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Also i got the unlimited plan and it was added extra costs to my bill which made it a lot more expensive and it was not clear when I signed up. Lately I cancelled the plan and they charged my credit card a cancellation fee of U$32.00. Overall I give them a bad rating. I will try another comapany. Followup comments:
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But now for the bad. My credit card was stolen shortly before a billing cycle, so while I was waiting for my new credit card to arrive so I could update my account, the automated billing cycle failed. Despite correcting the issue *the next day* and receiving email that my account had been restored, I received notification that to continue service, I would have to fax or email (!) copies of my credit card and driver's license and/or passport, front and back, or risk having my account suspended. I responded that my credit card had already successfully been charged, and sent a response including the confirmation number from my credit card issuer. I also logged in to my Broadvoice account and verified that my service was current and successfully billed until 4/28. In the same email, I indicated that I was not going to be sending scanned copies of my credit card and passport when Broadvoice was already successfully able to charge the card (for 2 separate accounts!). No response from Broadvoice until 4/6, when I received notification that my account was suspended and could no longer make outgoing calls or configure forwarding. Inbound calls still work. On 4/22 I receive an email that my account has been canceled and the phone is dead. Note that I'm paid through 4/28. I call the support number and am told that my account was canceled due to non-payment, and the Billing is the only department that can help (only open 9-4, Eastern). The irony is, the other account uses the exact same credit card (but has a billing cycle that runs one day later, so I was able to update it before it failed). So my money is good in case, but not in the other. In any event, requiring scans/faxes of credit cards and passports seems completely out of the question. I will amend my review if Broadvoice is able to make it right (at least restore my account until I can port my number), otherwise I intend to file a complaint with the FCC Common Carrier Bureau, file a chargeback through my credit card issuer (since I paid for 4 weeks of service, but only received 1 full week of normal outbound and 3 weeks of outbound before they terminated my account). *** UPDATE *** After 3 (more) calls and a couple emails, Broadvoice and I were able to come to terms on the credit card authorization form. So my advice to not bother with emailing support, but instead use their support line. They seem to be much more responsive to phone calls than to emails. *** UPDATE 2 *** Well, they went back on their word after I provided some of the information they requested, and so I had to make 4 more calls. Finally I was told that I was "lucky" and that they would let me be their customer. They re-enabled my account (but all of the passwords had changed), and within a couple of hours my service was restored. *** UPDATE 3 *** When the billing cycle rolled around again, I discovered I was slapped with a $9.95 fee for "account reactivation." This is pretty frustrating, given that my account was always in good standing (meaning it was paid through to 4/29), and that I never canceled it. So I suppose Broadvoice has the right to disable your account after the first week of the month and then charge you for re-enabling it. I'm looking for another provider now, and am happy to pay a fee for a LNP port to get away from them. Followup comments:
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Broadvoice is a waste of money and takes phone service back to two soup cans and a string. Followup comments:
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I decided to switch services because I saw how much they charged on top of the world plan. 5 dollar fake int'l regulatory fee, plus their other 2.50 fake regulatory fee. That is false advertising IMHO, since regulatory fee would mean imposed by the government, not by THEM! Also, their caller ID service did not show names for neighbors who called.. don't know why. My father is elderly, so he would not answer the phone if he can't see the name! When dialing some numbers I would wait on dead air for 15 seconds before a ring. Faxing did not work at times, I would notice the faxmodem would not keep a connection. It works fine with current provider now, same modem too! Also, I don't understand why they do not have a US/CANADA plan. It is either just USA, or world plan which has the ridiculous $5 charge tacked onto it. Their customer service is lacking. I saw in the terms of service that you can cancel within 30 days, and if you go over 250 mins you get charged for those, no big deal. But the main website said you can cancel only if you have less than 250?? So I asked billing, and they kept saying, you cannot cancel for refund if you are over 250 mins. What kind of customer service doesn't follow their own terms of service? Not to mention it would take a full day or two to get a response. Anyway, I put in a request to be ported to voipo, and they took their sweet time with the porting, so I was out of the 30 day trial period by 4 days! I requested that they not charge me the asinine $39.99 cancellation fee due to having to wait for LNP, but again customer service was unreasonable. My father lives on a fixed income (SS) and I am a student.. so that is a big charge for me. Not to mention, now that I did cancel, they did not give me a pro rated refund for the rest of January's monthly fee ($30)?!?! I called and the CS person said that normally they don't refund part of a month, that one should cancel at the end of the month. I mentioned that this is ridiculous in the case of porting, which cannot be planned to the day, and sometimes runs late. I am waiting for a response. Now I am with VOIPO and even though there were minor hiccups, probably due to broadvoice's transfer slowness, they are great. They understand not putting hidden fees, and even offer a cloned line. They respond quickly, even at late evening hours (I thought they were 9-5 only?). Anyhow, Broadvoice seems like they are becoming like Vonage. It seems like any company that gets too big starts taking advantage of the customers. Educate yourself before you make a mistake that I did. I wish I knew of the reviews on this site before signing up for BV VOIP. Followup comments:
