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[usa2k]

http://forums.voipo.com/showthread.php?t=413

Tentative Pricing

$21.95 – If Paid Monthly
$99 – If Paid Every 6 Months

Then later ...

Tentative Pricing

$21.95 – If Paid Monthly
$99 – If Paid Every 6 Months
$199 - Paid Yearly

Where number Portability is discussed


ALSO:

All plans have a $29.95 activation fee. Federal, state and local governments in the US along with the FCC require us to provide certain services, comply with certain regulatory policies, and collect taxes when they deem appropriate. A USF surcharge and an E911 Recovery Fee will be billed with service. We don’t like to do this either, but unfortunately VoIP is regulated by the government unlike web hosting.

When will these type of charges get added in?
If people sign up now, are you waiving the $29.95 and the extra fees?

[VOIPoTim]

http://forums.voipo.com/showthread.php?t=413
When will these type of charges get added in?
If people sign up now, are you waiving the $29.95 and the extra fees?

During the pre-launch, the rates are flat and we're absorbing the additional taxes and fees.

The $29.95 would still apply and is basically to cover the cost of equipment. If we sell or lease the equipment or call the setup fee anything related to equipment, there are some complication with sales tax since it's a physical item. More or less that's what it's for.

[fisamo]

I'm curious--is there any way you can 'write off' the equipment at a later time, say, if a customer cancels after a year? I don't see any need to automatically unlock/release the equipment to be used on anyone else's service, but if you have no intention of re-using the equipment (maybe you do plan to re-use?), why go through the hassle of asking that it be returned upon cancellation? If you do opt to write off the equipment (presuming it's possible to do so legally without tripping over tax issues), would you consider unlocking the devices upon request (with or without an unlock fee) of your ex-customers?

As the masses adopt VoIP, I don't know how important it would be to cater to the customer who wants to be able to reuse the equipment, similar to catering to the BYOD crowd. I just ask because it was a question that Vonage wrestled with a few years ago. IIRC, they no longer unlock adapters of canceling customers, but they also do not require that the equipment be returned. To me, the bigger issue of the equipment return is the hassle of boxing it up and taking it to UPS/FEDEX/DHL or the post office. Although another way to cut down on the customer's hassle is to provide prepaid shipping labels, that comes with the added costs of paying for the shipping and the internal man-hours to support obtaining, distributing, and accounting for these labels...

[burris]

I'm curious--is there any way you can 'write off' the equipment at a later time, say, if a customer cancels after a year? I don't see any need to automatically unlock/release the equipment to be used on anyone else's service, but if you have no intention of re-using the equipment (maybe you do plan to re-use?), why go through the hassle of asking that it be returned upon cancellation? If you do opt to write off the equipment (presuming it's possible to do so legally without tripping over tax issues), would you consider unlocking the devices upon request (with or without an unlock fee) of your ex-customers?

As the masses adopt VoIP, I don't know how important it would be to cater to the customer who wants to be able to reuse the equipment, similar to catering to the BYOD crowd. I just ask because it was a question that Vonage wrestled with a few years ago. IIRC, they no longer unlock adapters of canceling customers, but they also do not require that the equipment be returned. To me, the bigger issue of the equipment return is the hassle of boxing it up and taking it to UPS/FEDEX/DHL or the post office. Although another way to cut down on the customer's hassle is to provide prepaid shipping labels, that comes with the added costs of paying for the shipping and the internal man-hours to support obtaining, distributing, and accounting for these labels...

You make some good points....

One example might be the DSL I recently switched to from Comcast.

ATT/BellSouth provides a modem for which they charge you $75.00. Unless you have signed up in a certain fashion, ATT will charge you $75.00 + sales tax(for your area). They then set up a schedule to charge this out on each monthly bill for 10 months, and they automatically set it up that way.
Then, if you are entitled to a rebate, which I suppose 99% of the people will be, they will ultimately credit this, as will be reflected on a future bill.

They too, explained this to me as Tim explained it.

In my case, they inadvertently sent me 2 modems...when I made them aware, they sent a pre-paid label as an attachment to an e-mail. A number of companies use that method now...