[Asterisk-biz] flaky service an support

[Nathan C. Smith]

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Goodyear [mailto:me at jrob.net] 
Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2005 9:05 PM
To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion; John A. Lestoni
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-biz] simpletelecom.com??? are they a SCAM?


I would very much like to continue this discussion of peoples' 
experiences. I've spent a LOT of time and effort stepping into the VoIP 
world and am pretty shocked at the flakyness of the service providers.

/rg


Don't you feel the old adage of caveat emptor and "you get what you pay for"
apply here too?  VOIP providers use, in  most cases, a third party network
(The Internet) that they have no control over.  Do you have an SLA on your
Internet Connection that provides for VOIP-quality connections (low latency,
reliable bandwidth)?  If you are paying pennies or fractions of pennies for
a call you may not really be in a position to complain.  Give the VOIP
provider control of the network and you reinvent Ma Bell.

I've registered with several providers and I keep an eye on their IAX
registrations and one is consistently below 30ms for me while others are in
excess of 80ms and even 200ms, telling me two things: 1) I am close to their
network, and 2)they understand the value of low latency for a VOIP provider.

We also need to consider a few other items: 
1) historically telecom has not had "good customer service".  This is a
subjective statement because "good service" means different things to a
consumer compared to a small business or an ISP, but I will wager most
people will agree by nearly any definition.  Why should we expect things to
improve because VOIP is now in the picture?  On the other hand, it would be
an excellent opportunity for a new well-funded provider to make a positive
splash.
2)Most VOIP providers are small, they are geeks trying to make money with a
bleeding edge technology.  I don't know about you but to me geeks and
customer service have almost always been mutually exclusive.  
3)Giving good customer service to a very technical product is difficult.
People of different technical backgrounds will attempt to use the service
and they must each be addressed at their own level of expertise to get them
started.  This is like the early days of the ISP when it took your neighbor
kid to connect you to the Internet because it was so much more involved,
technical and unrefined.

I think if there is a point I'm trying to make it is this:  We are all in
this together, using an unrefined technology to make or save money, and we
should be glad there are as many providers as there are rushing in to try to
fill a need.  Let's support and recommend the ones that excel at meeting our
needs, whether technical excellence, customer service excellence, or good
pricing and availability, and offer constructive criticisms for those that
do not.

-Nate