home office usage

[jwhitted]

Hi, I'm looking at various VOIP providers to try and find a plan that meets my home office needs. I will use the service to attend numerous conference calls throughout the day, probably racking up 5000+ minutes per month (average 4-5 hours a day on calls, 5 days a week). The vast majority of these calls will be to 800 #'s if that makes any difference. Do you have any plans that can reasonably accommodate such a usage pattern? Thanks.

[MarkTomlinson]

Hi, I'm looking at various VOIP providers to try and find a plan that meets my home office needs. I will use the service to attend numerous conference calls throughout the day, probably racking up 5000+ minutes per month (average 4-5 hours a day on calls, 5 days a week). The vast majority of these calls will be to 800 #'s if that makes any difference. Do you have any plans that can reasonably accommodate such a usage pattern? Thanks.

This is a user forum, but the CEO and others from VOIPo do stop in occasionally, so you might get an answer from them -- or not.

That said, what you describe is exactly how I use VOIPo. They charge per minute for international calls (first hour is free per month), but all mine are domestic so I'm never charged anything above the flat rate.

[wingsohot]

Hi, I'm looking at various VOIP providers to try and find a plan that meets my home office needs. I will use the service to attend numerous conference calls throughout the day, probably racking up 5000+ minutes per month (average 4-5 hours a day on calls, 5 days a week). The vast majority of these calls will be to 800 #'s if that makes any difference. Do you have any plans that can reasonably accommodate such a usage pattern? Thanks.

I don't see that as being a problem because your calls are to toll free numbers. Yes, minutes will be used, however, Voipo will not be charged for the minutes used. Your calling party will be charged.

[holmes4]

I also do this, though not quite that much usage. There is no limit on domestic calls, though if you have non-800 numbers available, using them will save the company you're calling some money.

[RayCapodanno]

This message is a response directed specifically to the online user named MarkTomlinson.

I don't know if you've carefully read the VOIPo Terms of Service Agreement (hereinafter, "TSA"), a document that is available online (http://www.voipo.com/tos.php) and by which you are legally bound once you "sign up" for the plan. There's a Section called, "Services Average Use Only", which, in pertinent part, specifically reads as follows: "If an account exceeds 5,000 minutes in a calendar month, VOIPo may bill for the excess minutes above 5,000 at 1.9 cents per minute."

What this means, effectively, is that the VOIPo Residential Plan is NOT an "unlimited" plan, as advertised.

Your comment regarding your monthly phone calls --- "all mine are domestic so I'm never charged anything above the flat rate" --- is (no disrespect intended here) simply incorrect . . . or, from another perspective, is correct as long as you do not exceed 5,000 minutes per month. In other words, the only reason why VOIPo has not been legally able to bill you more than "the flat rate" is because you probably have not exceeded 5,000 minutes in any given month since you started using their service.

In my experience, 5,000 minutes (which is 83 hours and 20 minutes) per month (or about 2 hours and 45 minutes per day, on average, based on a 30-day month) is usually more time than I would spend talking on the phone. However, as we all know, we don't always spend our time on the phone talking --- there's a lot of hold time, occasionally, especially when calling corporate customer support for various other products and services, as well as massive hold times when calling federal, state and local government agencies. All that hold time can add up, over the course of any given month, to an amount that when added to actual talk time, can conceivably exceed 5,000 minutes per month.

There is additional language found in the same Section of the VOIPo TSA: "VOIPo uses automated systems to monitor usage to detect patterns which are typical of non-residential use such as telemarketing, call center, autodialing, continuous call forwarding, frequent, excessively long calls to single numbers, etc."

In fairness to VOIPo, their reasoning for including this language is sound --- they do not want businesses, especially telemarketing companies, to take advantage of their low residential rates (after magicJack, VOIPo has, from what I can tell, the lowest rates in the US residential VOiP phone market). What concerns me, however, is the final sentence of that Section: "VOIPo shall have sole discretion to determine whether usage is consistent with average usage or not."

I'll explain why I am concerned with that sentence.

There are other, "residential", non-business scenarios which can fit the description VOIPo provides here as being a basis for charging 1.9 cents per minute. Here are two examples:

(1) I recently spent 12 hours on the phone, over the course of two days, with three different Customer Support Technical Specialists at Research In Motion, in order to resolve a major technical problem I had with my BlackBerry device --- three very long phone calls to the same phone number. I may have to call them back again as a follow up, which will undoubtedly involve hold time and talk time in excess of an hour, and perhaps multiple such calls to the same phone number, again (and maybe again?).

