I've been with ViaTalk for over a decade now (one of the few). My main reasons for staying:
1. Fantastic features. They have so many that I use often that I rarely see others touch -- like distinctive ring, simul-ring, COMPLEX white and blacklists, complex routing and callerID options.
2. Great US-based support. I almost always get extremely helpful support people out of Albany, New York who seem genuinely concerned about my issues.
The one thing of late is that I've had a couple problems for some time that never got resolved and we're now pretty sure they were linked to my Linksys PAP2T adapter (well, all of them, not just mine).
So now I have an Obi. That got me to thinking, when my service is up next year (10/2015) I'd like to be fully loaded with info on whether I should stick with them (basically they charge $150 a year but you can always get $150 for two years by just timing your renewal carefully. So, $75 a year. Not bad for this service.
However, saving is never a bad thing. As long as voice quality is solid, I find I don't need as many features these days, though I do use my home phone for a bit of business and need it to be solid for inbound calls and reliable conversations.
What other services should I be seriously considering over ViaTalk now that I've put a toe in the water outside their domain?
BTW, great story about one of their features and why it was so valuable:
I broke my leg a number of years ago and, as often is the case, health insurance DID cover it all but they took their time doing it. Of course, I started getting annoying collection calls almost immediately. Well, using their filter-based advanced call routing, with the first annoying rep I told him we'd never speak again. He thought I was joking and said so. I then set up a rule so that ANY calls from his entire company would be forwarded to a great number that just plays a recording of an old AT&T recording that says, "The call you have made requires a deposit of 25 cents. Please deposit 25 cents to complete this call." Ah, vindication.
The MOST annoying guy got very personal with me. Threateningly so. I told him this call would be the last time we'd ever talk. Like the first guy, this one also laughed and got very animated about how he'd destroy me. So I found out his boss' direct extension and forward all his inbound calls directly to his boss' direct line. Now that's a feature that makes you feel in total control.