service feet first.

I have to say that I didn't think things out too well and canceled my AT&T account and created my phone.com account online on the same day. It took a few days to get my phone # ported, but I wasn't worried about that. It also took another couple of days to get the Linksys phone adapter delivered.

The set up was fairly easy. Unfortunately, the Linksys phone adapter, which phone.com provided for free was DOA. I called phone.com and was surprised to hear an American rep talking to me, since most customer support is overseas. The guy was more than happy to assist and when we both figured out that the adapter was the problem. He promptly sent me a new one, via overnight delivery.

All in all, it took a couple of weeks to get my voip service set up. Part of that was my fault though, because I was really in no rush to set it up and get service up and running. After the new adapter came. It was a breeze to set up and the call quality has been pretty good.

The only thing that new customers really need to understand is that the adapter needs to be hooked up to your router/gateway, directly via phone cable. So, instead of my phone being where it was with AT&T. It is now closer to the router/gateway & phone adapter, via telephone line. Only because I really didn't want take the time to run and hide a 50tf line to the original location. I also wish that the Linksys phone adapter had wifi capabilities, so I could have left my phone where it originally was.

Other than that small gripe. I am happy to be paying 1/4 of what my AT&T bill was. It's also nice to have the ability to check phone messages online and have the ability to get text messages on new voicemails.