How unhappy are you with the joiphone VoIP Service?
Filed under: Cell Phone Information, Cell Phones | By: Peter Chubb
Posted on: October 11, 2008 | 30 Comments
It seems that a number of people have been complaining about the service or lack of it, that they are getting with the joiphone VoIP Service. The company seems to have a problem but do not want to let their customers know, as they have been constantly lying.
Phone Review tried to help customers by doing a little digging, but they just came up blank. They did say that their website has gone, this does sound bad, but it is something that I expected.
Customers of the joiphone VoIP Service have said that they have not been able to receive call for about 40 days now. They were told by customer’s services that their tech people will be fixing the problem. This was a lie, because they did not fix the problem.
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I have had joiphone for over a year. I must say that I was not as satisfied as other reviewers.
1- The service was not reliable and I live in a big metropolitan area of over 5 million people. The voice would break frequently especially when calling a cell phone.
2- customer service emails are impersonal and very short on words and rarely carry a name or a person’s email address to contact back. You have to keep emailing customer service in general.
3- When I called live customer service they would tell me to contact a certain email address for more help !!!
4- I had the prepaid one year contract. after my first year of unhappy service was over, I emailed customer service to cancel, then they told me that my second year contract had automatically renewed itself after the end of the first year and that I could not cancel it. Or I would lose all the money paid upfront.
Alex, I would be happy to provide you with a detailed list of the terrible service I have received from JoiPhone. I have never in all of my life dealt with a company that is as full of deciept, lies, and ineptitude. Your service may work great, like mine did for about 5 weeks, but your time will come…
My service was out for 6 weeks. I could not receive a call from anyone and I could not forward my calls to another number. After 5 weeks, I was told that they didn’t know if the issue would ever be resolved.
Hearing that, I decided to sign up with another provider and transfer my number to them. JoiPhone keeps denying my transfer request and says that I made a request to transfer my number to a different carrier before I made the request to transfer my number to the provider I’m with now. That is an outright lie.
A co-worker of mine has experienced the exact same run around and pack of lies. I have filed a complaint with my CC, the BBB, and the FCC. AVOID JOIPHONE AT ALL COSTS, FOR YOUR OWN SANITY!!!
I only hope I can get them to abide by the law they are bound to and transfer my number, per my request so that I never have to deal with them again. They are unbelievable!
Oh yeah, I forgot to include their response to a co-worker of mine.
This is a direct, word-for-word quote from the JoiPhone Sales department, “In reference to correcting your issue we have procured a shipment of incense which we have been burning for the last 24 hours with the hope that we will get good Chi and a sense of balance in our minds and souls.”
That’s the kind of “people” you’re dealing with.
If you are even considering JoiPhone don’t. Its that easy. I could write a book on the nightmares I’ve experienced. Like some of the others it started okay and a complete disaster from there. Good luck in trying to get your numbers transfered to another company it you have alreday signed up.
This is my second post to this board so far and I’m still happy with the service since June 08. The 12 hour outage back in October and the initial problems calling China were cause for concern, but service has been so good since then I’ve added a second line for my daughter. I emailed the go-ahead for the second line (different area code) on 11/25 and it was up and running on 11/28; not bad for “non-existant” customer service! I’ve read a lot of nasty customer issues with Joiphone on the various websites and am keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll continue to have good service with them..
As an ex-Sunrocket customer, I know it’s very frustrating when your phone service goes down. My initial transfer from Sunrocket was to VOIP.com and the only reason I switched from them was their lack of fax support. Hopefully, all will continue to go well with my Joiphone service, but I’ll be sure to post on this board if it does go downhill. As a satisfied customer of both services, I can recommend either Joiphone or VOIP.com. And no, I’m not affiliated in any way with either service, except as a satisfied customer.
To Nels,
Yeah right. I’ll bet your real name is either David Norman or Joe Egosi. BTW, Joe Egosi is the CEO and David Norman is some weird guy who goes by the alias Mike, he’ll probably change his alias after he reads this though. Joe is nothing more than a glorified scam artist protected by money, a team of lawyers, and an agreement that you have to agree with before they send out the router that says you will not sue and will not hold accountable JoiPhone. So basically, if you sign up for the service, you can forget about suing them for anything. You’re better off doing a charge back on your credit card. Do a google search on Joe Egosi. You’ll see that Joi internet was sued by Bell South for, you guessed it, false advertising. Joi Phone appears to be the continuation of the lies and deceit of Joi Internet. These greedy people are just trying to make money any way they can, and since they couldn’t do it honestly they have resorted to lies and other forms of deceit and false advertising. I saw their billboard in Atlanta. They say it’s $8.95 month, but when I call in, it’s only if you prepay for a year. So, basically, they have you locked in if you prepay for the year and they won’t refund your money either. Your best bet is to just STAY AWAY!!!!!
