localphone.com as terrible as they say?

mnbvcxz

I was thinking of trying alternative services and voip as 18185 is getting more expensive and not all providers support it now.

However I found localphone.com who seemed quite cheap and reasonably regarded, more so than the betamax clones. But now when I look at reviews now they are suddenly really terrible.

I don't know if the company has just imploded or if I am missing something. Are people using them in the Uk much and how is your experiences?

Otherwise I can see all the betamax clones who people say are flaky, a bunch like sipgate who are said to be ok but are just not all that cheap and someone called aloha connect from wales who talk a good show but I can't find any mention of them in practice so don't know if they are really a teenager in his bedroom or a serious option.

thanks

LeifGR

mnbvcxz wrote: »

I was thinking of trying alternative services and voip as 18185 is getting more expensive and not all providers support it now.

However I found localphone.com who seemed quite cheap and reasonably regarded, more so than the betamax clones. But now when I look at reviews now they are suddenly really terrible.

Can you show us some links to these terrible reviews?

Are people using them in the Uk much and how is your experiences?

I have been using them for a couple of years, both for dialling via their "local" numbers you get assigned and by using IP telephony. Both work very well for me and I have had no problems.

Are you thinking of using them for IP telephony or through the allocated special numbers?

If you are looking for IP telephony providers, I use DIDLogic and Localphone, depending on who offers the better price for each country.

mnbvcxz

Thanks for that

https://www.trustpilot.co.uk/review/www.localphone.com
http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews260147.html

A year or so ago when I first looked into it there were just some sparse mentions of them on forums like this saying how good they were.

Now the above links are terrible? And they are not very active on facebook or their blog so I wondered if the company was running uncared for on auto?

But it sounds like you find them ok in practice so I may give it ago with the special numbers and see if the call quality is ok. If all goes well I might try and get an obihai voip box and route my calls through. Though as I said I'm a little wary that most voip providers seem to have dubious quality reviews or be rather pricey but we will see.

I will lok at didlogic, thanks. I had never heard of them.

mnbvcxz

I don't know exactly how but betamax, delmont and finarea are three confusingly interrelated companies that run the same voip service under a vast array of brand names and prices. They are dirt cheap with byzantine free credit offers but have a reputation of little customer service if anything goes wrong and random quality.

If you look for a voip service you come across them lots because they are split under so many names.

Some of their brands are,

12voip, actionvoip, browsercalls, budgetvoip, budgetvoipcall, call2india, calleasy, callingcredit, callpirates, cheapbuzzer, cheapvoip, cheapvoipcall, cosmovoip, dialcheap, dialnow, discountcalling, easycallback, easyvoip, freecall, freevoipdeal, frynga, globalfreecall, hotvoip, internetcalls, intervoip, jumblo, justvoip, lowratevoip, megavoip, mexicobarato, mobyler, nairacalls, netappel, nonoh, panggilanmalaysia, pennyconnect, pinoydialer, poivy, powervoip, rebvoice, rynga, scydo, sipdiscount, smartvoip, smsdiscount, smslisto, stuntcalls, supervoip, telbo, voipblast, voipblazer, voipbuster, voipbusterpro, voipcaptain, voipcheap com, voipcheap uk, voipchief, voipdiscount, voipgain, voipjumper, voipmove, voipraider, voipsmash, voipstunt, voipwise, voipyo, voipzoom and webcalldirect.

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mnbvcxz wrote: »

I don't know if the company has just imploded or if I am missing something. Are people using them in the Uk much and how is your experiences?

All my friends and family use localphone and we've found it to be fantastic. I even use localphone to reduce my business call costs for UK mobiles and international numbers. The reliability is fine and call quality is better than a BT land line in my experience.

That said, localphone is a consumer grade service and you do get the very occasional connection failure (more often than you would expect from a BT fixed line or a business grade VoIP service like sipcentric or Voipfone) but redialling usually overcomes that. However in my experience this doesn't happen often enough to be a source of frustration.

In contrast, I found the betamax providers like voipcheap to be truly awful in terms of voice quality and the customer service is shocking. At least you can call localphone if you have an issue. I've only had to do that once and my problem was resolved instantly.

I think review sites tend to attract a disproportionate amount of negative feedback because people who want to vent frustration are sometimes more motivated to use them.

As others have said, there are loads of VoIP providers to choose from and you can try most of them for very little money indeed with no commitment. I doubt you would be unhappy with localphone though.

LeifGR

Finarea also run 18185, 1899 and some other prefix numbers as well as several 0844 numbers for overseas calls. Curiously, I have never had quality issues with 18185 or 1899 but I have had plenty with the 0844 and voip offerings.