Voip

vinylmusic

alphason wrote: »

I've recently started using voipdiscount.com they offer free calls to Japan landlines (and others) provided if you have freedays on your account.

If you credit 10euro to your account you will get 120 freedays where you call the free destinations to a limit of 300 minutes per week. After the 120 days either top up again or you can use the 10euro credit to make calls until you have used it up.

Works ok for me so far. Although there support is very poor and I am having difficulty sorting out a Uk number for incoming calls. See my other post in the home phones board.

I paid £35 for a Sim from Story telecom
anyone can call me from anywhere while I'm travelling Europe and I wont have to pay roaming charges. It has a UK number so anyone calling me pays normal UK mobile rates.

For outgoing calls I have downloaded the ap from freecall.com to my mobile phone so all I need to do to call is find a wifi hotspot and theres plenty of those around.

I'm a bit annoyed with freecall though as they have already charged me for calls which should have beed free and they have ignored my complaints to customer services (see my earlier post on this thread).
It's not much but I have no way of knowing if this will happen for every call I make while away and it will all add up.
Basically I am not getting what I signed up for.

I doubt if Trading Standards will help because they are based in Luxembourg

It's still the cheapest way for me to call so I'll probably use up my credit and try a different provider

kwikbreaks

vinylmusic wrote: »

I think that they are all one and the same company based in Luxembourg

Yes they are as was already mentioned. Each site offers a different pricing model though and http://backsla.sh/betamax gives an easy way to compare them. I used to use VOIPcheap and still have some credit with them left over.

The only reason I took a VM line was because doing so was necessary at the time for a free install, cheap months, and a good cashback deal. As soon as my minimum contract with VM was up for the phone I binned it in favour of Vonage which has the advantage over the Betamax products of being able to port your normal UK number. The VOIP number I had with VOIPcheap made my outgoing calls look like they were coming from a dodgy cold caller (I stuck with my VM line for incoming).

vinylmusic

Freecall are really giving me the runaround here
I dont think that they bother to read messages proerly

I wrote:
Error description:You are charging me for calls that should be free.
Only 2 calls so far. How can I have exceeded FUP????
I sent this to you yesterday and the day before
WHY ARE YOU IGNORING ME
2011-07-19 11:01:43 +441244665709 (FUP exceeded) 00:03:50 € 0.080
2011-07-18 10:28:24 +441248421852 (FUP exceeded) 00:02:27 € 0.060

Freecall's reply:


Dear customer,
You have exceeded the FUP. We offer calls to various destinations. If you use of our services in a normal way you will generally not be confronted with our Fair Use Policy; we reserve the right however to limit these calls if excessive or fraudulent use is suspected. Should you exceed our Fair Use Policy limit you will be charged normal rates for your calls. Please consult our terms of use for details.

Kind Regards,
Customer Service.
Obviously a template response
They really dont care nor want to spend any time to understand their customers

Saeed

vinylmusic wrote: »

Freecall are really giving me the runaround here
I dont think that they bother to read messages proerly

I wrote:
Error description:You are charging me for calls that should be free.
Only 2 calls so far. How can I have exceeded FUP????
I sent this to you yesterday and the day before
WHY ARE YOU IGNORING ME
2011-07-19 11:01:43 +441244665709 (FUP exceeded) 00:03:50 € 0.080
2011-07-18 10:28:24 +441248421852 (FUP exceeded) 00:02:27 € 0.060

Freecall's reply:


Dear customer,
You have exceeded the FUP. We offer calls to various destinations. If you use of our services in a normal way you will generally not be confronted with our Fair Use Policy; we reserve the right however to limit these calls if excessive or fraudulent use is suspected. Should you exceed our Fair Use Policy limit you will be charged normal rates for your calls. Please consult our terms of use for details.

Kind Regards,
Customer Service.
Obviously a template response
They really dont care nor want to spend any time to understand their customers

They are not giving you the run around. They log calls by IP address and if an IP address goes over 300 mins, the account gets charged. When you are using the mobile phone app, you are probably using the same IP as several hundred other people use that week via the same betamax provider and therefore all your calls will exceed FUP. You may get lucky now and again, but most of the time via this way you will get charged. Try the app on your PC, it should be free especially if you have a static IP.

vinylmusic

Saeed wrote: »

They are not giving you the run around. They log calls by IP address and if an IP address goes over 300 mins, the account gets charged. When you are using the mobile phone app, you are probably using the same IP as several hundred other people use that week via the same betamax provider and therefore all your calls will exceed FUP. You may get lucky now and again, but most of the time via this way you will get charged. Try the app on your PC, it should be free especially if you have a static IP.

I beg to differ there because in both cases I wasn't going via my SIM I was using wifi from my home internet connection.

If I were using WAP to connect with my phone then what you say would be right. But I wasn't


I replied to freecall.com but as usual they are ignoring me
They seem to think that showing me their TOC is all they need to do. They clearly dont want to spend time over customer complaints

Saeed

which phone application are you using?

vinylmusic

Saeed wrote: »

which phone application are you using?

I have a Nokia 5800 Music xpress running Symbian
I downloaded the Freecall ap for Symbian from their website.
I took my SIM out of the phone to make sure the calls wouldnt mistakenly go through my phone provider three

Saeed

strange... have you been using more than 300 mins on any of the betamax providers? i've used their services too and currently have 5-6 accounts on different betamax providers. never had a problem with the free calls.

vinylmusic

Saeed wrote: »

strange... have you been using more than 300 mins on any of the betamax providers? i've used their services too and currently have 5-6 accounts on different betamax providers. never had a problem with the free calls.

No I only have the one account.
I'm now in France.
I made a call to UK from the wifi in my hotel last night and it registered as being free
I then tried 2 times to call a number in Ireland but that was unsuccessful
This morning I found a strange UK 07 number in my call history which I certainly did not dial and that one camew to 0.10 euro.

I wont bother to complain because I'll probably just be referred to their TOC's again
I'll just wait until my credit has been used up and move to a different VOIP provider so it will be their loss in the long run.

I'm done with companies that have useless customer serevices who just dont listen