[asterisk-biz] VoicePulse engaged in very dubious business practices

[David Pollak]

Folks,

I've been using various VoIP services for over 2 years.  I've used just 
about every one.

I had been using VoicePulse Connect which worked fine with IAX.  I 
switched over to using SIP for various reasons.  VoicePulse's support 
for SIP was very, very weak.  On a daily basis, I had to call 
VoicePulse's technical support to get them to reboot the SIP server so 
that my Asterisk instance would stay registered with VP's servers.

Ultimately, I gave up on using VoicePulse.  I turned off auto-renew.  I 
deleted all the DIDs (or so I thought) that I had with VoicePulse.

Yesterday, I got my credit card statement and VoicePulse charged me 
$41.03.  I called and asked why they charged me.  "Your account dropped 
below the minimum amount, so we charged your card."  "But I disabled 
auto-renew."  "It doesn't matter, our terms of service allow us to 
charge your card."  (this is a new feature of the new terms of service 
and not the terms of service that I agreed to when I originally signed 
up with VoicePulse.)  This went on for about 30 minutes.  At a certain 
point, I started asking for a supervisor.  After spending (I kid you 
not) 5 minutes screaming "Are you f**king deaf, connect me with your 
supervisor," the rep finally connected me with a supervisor.

Turns out that I hadn't canceled one of the DIDs on one of my VoicePulse 
accounts.  Even though I hadn't accessed VoicePulse in more than 6 
months (for termination or origination) and despite that I had turned 
off auto-renew, VoicePulse charged my account.  Here's the rub.  The 
credit card associated with the account that had the DID is an old card 
and the number is no longer valid, so VoicePulse looked at my other 
accounts until they found a card that was valid and charged that card.

After a 15 minute discussion with the supervisor, I made the point clear 
that either VoicePulse could refund my money or I'd dispute the charge 
(disputes cost merchants a lot of money.)  Finally, the supervisor 
refunded $41.

I would strongly recommend against giving VoicePulse your credit card 
number.  They charge credit cards without authorization.

Thanks,

David