Review by jester121 
UPDATED: 274 days ago
member for 5.4 years, 1684 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Lake Zurich,Lake,IL
 $24 per month (12 month contract)
 about 14 days
 "Good price, tons of features"
 "Terrible communication, some rude techs, flaky service, capacity issues?"
 "VT was thrilled at the cash influx when Sunrocket died, but they bit off too much."
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Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Ex-Sunrocketeer here. I ordered from Viatalk a few days before the mass exedous from Sunrocket, but they have no concept of first come, first served. Despite jumping ship early, I waited much longer than plenty of other people for provisioning and shipment of the adapter.
After 5 days waiting, I called to add rush service to my order -- that was never done. After 10 days waiting, I called to get provisioned for BYOD, they said it would be processed but never was. In total, it took 14 days to finish provisioning, and 17 days to receive my adapter (keep in mind, I ordered ahead of the rush but saw dozens of reports from people who were up and running in a week). Apparently Viatalk staff and management monitors internet forums as well, and sometimes steps in to help users who are complaining publicly. I chose not to take that route (I complained loudly but didn't accept private offers of assistance), so I could evaluate how VT treats the average customer. Not very impressive, to say the least.
Now on to the service -- call quality ranges wildly from perfectly clear to all but unuseable, sometimes on the same call. At least 1/2 of my calls have noticeable echo on my end, about once a day I dial a number and get a fast busy and have to redial it. Voicemail is sometimes flaky and sluggish to respond to prompts -- more than likely capacity issues again.
Their website is pretty well organized and they have a ton of nice features, all the call blocking and simultaneous ring features, along with the $199 for 12 months deal, were the main reason I chose Viatalk when Sunrocket started floundering. Supposedly they're adding staff and capacity and things will probably settle down soon.
UPDATE - a couple months later --
Viatalk did a nice job of porting my Sunrocket number over, it was three weeks to the day (as promised). They acknowledged receipt of the documents and send an e-mail right away when the port was finished.
Voice quality has been a bit flaky lately, static on both ends of the call, some echo, and other sporadic issues (this is with no other traffic on my Comcast line). We've also had random outages about once a week, but not for extended periods of time. It's easier to just grab a cell phone than invest hours trying to fix these things with tech support (and based on what other users say, all VT support will say is "must be something on your end".)
4/8/08 -- So I bumped up the reliability and tech support score a bit, things have been pretty stable lately. For the $3-4 per month I'm paying in un-fees right now it's ok, hopefully something better will come around soon. It appears their tech support has gotten its act together as well, I submitted a ticket for a control panel issue and it was responded to promptly and efficiently.
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