How unhappy are you with the joiphone VoIP Service?
Filed under: Cell Phone Information, Cell Phones | By: Peter Chubb
Posted on: October 11, 2008 | 31 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 their service for about 4 months and its been great except for 1 day that the entire day went down including their website. The quality of the call is same as vonage (I switched for vonage) with a cheaper price. The web interface in very basic and limited compared to vonage. Great basic service with a low monthly price.
I remain neutral in my opinion of this VOIP. They have on ocassion helped expediently with my connection concerns. Where they fail to live up to customer service is when you try to cancel service. Suddenly they become despondent and send you on a wild goose chase. Just long enough to place you into a second year contract. I deliberately contacted 45 days before end of contract term. Asking for a RMA # so I can get the router back before initiating another year contract. I am now down to day 30 in which to get a number to return this. Its not that I dislike their service, I hope to use it again but only if they step up to the plate and realize some folks have to cancel if they DONT have a cable provider in their new residential area. I lived up to my end and agreed to the TOS now its up to them to live up to their side and allow a customer the right to terminate based on the agreement terms. Overall the service itself is piggybacked off the cable modem so 80% of the time it was the cable provider that was having the connection issues. Only one time did I have to use the E911 service and for anyone having to be unfortunate in using it, expect your stress level to sky rocket when they take what seems forever to patch you thru and then disconnect you midway.
Logic,
I had the same problem with VOIP.com being very slow to discontinue service. I notified them in advance of my intentions to cancel and that I wanted my number transferred. At the very end of the one year contract I switched to their cheapest month-to-month billing so I they couldn’t automatically renew for a year. After that it took over two billing cycles to get my number transferred. Granted, I was paying $9.95 per month just to keep my number from being devoured by the unassigned number pool, but we had had the number for over 15 years and didn’t want to lose it. I was routing the number to the Joiphone temporary number so I didn’t lose phone service to my old number. You could try to stop future payments by disputing the charge on your credit card, but it would be a hassle.
Thankfully, I haven’t had to use E911; please elaborate on the issues you had and whether you think they were Joiphone specific or might be an issue with all the voip providers.
Nels, Thanks for sharing your experience. The CC I used is customer friendly when disputing. I have the original service ticket # and the second request for termination. All I need do is present that and the CC will reverse the charges.
As iterated the E911 service was a one time ordeal so I cannot make an overgeneralized statement that ALL VOIP providers that carry the E911 service are inherently going to have the problem I entailed. It was what it was, a disconnect followed by re-calling to get the paramedic help required for a family member. Four minutes can be the difference for a heart patient to wait for am ambulance due to a glitch. The terms pretty much state that the VOIP is NOT accountable for this service that I pay extra for.
Joiphone is and will remain a neither positive (jump for joy) or a negative( There service is off more then on) type of provider in my eyes. They simply have alot of TERMS that are favorable to them and not friendly to the consumer. Unlimited should be UNLIMITED .
Glad you got to keep your number though
joi oh my …. It was a bad day i sighn this british cheater telecom. my bad i did not check on internet custmer satisfection report. I last almost 250.00.US .in return they gave me a pain only . i sighn in july 2008 and i have only one way just only incoming and that is not all last three months it was dead no tune at all.can any body help me out how ican give them some hard time.
Without question, Jonas is right. The folks at Joiphone spend more time trying to stifle the bad press on the internet than actually taking care of the many problems their customers have with their service. If you go to yellowpages.com and type in Joiphone all you get are sponsored links…look up any other business you can “rate it”. If you could rate joiphone, that would be system overload. YES JoiPhone is no Joy and they are that bad.
Yeah, I did a little research on the company. Turns out the owners are nothing more than scam artists. Do a google search on Joe Egosi and see what comes up. Draw your own conclusions, but I’m going with criminal who hasn’t been caught yet. Stupid company screwed over a couple of my friends. Also, Dean, you’re right, anyone with half a brain and a left nut can see that people from that company are writing all the “positive” reviews. I mean, who writes a review and includes the email address it came from?? That doesn’t make sense. I’ll stick with my cell phone, works a whole lot better and I don’t have any problems. Other than that, you get what you pay for and you should never NEVER EVER pay in advance for a telephone or any other kind of commodity service. Name one other utility that you pay for a year in advance. They take your money and ignore you, they have you by the balls. The best thing to do is dispute with your credit card company since they have to pay a fee to dispute the transaction. These people need to go out of business, they’re hurting more than they’re helping.
