 Review by RMKyote 
UPDATED: 307 days ago
member for 8.8 years, 452 visits, last login: 2 days ago
 Beverly Hills,Los Angeles,CA
 $12 per month (24 month contract)
 about 5 days
 "Great Features and Toys! Other than that RUN!!!!!!"
 "EVERYTHING! Customer Service is Pathetic! Product Quality is . . . . AHHHHHHHHH!"
 "If you need to use your phone, don't use ViaTalk."
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Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings well below consensus)
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UPDATE (1/09):
As of Mid November I ran to VOIPo because ViaTalk just got to be too much of a fraud, nothing but lies and false promises that they did start to act, but seriously failed in continuing. I got tired of the lies, outrageously out of line CSR's, the bad calls always attributed to 1. My ISP, or 2. my network, or 3. Me. But never them. Tickets were taking so long to get acted upon, problems had time to resolve themselves before VT ever got to them. I still have tickets that I submitted months ago that were not answered before I left. I got Vonage for a couple of weeks on the same network with the same ISP and it was perfect. The reason I went with VOIPo was I was invited to join them and they have done a good job of starting up and all of my inquiries and "tickets" have been answered by the same people, if not 85% of the time the CEO, that have come to know my network and ISP and look at their end first and work towards me. The adapter, Grandstream HT502, that they use is the one that VIaTalk is moving to but never offered to me, when I have been telling them for the years of my contract that their Linksys gear was crap. Looks like they finally wised up. Too late for me.
Bottom line: STAY AWAY FROM VIATALK! There are too many other providers that you can get far better service from. Plus, at the rate VT is going, they can't be long for this world.
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After two years with Vonage I was tired of no contemporary market features and excuses as to why they weren't going to have them. But I had NO, ZERO call quality problems. When I first started having problems with ViaTalk, I called and got a TSR that was amazing. But as time went on and the problems went unresolved, increased and got more elaborate, you could tell that he was losing interest in helping. He went from calling me by my first name (he got so he would recognize my voice because I had to call so many times) to calling me Sir and pretending we had never spoken before. The other day I got a TSR that told me I didn't have a problem because everything was fine on their end and started to argue with me. I read him all the eMails that I had up to that point from people that could not get through and it didn't matter. All the while the call was breaking up and hissing, crackling, choppy and I was calling into their VoIP from a POTS line so they could make any changes to my adapter and not loose the call. They were even having problems. I then politely asked to speak with a supervisor and got a ton of really creative excuses why I couldn't. Then when I insisted I was connected to someones voicemail and have never heard back. I have found several recent threads here in DSLR and the VT Forums where others are having the same problems that I am with call quality and Tech Support, so it's not just me. I now eMail instead of calling on the phone when it is important.
I have since resorted to submitting Trouble Tickets through the website of which I can not check them other than a link sent in an eMail. I have performed a mountain of tests that they have requested that would over burden a cancer clinic and all the numbers on my end are great and theirs horrible. So . . . . ? No word from them since my numbers started looking good and theirs not.
I spent three months investigating, checking out every nook and cranny on all relevant forums; calling VT; gaining friends on the VT boards that were a great help, and all "looked" great. I really thought that I had stumbled on a life saving, too good to be true, greatest thing of all time. But within a week of being up and running things started to fall apart. I gave it time and the TSR's all the assistance they needed, put my adapter in the DMZ, rebuilt my network to favor the adapter (my Vonage adapter was buried on my network and NO problems); jumped through hoops and nothing has been accomplished. Now either I have no problems or it's all on my end as per VT TSR's. I have been moved to all servers in my "relative " area, they all have bad latency, but not moved to a server that has good numbers as I have found and requested. You use to be able to do it yourself in the control panel, but that feature has disappeared. The one real reason that I switched was all the great features/toys they have and they are always adding more, even to your line without your knowledge or permission. They did that to me and killed my line and it has never been the same since. Good intentions, bad execution. But as I have read it being said, "They need to knock off the creative stuff and focus on the recently emerging problems." I agree.
There is much more and I really don't want to go any further. Just take this as a friendly warning. If call quality is important to you, or for that matter a call at all - use Vonage. I don't believe I just said that, but sadly it's true.
This is the true sense of the phrase: "You get what you pay for!" And boy am I paying for it. Don't you.
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