(2) My mother, who is 91 years of age and is generally home-bound, spends a good deal of time talking on the phone. She does not make a voluminous number of calls per day (i.e., I would consider "voluminous" to mean an excess of 100 calls per day), however when she does make a call, it's usually to one of her siblings and they tend to talk for a long time (an hour or more).

I spoke with a VOIPo representative about all this and the response I got was, albeit friendly, one which did not, unfortunately, resolve this issue.

Here's a copy of part of my email dialog with VOIPo regarding this issue:
__________________________________________________ __________________________________

from: Christopher G support@voipo.com
reply-to: support@voipo.com
to: raycapodanno
date: Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 6:03 PM
subject: [#UFM-932819]: Question about TOS
mailed-by: voipo.com

Hello Raymond,

We cannot guarantee that minutes over 5,000 will not be billed as per our ToS. However, we rarely see customers go over that soft limit. The customers who use our service the most average about 2-3 thousand minutes per month. Let us know if we may be of further assistance.

Regards,
Christopher G.
VOIPo.com

Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: UFM-932819
Department: Supervisor Escalations
Priority: Requests Handled in Order Received
Status: Pending Customer Response
__________________________________________________ __________________________________

I went on to ask if there is a way to track usage online, and the response I got was that, "All calls are viewable within your call history online. The duration of each is also referenced." When I asked further if "there [is] a running cumulative total number of minutes used available online (i.e., without me having to add them up manually)?", I got the following response: "Unfortunately we do not have a running total of minutes."

Further questioning by me yielded the following suggestion:
__________________________________________________ __________________________________
from: VOIPo support@voipo.com
reply-to: support@voipo.com
to: raycapodanno
date: Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 7:20 PM
subject: [#UFM-932819]: Question about TOS
mailed-by: voipo.com

Hello,

We have an automated system that monitors usage but there is no customer facing or employee tool for us to calculate this. If you wish to get a break out of your usage you can submit a ticket to customer service and it will get escalated up the chain to get a usage total.

We have access to the same vpanel you do.

I would suggest adding up the calls using an excel spread sheet and exporting your call history.


Best regards,
Clay G
Support Supervisor
VOIPo.com

Thanks for choosing VOIPo, The Likable Phone Company.

Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: UFM-932819
Department: Customer Care
Priority: Requests Handled in Order Received
Status: Pending Customer Response
__________________________________________________ __________________________________

As "likable" (and I mean that most sincerely) as VOIPo's employees are, the company is nevertheless engaging in false advertising and does not offer a reasonable remedy to ensure that residential customers will not be charged above the flat rate.

I am genuinely disappointed because after much research, reading reviews, etc., I thought I had finally found a company I could trust.

I hope your experience with VOIPo remains positive.

Sincerely,
Ray

[burris]

Hi, Ray....

I am one of the very many satisfied customers of VOIPo and no, I will probably never use anywhere near the total allowed.

Having said that, I think maybe you are pushing the envelope a bit in citing verbatim the TOS and expressing the thought that VOIPo is not honest in their presentation.
I know Tim and have been with them since before the beginning and have never encountered a more forthright, honest company and CEO than I have with them.
No, I don't work for them nor do I own any stock or have any other rights other than that of a paying customer.

I would then ask you to read Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle...etc., infinitum and tell me if you've contacted them in the same manner that you are questioning VOIPo.

If you read and don't agree with Microsoft, are you going to discard all their products with the same TOS? After all with them, even if you buy their OS, you don't own it.

If you are happy with the service, hang in there, and if a problem arises, then contact Tim to address it.

[VOIPoTim]

I replied to your ticket personally, but will reply here as well since you posted.

Our plans are designed for users with "typical usage". The average user on our network uses 472 minutes per month so in order to trigger overages, they would need to have 10x the average which is pretty extreme.

All VoIP services have similar verbiage in place in their Terms of Service documents to prevent users from abusing the service. Providers have to have this type of protection in place because some unscrupulous people abuse the service by doing things like ordering 40 accounts and trying to run a 24/7 call center on them, etc.

Users that are using the service for normal residential usage should not worry about this.

[MarkTomlinson]

Wow. Didn't see that coming.

[FloridaMatt]

Compared to my former telephone provider, Bright House cable, Voipo's TOS is much more definitive. Here's what Bright House says on their features page and TOS.

Features: "Call anytime, anywhere, across the street or across the country with Unlimited Nationwide calling plans."

TOS: ". If BHN determines in its sole discretion, that your use of the Home Phone Service is excessive or in violation of this Agreement or not typical of a residential user of the Service, we reserve the right (i) immediately and without notice to terminate or modify your Home Phone Service or (ii) assess additional charges for each month in which any excessive usage occurred."

Let's see, no definition whatsoever of what might be considered excessive or "not typical", and no mention of what the additional charges might be...