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However, once you can get the service going, it works well. They have several proxy servers to choose from, although many just resolve and trace into Chicago. Call quality was good, and call completion was fast. After all my trouble, my account was suspended one day because I didn't print off some paper form and fax it back to them. Just too much for me to handle, so I got a refund. I would seriously consider another provider first before trying these guys. Followup comments:
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I made the mistake and picked Broadvoice. My service has now been out for a week and their only response is to quote their terms of service and refuses to even allow me to port my number to another provider. Very sad situation. I filed a formal complain with the FCC today about this. Save the hassle and pick a provider that offers reliable service and will work with you as a customer. Followup comments:
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"Try BroadVoice service risk-free. If you are dissatisfied, for any reason, you may cancel the service within 30 days of activation and receive a refund. We’ll refund your money hassle-free, with no questions asked. The cancellation procedure is simple – just send us an e-mail and you’ll receive an RMA # (Return Merchandise Authorization Number)." But be careful activation starts the day you request the service! You don't get 30 days to try the service if you’re waiting to receive the device from them to connect. BroadVoice requires the recipients signature to deliver the package, something they don't tell you when you signup. In my case I wasn't home to sign for the delivery which ended up being sent back to BroadVoice. Calling their customer service to change the shipping address resulted in endlessly being on hold, repeatedly getting dropped after being on hold for over an hour, etc. By the time I did get someone on the phone I was ready to cancel rather than give them a new shipping address. But Customer Service can't handle cancellation requests, I learn, these need to be sent to "billing" by email. So I email billing, a month later no response from billing on my cancellation request but I'm charged for another month’s service. When I call Customer Service back they ask me to resend the cancellation request. The next day I get a cancellation confirmation and another charge on my credit card for $39.95. When I call customer service back I'm informed that I've gone over the 30 day trial period (strange I haven't gotten to try anything yet!) Bottom line: they've charged my credit card for $121.75 ($68.35 startup fees, $13.45 for month 2, and a $39.95 cancellation fee), I've receive no service and I'm told this is their policy. My opinion: It is unethical for a company to charge you for a service and start the clock on their 30 day guarantee before you receive the device from them to access the service. Give these folks your credit card number at your own risk! Followup comments:
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I will also concur with the other reviews on the often lengthy hold times waiting for a CSR. To go into detail on my connection, sometimes people say I’m cutting out, or there is a voice delay. Sometimes when I take my cordless phone off the hook to make a call or scroll through the caller ID list, the display goes blank. I have tried this on all extension handsets and get the same thing. The only way to get the phone to reset is to take the battery out and put it back in, which is a hassle. I never had these problems when I had Lingo. Also, I can no longer access my answering machine remotely since the touch tones sound distorted when they reach the machine. I will give them one thing - They did respond to my second email regarding the porting of my number but not my first, which was the cause of rewriting them. This email was my third although I have made numerous phone calls. So, my sentence saying they ignored emails was a little overstated. UPDATE 11/05/06: After waiting on hold for 25 minutes, a CSR tells me that they do not support faxing and that they can't help me with my problem. I was able to fax one other time before, and Lingo supported faxing. Also, my callers tell me I cut in and out sometimes, but I have no problem hearing them. Also, my caller and I can't talk at the same time on some calls due to some sort of voice activation feature that occasionally appears. The signal from Broadvoice does something weird to my phone half the time when I turn on one of my handsets. I wind up having to take the battery out to reset the line, which is a major inconvenience. The display on my phone will lock up when I scroll through my CID list. This only started after I switched from Lingo to Broadvoice. I still can't call into my answering machine to get my messages due to distorted touch tones. I can't call Broadvoice CS from my Broadvoice line since their system doesn't recognize the touch tones, and their automated menu hangs up on me. Long hold times, and after I reach someone, they almost act as if they don't want to