I hate to bust your bubble, Jonas, but I’m none of the people you accuse me of being. Just a customer who has had decent service from both Joiphone and VOIP.com so far. If it makes you feel better, I also was upset when I saw what it really cost for the first year at “$8.95″ per month and questioned their honesty in an email to their customer service. Their exact reply was as follows:
—————————————————————————–
Subject: [Incident report #138908] How does a $8.95 per month rate turn into a
start up cost of $170+?
From: Angie via RT
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:56:31 -0400
Hello,
Thank you for your email.
Here is the information you requested.
JoiPhone Unlimited Yearly plan.
$107.40 JoiPhone Unlimited Annual Plan ($8.95 X 12)
$30.00 One time set up fee
$14.95 Shipping and Handling fee
$11.40 911 Emergency fee ($0.95 X 12)
$6.62 Universal Service Fund Tax (Federal tax of 6.16%)
Total: $170.37
Joiphone Billing
———————————————
It looked pretty straightforward; they didn’t seem like they were trying to deceive me or be underhanded to get me to become a customer. Once they let me know what the pricing situation was, I could decide for myself whether I wanted to buy. Interestingly, almost every reasonable priced VOIP service I’ve checked into advertised the same way. Both Sunrocket ($199/year)and VOIP.com ($199/year) were yearly signups for non-international service and they advertised their services as a monthly rate also, so what’s the problem? I could be with Vonage and/or OptimumVoice for $29.00 per month with exorbitant international long distance costs, but I took the risk of going with Joiphone and have been satisfied with their service so far.
Maybe I’ve been one of the lucky few to get great service out of Joiphone, but, if the service deteriorates, I assure you that I will post my experiences here. Don’t forget, I’m locked into two phones worth of service for a full year and I will be VERY unhappy if their service doesn’t meet my expectations. I say again, if the service stays good, there’s no better buy on the market for my particular circumstances. Since my wife’s father has been failing, we make very frequent calls to China at a cost of less than 3 cents per minute! None of the alternatives I’ve investigated comes in better price-wise for the same service I’m getting from Joiphone and I hope it stays that way.
Even though I am happy with my particular service right now, I have not recommended Joiphone to any of my friends for fear that they might be disappointed in the service and experience some of the hassles i’ve read about on this and other forums. I am satisfied being a Joiphone customer so far so please don’t accuse me of being a shill for them as that is definitely not the case.
Nels
Then why are you defending them so strongly? I mean, I enjoy a lot of products but I don’t go around defending Verizon or my utility company because I enjoy using my cell phone or using my electricity. Just seems odd that you feel like you have to defend the company even though you, allegedly, don’t work or have any other association with them, other than your phone “service”
Just a thought.
Jonas, why do you enjoy bashing them? You haven’t related any first-hand experience with the company except for google searches and to protest their $8.95 per month advertising. Maybe you’re a competitor or disgruntled ex-employee bashing the company for whatever reason… I don’t know any more about you than you do about me, so why the constant accusations?
I haven’t “defended” Joiphone except to relate my experience with them (and VOIP.com, by the way). As a former Sunrocket customer, I was extremely upset that Joiphone had disappeared from the face of the Internet universe for a very long 12 hours back in October. As a matter of fact, I was searching for news about them when I stumbled across this site. Frankly, I was curious that there was a forum dedicated to the “unhappiness of Jophone customers” and worried that I had made a spectacularly bad choice switching from VOIP.com to Joiphone back in June. It turned out that I hadn’t, at least as of this writing.
You seem to be awfully quick with accusations about my “defending” Joiphone, but I am just relating my experience with the company as others have done on this forum. I have already said that I will relate both the good AND bad experiences I have with Joiphone but, luckily; so far they have all been of the good kind. I have just as much right to relate my good experiences with Joiphone on this forum as you to relate your bad ones, if you actually have had any.
For what it’s worth, if I stumble across any site that constantly knocks a product that I have had a good experience with, I wouldn’t hesitate to post (with evidence) my experiences. Similarly, if I have a bad enough experience with a product or service, you can be sure I will post that to the appropriate site also.
In short stay as far away from these incompetent losers as you can.
I signed up for a year of service in August and paid in full for a residential line ($8.95 a month at the time) the total was $140.37. This sounds like a good deal right….WRONG.
On Wednesday December 10th they erroneously discounted the number. Now, when you call in or try to call out the recording says: this is an invalid account. Let me remind you this is only the fourth month of a 12 month deal.
I have called joiphone twice a day, every day and sent countless emails to sales@joiphone.com, billing@joiphone.com and cancel@joiphone.com. As of Saturday December 13th, still no service.
Do yourself a favor: In short stay as far away from these incompetent losers as you can!