Is PhonePower too good to be 1?Nope - PhonePower is undeniably the best! It is extremely rare to find a superior product with a superior price and customer service. And to think I found this combination in a voip provider is nothing short of amazing. My experience… I had SunRocket for 2 ½ years – while only experiencing shaky service in the last 6 months of their existence. To be fair I will give you somewhat of a foundation from which I make a comparison. SunRocket (6 months prior to going out of business) Service Quality - 4. Reliability - 4. Customer Service - 2. Ease of Use - 3. Price – 4. I searched for a replacement. I needed to keep my existing number, which proved to be difficult task. Following SunRocket’s demise, I decided to try two companies at the same time in the early spring of 2007 – VoipYourLife and Voip.com. VoipYourLife Service Quality - 4. Reliability - 5. Customer Service - 4. Ease of Use - 3. Price – 4. I would have stayed with VoipYourLife, but they were unable to port my existing number (from SunRocket). Their customer service was pretty good – worlds better than SunRocket and Voip.com. Voip.com Service Quality - 2. Reliability - 2. Customer Service - 1. Ease of Use - 3. Price – 3. Unfortunately, there isn’t much I can say positive about my experience with Voip.com, other than their online “Feature” set is easy to use and understand. They were able to port my number, so I stayed with them for eight miserable months. I live in the Midwest and my overall service was never stable. Almost daily, I had dropped calls, calls that could not be made, and instances when only one of two parties could hear the other. I stayed because I was able to keep my number and the thought of having to pay the $30.00 cancellation fee gave me a bad taste in my mouth. If I could hold out for a year, the cancellation fee would be dropped. The straw that broke the camel’s back came when one of my co-workers called and were unable to keep a connection. Furthermore, I was unable to contact them at our company 800 number. I was forced to revert to my cell phone at times like this. Every once in a while I would attempt to contact Voip.com’s support center for assistance. They were never able to resolve the troubles I was having. Half of the time they would give the notorious, please power off and on your voip modem and expect remarkable improvement – there was never to be improvement with this company. I believe this company merely deals in numbers - give a customer what appears to be a shiny rock and we should be able to keep a small percentage without being thrown back in the ocean. Be ready to experience longer than normal hold times (in excess of 30 minutes) if you go this route, but I would rather be employed as a sand-shovel scooping clean-up artist in a parade following elephants. PhonePower Service Quality - 5. Reliability - 5. Customer Service - 5. Ease of Use - 5. Price – 5. Where do I start? This company has done something companies of all sorts could only strive for. They were able to port my existing number (from Voip.com) in two weeks. It only takes minutes to speak with a live, intelligent individual if you have a question. Oftentimes companies will align efforts with securing the sale, while neglecting those customers who have already purchased the product/service. The opposite should be 1, but you rarely experience it. Want to? Call PhonePower and prepare to be amazed. Here is what happened when I signed up. I needed some assistance with my Netgear Router, in order to make PhonePower’s device work properly. I would bet that 95% of the competitors would have replied with, “Well, you will need contact your router manufacturer for assistance with this issue. It sounds to me like a firewall problem. Please contact us back after this issue has been resolved.” Sometimes routers need to be configured differently. Expect a few more phone calls and a couple hours of time to find resolution. It was PhonePower’s turn. I was at work, so I shot off an email to their support email address. Less than three hours later, I got a call from a support technician. I felt like I had won the lottery. Why did I get this type of service? Did I have a relative working at the company who recognized my name? The only problem was that I was still at work and unable to effectively trouble-shoot with the tech. After I explained this to him, he suggested that he contact me after work. I told him I would be off in an hour, “Would you be able to call back?” He said, “Sure. I will call you back in an hour.” I’m thinking yeah, right. Maybe I’ll get a call back in a day or two (if I don’t end up calling them back) and then I’ll have to explain the whole situation to a new technician. I got out of work about twenty minutes late that day and my phone rang on my drive home. It was the SAME TECHNICIAN, asking if he had called at an opportune time. I apologized and laughed, not believing the service PhonePower was displaying. I was not at home, so he agreed to contact me in another fifteen minutes, which he did! We quickly worked through the situation and had a resolution in less than 10 minutes! Be aware, you too could get the best service possible, along with the best call clarity and dependability in the market. My only concern is that if everyone starts to learn about the ‘Best Kept Secret’ in voip history, demand will outweigh supply. Voip customers need most of you out there to continue with lackluster companies, so a few of us who do research (http://www.dslreports.com/gbu) can relax in a 5-star atmosphere of the PhonePower experience.
