Ditched voipgain, seems they basically charge what they like for phone calls and totally ignore the stated priced.
When you email they say they have charged in accordance with stated prices.
Pile of crap basically.
Switched to voipfone, had a blip with setup, called customer service, they had it sorted quickly. Pay £2 a month for an incoming number. This weeks calls have cost me less than £1.
I feel that I must defend voipgain here. I have been using sipgate for incoming calls and voipgain for outgoing calls fully since January 2011.
I have moved to a Siemens Gigaset handset (in fact 2 of them) which plug into my broadband router with virgin (only 10mb) internet.
To the other half it is exactly the same as a "normal" phone to use except we actually get the CLI being displayed whereas Virgin would have charged you.
Yes you have to put €10 of credit into your account for 90 days but I have just checked my January calls outgoing via voipgain and for the month I made 111 outgoing calls which between them lasted a total of 10 hours 5 minutes and I got charged €1.42 (so about £1.18 in real money) but that £1.18 was deducted from the €10 I had put on to get the "free days". Once my 90 days of "free days" runs out you let the existing credit on your account run down and then put another €10 on it.
In 13 months I have only put €40 credit in (so about £33.50) and I still have €11 in credit.
I have saved the £3 a month by not paying Virgin for the line rental (since I have BB with them they would have charged me only £3 per month line rental) which would be £36 plus all the call costs. Admittedly most of my costs are to landlines in the UK and the USA (landlines and mobiles) but a 2 minute call to a UK mobile costs me €0.17 (£0.14).
The only time that there are issues with the call quality are when I am hammering the link from Virgin downloading MS updates!
No need to defend them. It seems they are excellent for some and not so for others.
They get a lot of good press here so they must be doing something right. I just didn't like the way they charged me basically whatever they liked for calls, and when asked just said it was the stated rate, when it clearly wasn't.
I'm sure there are plenty who dislike sipgate, voipfone etc, and others who rate them highly.
I wanted to use voipgain for the free UK landline calls but decided the customer service and incoming number where more important for me personally.
I don't think there's a right or wrong answer, whatever works best for the individual requirements.
I've recently opened an account with this firm (Dellmont) under another label, voipcheap.com.
Seemed to start off OK, made calls for a few weeks during free days after crediting 10EUR, no charges.
However, today I was charged for a call due to FUP exceeded even though I have not exceeded 300mins in the last 7 days (with 74 free days remaining), even according to their own log.
I have a personal static IP, and all calls are made direct from my router which registers directly with their SIP server, not through a proxy. This means that only my calls could possibly be attributed to my IP, nobody else could be using their service with my IP.
Despite this, they claim FUP has been exceeded after 254 minutes usage (from their logs, rounding calls up to the next minute), NOT 300 minutes as their terms specify. This is the only account I have with Dellmont.
Although their service is still cheap, they are not providing the service they advertise - be aware.
I have loads of TopUp credit on my PAYG mobile. Does anyone know of any VoIP providers that can be topped up using the PAYG credit (besides Betamax as they are giving a really poor rate at the minute - £5 gives you 3.30 euros or less).
Thanks
PS:Voipgain and Betamax were OK for me and did not overcharge/FUP me.
Can I ask what your experiences of VoIP are? How are the calls? Are there delays on the line etc? Has anyone ditched the landline and only use VoIP for incoming and outgoing calls?
Am thinking about getting wireless Internet (wireless Internet provider) and ditching phone line as won't be needed for broadband. I'm not sure who they use as it has a couple of links to different sites, one being smartvoip another being voipcheap. Headline seems to be £5 for a local number and free 01 02 03 numbers as well as some other countries.
Any thoughts?
Voip has always been a bit hit & miss with me so need to have a backup like 18185 or their 0800 access equivalent, or a good inclusive minutes mobile deal as an alternative. Most of the time voip is ok though.
The funny thing is, calling a far away country via voip can have choppy quality while a direct Skype-to-Skype call made a minute later to the same person can be HiFi with no discernible lag or even be a smooth video call. I wonder if the POTS providers (Plain Old Telephone Service) are none too keen to keep squeaky clean gateways working for voip.
