7 Ways to get screwed by your VoIP Phone Company
VoIP Phone Companies getting more popular and getting their fair share of customers.
They offer outstanding rates and/or package deals with low monthly fees. Most customers save a lot of money but..
Top 10 ways VoIP Phone Company screws their Customers:
- Marketing "Unlimited Calling Plan" while in-fact this plan has limits on number of minutes used per month and/or call pattern they deem "Commercial use" and charge you twice as much in addition to initial cost of the plan. i.e.
- Vonage offers a "Unlimited Residential calling plan" - in fact you can use only 5,000 minutes a month. If customer exceeds 5,000 minutes a month Vonage WILL terminate your account and charge you a $39.99 disconnection fee. After that they will forget to stop charging your credit card month after month until card is cancelled or replaced.
- ITP VoIP offers "Residential Unlimited calling plan" for $24.99/mo - in fact if you call one of your friend after another - they will consider your account as "Commercial" and will start charging you by the minute (2.5 cents a minute) with immediate $50.00 un-refundable charge. - Terms of Service (TOC) is written to hide service "gotchas" many VoIP companies offer.
- look for anything in "Usage" or similar paragraphs that will describe limitations and if in-doubt - call the representative and ask for explanation in-writing. - Equipment lease - your VoIP box (or router) lease could be a source of "income" for the VoIP company. They may offer a VoIP box lease for a monthly fee and if service is cancelled - charge your credit card for it while in-fact its been paid during initial order.
- Many VoIP companies offer 2 months of free service and/or 30 days free trial. Some of them will offer 200 and other 500 initial minutes after wich free trial no longer can be applied to your account.
Some of them will apply 2 free month to the first and 12-th month of service and conveniently forget to credit the 12-th month. - Even though it may not be stated in a TOC some VoIP Phone companies assume a year (or even two years) contract.
- Vonage is famous to imply a two year contract if customer account have been cancelled by the customer or them while contract have never been signed/presented or otherwise described anywhere in TOC. - If your account have been cancelled - most VoIP companies will block you from accessing your account page to check for minutes used or any other information requested by your credit card company to dispute any extra account charges. Since there is no paper bill (most of the time) - you will have no proof to dispute the charges.
- Many VoIP companies outsourcing technical support personal using "third country" employees who, more often than not, don't speak English and can not read the manual to properly troubleshoot the networking issue with the VoIP box.
- google VoIP service prior to signing-up for it.
