Skype seriously annoyed a lot of people when they gave less than a month to have their London SkypeIn phone numbers – many their main business number – changed by 20 December.
We were one of those unfortunates too, so were forced to take action.
Skype: Serious loss of trust
Skype offered to replace the central London 0207 number, with a more generic 0203 London code.
Skype had lost our confidence in their apparently incompetent handling of the situation and we wanted an 0207 number, ideally our original one.
SkypeIn sucked
We’ve had serious problems with our SkypeIn number pretty much from the word go. When people called us on it, the complained about the call quality, which lead us to take up the policy of getting people’s phone number when we received a call – only to return the call to them as soon as we could.
Not exactly business like.
What are the options?
Having made the decision to keep our number, we looked around at who else was available and found two contenders – GCI with their Geonum offering (the company that Skype got the number form in the first place) and VoIPFone.
Both offered for us to keep our 0207 phone number.
GCI didn’t appear to quite have their offering up to speed, follow Skype halting discussions with them to keep the 0207 numbers, so we decided to look elsewhere.
The offering from VoIPFone appeared really strong – easily covering everything that we’d had with Skype, and providing much, much more.
VoIPFone: Miles Better Than Skype
After careful consideration, we decided to go with VoIPFone.
VoIPFone decided to wave their usual £10 charge for transferring numbers to their service.
We’re so pleased that we did. Being with VoIPFone is a total contrast to the service that we had from Skype. The calls are crystal clear and are a joy to talk on.
As with Skype, there’s a software client also available, so you can still receive calls while you’re travelling and don’t want to carry their hardware adaptor.
The handsets that we’ve been using (Snom 300) also bring a strong feeling of quality.
The Virtual PBX feature is fantastic. For just 99p per extension per month, each member of your company can have their own line, with calls easily transferred between them, even if they’re located in a different location.
Voice mails can be picked up from your handset and also arrive via email, ensuring that you don’t miss them.
The number of facilities that are available on VoIPFone are extensive, so we suggest you look over their site to get the full low down.
So Glad That We Moved To VoIPFone
To date our experience has been nothing but joyful.
Not only do we end up with a better service, but the call charges for calling normal PSTN phone numbers are on the whole, actually cheaper than Skype.
As Skype users know, support isn’t somthing that Skype offers except through online forums – which is fine for some, but frustrating for many. In stark contrast VoIPFone’s support is at the end of the telephone (as well as online) and we’ve found it helpful, knowledgeable and efficient.
Even if you weren’t affected by Skype taking your phone number away, we’d go as far as suggesting that you might find VoIPFone a better service anyway.
We’re in the U.S. (and have a Skype 0207 number) and as much as VoIPFone looked like the better solution of the two, they don’t accept signups from the U.S. because of previous fraud. But oddly enough would allow us to sign up with someone in the U.K. which in the long-run seems even more dodgier for future fraud than just letting us sign up in the U.S.
VoipFone knocks socks off Skype. Skype is for those who want to have a dabble with VOIP. It is definitely not business class!
We’re even moving our home over to VoipFone. All the family now has their own number. No more scrabbling for the phone, and it’s as cheap as chips.
Give it a go, there is even a 30 day trial available – see above.
I used to have a SkypeIn Number too and encountered the same quality issues.
I have been using Voipfone services for over 6 months in a business environment and i have to say i am greatly satisfied by all the features they provide.
Setting up a hardware or a soft-phone can be a little bit challenging, but as mentioned in the post: the support is really helpful.
In top of that, the quality is much better and the service really reliable.
I am about to move my home line to the service too as it is much cheaper than most of the providers on the market.
Skype is to VoIP what AOL is to an ISP – or what Herod was to child welfare!
VoIPFone is excellent and business class. I have been using it for many months and have moved all 3 of my offices and my home over to VoIPfone. Like any technology, from time to time there have been hiccups that the guys at VoIPFone have dealt with very quickly. Their replies to emails are very speedy and helpful.
The best feature is in the event of loss of internet activity, phonecalls are automatically diverted to a PSTN or mobile so you’re never without service even if your ISP falls over or you have a power cut!
Development is always on going and new features are being introduced all the time. You really get the feeling these guys are enthusiastic about their product.
I know you can find cheaper providers but not with the offer of products and services you will find here and besides charges are completely scalable to your requirements with easy-out options if things go wrong.
When choosing a provider, I spent hours investigating and comparing. Save yourself the time and just get signed up and encourage others to do the same!
Anthony
@Anthony – “Skype – what Herod was to child welfare!” – brilliant line!
Yes …we continue to be impressed with VoIP phone and thanks for the heads up on the PSTN fall-over … didn’t know about that one before.
We’ve also have a great Voipfone experience. Their support service is advertised as running 9-5 on weekdays, but we had almost immediate, very knowledgable/helpful responses via their support email address on a saturday evening – brilliant.
We don’t have the best internet speed (1.5mb ish) and using skype in led to lots of complaints about voice quality. But voipfone seems to be crystal clear, plus it has lots of great features like transfer, forwarding, conferencing etc.
I love the english used on the pulled comment above
We’re so impressed with VoIPFone, we’re arranged a free 30-day trial for you, so you can see what you think of it.
Priceless