Underdeveloped service
Written: Apr 12 '00 (Updated May 03 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Allows you make use of your computer's microphone
Cons: Underdeveloped service
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| gluzd's Full Review: Net2Phone |
Bad service, bad website, bad competition...
It would be a surprise for me that net2phone manages to get new customers through their site - they must be doing it through conventional sources. Whenever you try to go to their web site and sign up or make any other maneuvers, it times out more often than actually gives you any info. Let me see your rates - server time out. Let me see my account status - server time out. When you try to reach them via conventional phone, humorously enough you get a very similar message. When you write them via e-mail, they ignore your message for a week or two and than ask to repeat the information, such as your account number (which they get automatically).
If you want to buy a pre-paid "calling card," you have to register separately (fill out the stupid forms and such over again), can't use funds from your main account. Maybe it's logical from the standpoint of their sales (pretty scary if true).
I tried talking to people in Kiev, Ukraine (pc2phone). Connection quality is not as good as the regular int. phone, but often acceptable. It varies all the time though. You can speak fine for five minutes and than get entire words dropped for another minute. I can not say for sure whether it's on my side (DSL at home / full T1 at work) or on theirs, but often it does go bad to the point when speech becomes unrecognizable. And there were a few cases where their servers were completely unavailable while the connection on my side had proved perfect.
Customer support is not familiar with sound cards based on such popular chip as Yamaha's OPL3-SA. By default it installs with full-duplex capability off under Win NT and doesn't work right with net2phone unless you change the device settings (Dual DMA must be checked in the device settings). They didn't have a clue.
The illogical thing I find about net2phone and several others IP telephony providers is that their PC-2-phone rates are the same as phone-2-phone. And they are often not cheaper than what you can get from your conventional long distance provider, though they are capable to charge you by the second and don't have per-connection fees.
My general impression is that after they got $150 million from Yahoo, they all went on a big vacation - forget about the customers.
I think it's still worth experimenting though if you have a spare $25 and need to call abroad (their $.10/min domestic charge is simply irrelevant). Maybe it's just me who's unlucky and it'll work fine for you.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
gluzd
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Member: Mykola Gluzdov
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 0 members
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