or can't help me. My problems never get resolved. I would switch back to Lingo if it wasn't such a hassle to transfer numbers back and I hadn't made an investment in equipment. Please heed my warning: Don't walk, RUN!!!!!!! You get what you pay for. I wish I had stayed with Lingo. UPDATE 11/29/06: Just got an email from Lingo giving me a $50 bonus and $4/month off the service price. Guess who's going back to Lingo? BYE, BYE, BROADVOICE!!!!!!!!!! UPDATE LATER THAT SAME DAY: Broadvoice wants to charge me a $39.95 cancellation fee even though I brought my own device. Looks like I won't be moving now. I also forgot to note that there are several phone numbers that I can't call, and I wind up having to use my cell phone to call them. Two numbers that come to mind are 800-987-5521 (one of my credit card companies) and 859-431-0300 (the cable company at my Grandmother's house). I get recordings saying that the calls can't be completed. Additionally, I noticed that the calls cutting in and out, the problem where my caller and I can't talk at the same time, and the voice delay tend to occur on calls where the other person is on a cell phone. Email to Broadvoice: After receiving less than confident sounding confirmations from Broadvoice customer service that this number is in the process of being ported from Lingo to Broadvoice and not getting responses to my emails from you, I decided to call Lingo today to see if they are processing this request. Lingo says they have never received anything from Broadvoice. The idea behind coming to Broadvoice was to save money. However, it has wound up being a money sink and a headache. In addition to the items mentioned above, one of you CSRs recommended that I buy an after market phone adapter and that the activation fee would be eliminated, and that turned out to be false. Then, I find out that I also needed a router with that adapter since one wasn't built into it. Then, he neglected to tell me that there were two versions of the phone adapter, and I got the one locked for Vonage, had to send it back, had to eat the shipping cost back and forth, and had to pay more for the correct one. I also continue to have connection issues despite several calls to your customer service center......all of this in addition to paying for two phone services. Your CSRs say they have no assess to the part of the system responsbile for porting, and they won't give me a phone number to directly connect to you. I'm ready to throw my arms up in the air, dispute the credit card charges from Broadvoice, and go back to Lingo. Are you willing to do anything for me at this point, or are you just going to ignore this email too? Broadvoice's response: We have responded to all emails and questions you have asked of us. When you continue to ask the same questions and receive the same answers this does not mean we are being unresponsive. We honestly do not have better answers for you. So, in turn, you have prompted me to write you the best answer I can possibly give you. I will say that our common porting time is roughly 30-50 days. Your port has been pending for 3 weeks. Broadvoice is a service provider (just like Lingo), not a local carrier, aka: CLECs. Unfortunately, we have no control over the porting process after we've received the request. We forward this information to our carrier partner who then in turn must complete the necessary steps on their side. Then they must contact your current carrier, whomever Lingo uses in your region, who then will have to contact Lingo. Lingo will authorize or deny the request, and then both carrier partners will need to work together to complete and disconnect the configurations that allow that particular number to ring to your phone. Lingo will never receive the request to port directly from Broadvoice. It will come from our carrier partner. The notification will not be sent directly to Lingo, but Lingo's carrier partner. Each carrier partner has thousands of transfers going in and out of their service and they have set up a system to organize this process. Although porting seems simple, it takes the work of many, many people along the way working for at a minimum three to four different companies to make it happen. For your own personal benefit I highly recommend you read this post in a popular Broadband forum: »Porting Rules Since we are only a service provider we are not governed by the FCC about carrier Porting issues. We cannot promise a certain time-frame to complete the transfer, but can only offer an estimate of the length of time that the typical transfer takes. We have outliers on each side, some that take far more time, or far less. We gladly offer to transfer our customer's previous phone numbers as a bonus for being a Broadvoice customer. We do this free of charge, even though the transfer costs our company money. Of course, we hope that is not the main reason for being a customer. We pride ourselves on our quality VoIP service and outstanding affordability. If you feel one of the above reasons is not compelling you to stay with us, than you will need to do what is best for you. Ultimately we would like to maintain this relationship, but the decision is yours. If you feel that this email has not been as educational as you had hoped, I can only steer you in the direction of the internet. Do some searches, look things up. Find out the difference between Voip porting and ILEC porting. There is nothing more that I can tell you to help you feel more at ease. Followup comments:
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BroadVoice
(12)
Hartford,Hartford,CT
$34 per month (12 month contract)
"adapter arrived quickly."
"call quality, hidden charges."
"be warned: you may be asked to fax them a copy of your driver's license and credit card"
Broadvoice Service Authorization Agreement
about 5 days
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