I had decided that I'd do my Google Voice (GV) end-of-XMPP transition on May 1st, so yesterday I signed up with PhonePower. I thought I'd post what my PhonePower experience has been.
The short version is, one day into my service, I'm reasonably happy and don't have any major negatives to report. My biggest gripe is their online support chat feature puts you in a queue, and you have to wait out the line ahead of you, but, once you get a service rep, they are polite and helpful. Another, minor gripe is their chat app doesn't go "ding" when you get off hold, so you won't know if a rep has come online if their screen is buried under another app.
Pretty minor grumbles. They're a lot easier to work with than say, my local phone company, cable TV/Internet provider, and many other "support" organizations that leave you on hold, listening to the same annoying on-hold music until you get a support rep who winds up wasting your time instead of helping you. I'd give the experience a "four of five stars" satisfaction rating, which isn't bad for support.
On to the larger details. I had two other problems (thus the chat/support sessions) and some positive feedback about service quality.
First, things I wanted from my new service provider, but didn't get:
* None of the SIP providers (PhonePower, Anveo, etc.) seem to offer PayPal. You have to sign up with a credit card (CC), which is not my first choice. Not only have I had my CC compromised on multiple occasions (most recently with the Target debacle last Christmas season) resulting in me getting a new CC number, CCs expire or change when I move or change banks, and each time that happens I have to track down which companies bill me by credit card and update their billing info for me. Not only is that a hassle, I usually miss one or two of them, and annually billed accounts are the hardest to track down and remember. I've never had a problem with my PayPal service, and actively select vendors that support them over those that offer just CC billing. <Sigh>
* I also wanted a service that would only take calls that came through mu Google Voice number, which I am keeping at GV. No service seemed to offer that, either.
I selected Phone Power (PP) because they were on ObiHai's "Approved" list and there are lots of positive reviews about them out there. I opted not to go with Anveo because I wanted my CallerID to display a name (more on that later) with my GV phone number, and Anveo is both slightly more expensive and charges extra for a CNAM record. Most services claim to work just fine with Google Voice, so that wasn't one of my problems while looking for a provider.
PhonePower costs were $35 straight up for their cheapest plan: no taxes, no extra fees for the included E911 service. The chep plan includes 300 minutes (5 hours) of outbound calling a month to the US and Canada and 60 minutes of calling to a list of international locations (more than we use) and unlimited inbound calls. $0.01/minute for US and Canada after that, international rates are variable. There's a cost checker on PP's website.
So, I pulled the trigger yesterday and joined up with PhonePower.
The enrollment/sign-up was pretty ststraightforward. As usual, the longest part of the process was browsing through the service agreement. Most of it is pretty standard stuff. About the only thing in there worth mentioning is they require a 30-day advanced notice of termination, so, if you decide you want to leave them in a year's time, you may have to call them in advance to let them know.
Once I was signed-up, it took just a few minutes for PP to assign me a new telephone number and get my service up and working at their end. My Obi110 adapter, on the other hand, wasn't cooperating. I started an online chat session, they wound their way through their diagnostic process, and decided the problem must be at ObiHai's end. Which was true, sort of. They directed me to ObiHai's tech support.
After getting off the chat with them, I remembered that I had done some customizations of the settings directly on my Obi110 and not through
ObiTalk.com. After logging directly on to my Obi110 on m local LAN and clicking the "Default" check boxes on the 110's SP1 configuration page, I returned to the ObiTalk Dashboard page, clicked the red status warning message, followed the directions, and the service came straight up.
My second problem was my Caller ID name field, or CNAM. It turns out PhonePower pulls your 14-character CNAM information from their Billing department's LastName then FirstName information, but what I wanted was to see "Lynne-n-Peter H." (Lynne-n-Peter is what I set our account's "First Name" to.) It took a chat with Support, which directed me to a Billing chat, which directed me to send them an email request.
The nice Billing support rep agreed to wave the $5 account change fee since I contacted them within a day of signing up to make my correction. It's worth noting, however, that you have to fudge your account name on their sign-up forms if you want something other than a 14-char, truncated "Jefferson Thom" to show up on your outbound caller IDs.
As for the testing I've done, my call setup times seem to be pretty quick, the call quality about the same as with GV or my old land line. First day of service, and I've had no problems so far. I'll post again if I run into any.