[Asterisk-Users] RE: Asterisk at home with Broadvoice?

Sun May 8 05:37:55 MST 2005

On Sun, 2005-05-08 at 08:26 -0400, John Stegenga wrote:
> RE Message: 5
> Date: Sat, 7 May 2005 23:18:46 -0400
> From: Andrew Kohlsmith akohlsmith-asterisk at benshaw.com
> Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] At home Asterisk via Broadvoice?
> To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
> 
> On May 7, 2005 11:04 pm, John Stegenga wrote:
> > Broadvoice will give me 2 lines, with 2 phone numbers each - distinctive
> > ring - for a reasonable fee...
> 
> Please do a google search for "broadvoice problems site:lists.digium.com"
> and
> reconsider your choice of VOIP provider.
> That reasonable fee doesn't actually include the thing working more than 50%
> of the time.
> -A.

currently broadvoice is still not 100% functional, I got an email the
other day from techsupport (when their own tech support number was down
along with every subscriber) that said it was a hardware failure,
despite their webpage now blaming a 'carrier partner' (of which as far
as I can tell they only have 1, global crossing, whom I do not believe
to be at fault given that global crossing has been doing billions of
minutes per month for a couple years voip and in fact deprecated all
their class 5 switches in 2003 or 2004.  If it were global crossing
there would be much more affected than just broadvoice and as a result
much more media coverage.  Plus a 'carrier partner' failure wouldnt
explain the fact that their webserver could not let anyone login during
the leading edge of this latest now going on 5 days outage.

Also, be wary of 'unlimited' plans.  I got a call from broadvoice and
was told that a 2 hour call does not appear to be 'normal residential
use' and instead they tried to claim I was using their service for
business purposes (which allows them to invoke section 1.3.1 of their
TOS, charge me $100 administrative fee to switch me to a business plan,
charge me a higher monthly retroactive, and charge me per minute if my
calls are not in the unlimited residential plan, plus potentially cancel
my account for a $50 cancelation fee).  They appeared to be satisfied
that I am a residential customer at least for now, but the mere fact
that I had to explain a 2 hour phone call to them (and only 1 call per
day for some time) is insane.

I wonder how many people have already canceled their broadvoice service
over this outage, and if broadvoice can remain solvent if this attrition
rate continues.  I am about to cancel my service and demand that due to
their deceptive advertising (they advertise *service* they cannot or
will not provide) they waive the cancelation fee.  Should that not work
I will just have to ask my bank to change my credit card number before
they can bill me, and then cancel.  Had they provided the services
listed on  their webpage it would not have come to that, but alas this
is not the case.

-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com
UK +44 870 340 4605   Germany +49 801 777 555 3402
US +1 360 207 0479 or +1 516 687 5200
FreeWorldDialup: 635378
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20050508/45c59ebe/attachment.pgp