Also I find that voip calls to mobiles are especially challenged.
Anyone else got experience of VoIP call qualities, is it reliable?
I won't have the option of using a back up carrier as my plan involves having landline disconected and using the money saved from this to reduce overall cost of the wireless package
Do have a mobile with inclusive minutes but reception is not brilliant in this area
Replies
Ditched voipgain, seems they basically charge what they like for phone calls and totally ignore the stated priced.
When you email they say they have charged in accordance with stated prices.
Pile of crap basically.
Switched to voipfone, had a blip with setup, called customer service, they had it sorted quickly. Pay £2 a month for an incoming number. This weeks calls have cost me less than £1.
It's early days but very happy so far.
I have moved to a Siemens Gigaset handset (in fact 2 of them) which plug into my broadband router with virgin (only 10mb) internet.
To the other half it is exactly the same as a "normal" phone to use except we actually get the CLI being displayed whereas Virgin would have charged you.
Yes you have to put €10 of credit into your account for 90 days but I have just checked my January calls outgoing via voipgain and for the month I made 111 outgoing calls which between them lasted a total of 10 hours 5 minutes and I got charged €1.42 (so about £1.18 in real money) but that £1.18 was deducted from the €10 I had put on to get the "free days". Once my 90 days of "free days" runs out you let the existing credit on your account run down and then put another €10 on it.
In 13 months I have only put €40 credit in (so about £33.50) and I still have €11 in credit.
I have saved the £3 a month by not paying Virgin for the line rental (since I have BB with them they would have charged me only £3 per month line rental) which would be £36 plus all the call costs. Admittedly most of my costs are to landlines in the UK and the USA (landlines and mobiles) but a 2 minute call to a UK mobile costs me €0.17 (£0.14).
The only time that there are issues with the call quality are when I am hammering the link from Virgin downloading MS updates!
They get a lot of good press here so they must be doing something right. I just didn't like the way they charged me basically whatever they liked for calls, and when asked just said it was the stated rate, when it clearly wasn't.
I'm sure there are plenty who dislike sipgate, voipfone etc, and others who rate them highly.
I wanted to use voipgain for the free UK landline calls but decided the customer service and incoming number where more important for me personally.
I don't think there's a right or wrong answer, whatever works best for the individual requirements.
Seemed to start off OK, made calls for a few weeks during free days after crediting 10EUR, no charges.
However, today I was charged for a call due to FUP exceeded even though I have not exceeded 300mins in the last 7 days (with 74 free days remaining), even according to their own log.
I have a personal static IP, and all calls are made direct from my router which registers directly with their SIP server, not through a proxy. This means that only my calls could possibly be attributed to my IP, nobody else could be using their service with my IP.
Despite this, they claim FUP has been exceeded after 254 minutes usage (from their logs, rounding calls up to the next minute), NOT 300 minutes as their terms specify. This is the only account I have with Dellmont.
Although their service is still cheap, they are not providing the service they advertise - be aware.
Thanks
PS:Voipgain and Betamax were OK for me and did not overcharge/FUP me.
I had a look on their website and am none the wiser.
Cheers, Des.
Can I ask what your experiences of VoIP are? How are the calls? Are there delays on the line etc? Has anyone ditched the landline and only use VoIP for incoming and outgoing calls?
Am thinking about getting wireless Internet (wireless Internet provider) and ditching phone line as won't be needed for broadband. I'm not sure who they use as it has a couple of links to different sites, one being smartvoip another being voipcheap. Headline seems to be £5 for a local number and free 01 02 03 numbers as well as some other countries.
Any thoughts?
The funny thing is, calling a far away country via voip can have choppy quality while a direct Skype-to-Skype call made a minute later to the same person can be HiFi with no discernible lag or even be a smooth video call. I wonder if the POTS providers (Plain Old Telephone Service) are none too keen to keep squeaky clean gateways working for voip.
Also I find that voip calls to mobiles are especially challenged.
I won't have the option of using a back up carrier as my plan involves having landline disconected and using the money saved from this to reduce overall cost of the wireless package
Do have a mobile with inclusive minutes but reception is not brilliant in this area