I am having problems with Joiphone, had decent (not great) service for two years (first year was $8.95/mo., 2nd yr. $14.95/mo.), signed up for another two years (for $8.95/mo.) and now I regret it big time. I believe I’ve been lied to and I’m glad for this forum, so I can figure out how to CANCEL them completely after two years, because it seems I have no other choice but to suffer through it!
But here’s the kicker - the Linksys adapter is “locked” by the factory to transfer only a certain amount of data. Why? Let me explain and maybe someone can figure out the rest.
The Linksys phone adapter that comes with your Joiphone service became a bottleneck for my two PCs and router. My internet was excruciatingly SLOW and the only configuration (check the Joiphone site) is modem-to-Linksys-to-router. The adapter cannot come after the router, which is what Tech Support told me initially. So basically all data travels through the phone adapter to the modem. When my internet was down for two days, I spent 1-2 hours on the phone with the cable rep to make sure the modem wasn’t the culprit. The modem was working fine. So it was either the Linksys adapter or my Netgear router. I re-connected the computer to router only and there was no problem. I connected it to the adapter only and it was ok, but not as fast.
So I called Joiphone Tech Support, told the guy my findings. He told me to do some tweaks, where he changed my IP address, went into my modem, router and adapter and made other changes. Basically I think he re-routed my modem to their Joiphone servers, but I can’t be sure, because I don’t know anything about this stuff. And he wouldn’t tell me anything except that he was tweaking it to make the adapter work after the router, even though it was not set to work that way. So I just followed directions. After several hours, callbacks, we got the Linksys connected after the router, so the router was routing the data/traffic to both phone and PCs. We tested it again - with just PC & adapter to make sure phone was OK with new config, then back to router with adapter after it and both PC & phone were working. Everything seemed to be fine.
Except my calls started dropping, there were echos and all sorts of problems. I called Tech Support again. This time I was told such problems were “normal,” that they cannot be avoided if I put the adapter after the router. The only type of connection supported by Joiphone’s Linksys adapter is modem to phone and PC. NO ROUTER.
I was told of a new upgrade adapter, but it would cost me $50. This new router does not have the locked factory setting but 4 ethernet connections, so I can bypass the router entirely (except if you have a wireless router) and more data can be transferred through it. I asked WHY a customer who has been using this service for two years and signed on another two years can’t be automatically upgraded to this new adapter-? After all, Packet8 my old VOIP company would just send me their latest phone/adapter whenever I renewed my contract. The Tech Support guy told me to write an email to upgrade@joiphone.com. So I did.
I got called back the next day or two and many calls after that, telling me to go to the speed test page and do a speed test of the modem and Linksys adapter. Having spent so many hours already and going through some personal issues at the time, it became really tiresome to mess with the wiring and equipment all over again. I have two preschoolers at home with me 24/7, for whom I have to cook and pick up after - who has time to stay on the phone and crawl around the floor messing with the equipment? It was really a drag. Plus I was sick for a week.
Finally I decided to do it, and guess what? I could not test the Linksys phone adapter speed at all - PC nor phone worked when hooked up directly to it and it to the modem. But I was able to get the router speed, so I emailed it to support explaining I couldn’t get the other speed test.
I got another call next day and was told I needed to do some more tweaks to get this other speed test and that it would take “2 minutes” (yeah right). I put if off for a week, b/c it was truly becoming a major drag. When I got on the phone with the initial guy who got me to configure everything so the adapter came after the router, I cussed my way through the job as I tried to figure out which cord goes to what and then my modem died mysteriously. At that point, my husband got on the phone and told them to send someone here to do it or get someone to refund our money. It was ridiculous.
Well long story short (or not-so-short), we got the modem working again (didn’t want to call cable co., b/c they might charge for coming out to look at it), did the speed tests again and amazingly, the Linksys phone adapter speed was NORMAL, very close to the router speed. What happened? Then I remembered that the Tech Support guy had told me to enter in some mysterious code via the phone after the automated message said, “Linksys phone adapter…” We definitely changed something in the Linksys adapter via phone, but WHAT?!?? Can the company actually unlock the factory setting so that this little piece of crap would actually WORK?!?!?!?!?? So basically, I was put through sheer HELL and agony so they could prove to me that their Linksys adapter is working fine and not have to send me a new one free of charge?!????
Sorry this is so long… If someone has a clue as to what all these reconfigs and tweaks were all about, please enlighten me.
I wonder if JoiPhone is affiliated with VoipGO… they sound just about as bad… voipgo has even had a message on their phones for a couple months now that just outright says they are not taking calls!!