HyperDog Digital vs Windstream

HyperDog Digital was my second internet phone company. I had had my first Internet phone company for more than four and half years before I switched to HyperDog. The experience I had with HyperDog was very disappointing. I got their router/adapter one week after I signed up on their website. I was with them for about one month before I finally decided to leave. I had had problems big and small since day one. Problems included 1. Their phone line could not detect my input after the line was connected. This meant I could not reach anyone after I called a company if their phone system requires an input from my keypad. I could not reach my previous phone company to stop their service after the phone line was ported. I could not check my voice mail. I could not do anything that required an input from my phone keypad. 2. My connection was cut off after only around 47 seconds every time for a period of time when I called my friends who were with a different internet phone company. In another case, my other friends who are with my old internet phone company could not reach me. 3. Their router/adapter could only be used as an adapter. My computers had problem accessing the internet when their router/adapter was used as a router. 4. Their caller ID only shows numbers but no names. Unless I memorized the numbers, or people left messages, otherwise I could not know who called me. 5. The message light would not blink when people did leave messages. This meant I needed to call their message center every time just to know if anyone had left messages. These were only some of the persistent technical problems I had with them. Some problems they did solve but came back. Their best tech person admitted to me that for some of the problems, they did not have the technology to solve them. I spent many hours everyday for the first almost two weeks with them to solve problems. I did not have any of the problems while I was with my previous internet phone company. I was able to use their router/adapter as a router with the same modem, router and computers. Technical problems were not the only problems I had with them. The waiting time to talk to their tech support and billing department was very very long. Ten, fifteen minutes wait was the norm. There were several times I had to wait for more than thirty minutes before I could talk to someone or had to hang up. I am normally a very patient person but even I reached my limit. This company is a very small Canadian company with a very small staff. The company’s name in Canada is Digital Voice(http://www.digitalvoice.ca/). I know at least one person who works at both the tech support and billing departments because I reached the same person when calling for different departments. Because this company is in a foreign country, my credit card company charged me a 3% foreign transaction fee for the amount they charged me. Their phone service also has very limited features. I missed the ‘block anonymous calls’ and ‘Do not Disturb’ features from my previous company. With the features that they do have, the caller ID does not show names and message light does not blink. In my opinion this company is not ready for the prime time. As a phone company, they can not provide the basic free of problems service to their customers. They don’t have enough staff to properly serve their customers. Their service features are very limited compared with other internet phone companies. I would not recommend them to anyone. p.s. The tech support manager promised to refund my shipping costs earlier because all the problems I was having. But when I actually decided to leave the company and asked for the refund, he ignored all my calls and emails. After a month of repeated contact with the company (I had to contact their sales to reach their administration), they finally agreed to refund my shipping but they refunded only the shipping from the company to my home but did not refund the shipping from my home back to them.