Why Vonage Doesn't Deserve Your Business

When you mention the name Vonage, one group knows who they are from the wacky commercials with the wacky song in constant rotation on televisions and radios all over the nation. If you by some miracle missed one of those, then I'm quite sure you have received an ad or three in the mail.

The other group unfortunately knows about Vonage from being on the receiving end of their aggressive, abusive, and dishonest business practices. But make no mistake about it. Vonage has acquired a tremendous amount of business since their introduction in 2001, over 2.5 million customers to be exact. That's right, two million. As a matter of fact, at one time, I was a Vonage customer as well. But now they're losing customers at an incredible rate.

Vonage, without a doubt, pioneered the VoIP local phone service market that exists today and they have paid their dues opening the market up as a viable competitor against traditional telephone companies like at&t® and the other Bell spinoffs. But that is where my respect for Vonage ends.

Somewhere along the way, Vonage has obviously lost its way. Just Google the phrase 'Vonage Complaints' and you will be presented with hours and hours of interesting reading material regarding the negative Vonage customer experience. At one point, when leaving their service, I even had a run in with them myself. The love I had for that company and their service turned to fury in just a couple calls to customer service to cancel service. Their level of arrogance is absolutely incredible. They simply do as they please to their customers. The call them liars, harass them, charge their credit cards whenever and for however much they like, they disrespect them, force them to pay fabricated delinquent bills or face a credit strike (modern extortion) and more. If there is any company that has a blatant disregard for their customers, the bread and butter, of their establishment, it's Vonage. They were without a doubt a monopoly in the VoIP industry. Unfortunately, their awareness of their size and strength led to a level of arrogance that resulted in abuse and taking for granted the sole foundation of their existence, their customers. Triniti Communications International aka TrinitiComm was born of this injustice and lack of gratitude.

When starting TrinitiComm, the founders used Vonage as a recipe for cooking up the perfect VoIP phone company. They learned what to do for and what not to do to their customers. And they learned how to provide both impeccable phone service with impeccable customer service and technical support. TrinitiComm enjoys an industry leading 99.4% customer retention rate. That is absolutely incredible.

TrinitiComm is a rising star in the VoIP industry that the masses have never heard of yet. They don't have any fancy jingles or large ad agency budgets. They don't send out one million pieces of ad mail every month. They just provide excellent phone service, with truly unlimited local, long distance and international calling, plenty of free calling features, stellar customer service, and stellar support for just $19.99 per month. And their customers are simply thrilled to spread the word about it. 91% of their customers have referred new customers to their company. It's really a win-win situation. The customer is more than satisfied and as a result, helps TrinitiComm keep new business coming in the door from the power of word-of-mouth referrals. They even have a commission program for people looking to earn some up-front and residual cash referring new customers to the service. Not service credits but cash money paid electronically every single month. (More Info)

Oh, and then they actually let people try the service out for a month for free so they can prove that what they claim is true. And there are no catches and no hostage situations if for some reason you decide not to stick around past your first month just like back in the good old days. Now that spells confidence in the quality of their VoIP phone service and support.

So if you have a cable or DSL broadband internet connection, make the wise move and switch to TrinitiComm today and experience how VoIP phone service should really be. Please visit the TrinitiComm site for more information about their products and services. http://www.triniticomm.com

Can You Really Trust A MagicJack?

MagicJack. When VoIP providers first heard the word it didn't mean a thing. After they learned about what it could do and who it was owned by, they stood there stunned. MagicJack was invented by and is owned by Daniel Borislow which owns Y-Max Communications, a national Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC). He rose to fame as pretty much the sole provider of long distance services for AOL back in the day. He invested several million dollars of his own money (over 17 to be exact) into making MagicJack a reality. But there are definitely some things that make you say hmmm and throw up a red flag here or there. Several people smell a disaster looming in the near future.

Don't get me wrong, MagicJack appears to be a truly phenomenal product in concept for anyone looking to save money on their local and long distance phone services. The pricing can't be beat. But what exactly is missing for their service to be so cheap? And how is this going to affect me when it really matters? And is the way MagicJack operates even legal? Well having their own phone network to ride on certainly helps them control the cost but not to that magnitude. They still have the termination fees with the Telco's when calling to land lines, exorbitant software and hardware costs, astronomical bandwidth costs, marketing costs, manufacturing costs, phone number licensing costs and a tremendous amount of other operation costs. $20 for an entire year of unlimited calling? One must ask oneself how on earth is this possible? It is said that a major portion of their revenue will come from advertising. Well at $20 per year per subscriber, they will have to rake in a tremendous amount of advertising dollars to support the MagicJack network and user experience from start to finish. Is it possible? Absolutely, but with a lot of creativity and a little invasion of your privacy. We'll explain how they actually invade in a second, but first the legality.

This is very interesting. Is the owner of a CLEC allowed to market a product that could realistically monopolize the VoIP industry because nobody else like Vonage, Packet 8, etc. could compete since they lease from said CLEC's? Is this not anti-competitive? Why have none of the other CLEC's made a move like this when they realistically could have and had the capital to do so? Is this another white collar super crime in the making? Like some others suggest, maybe this is a genius plan to amass as many subscribers as possible with a service that actually works and then when the class action law suits and iron fist of government slam down on their anti-competitive practices, they disappear with millions of dollars in pocket? If this is the case, there will be a lot of furious newly abandoned residential and business customers there who have lost more due to the inconveniences and costs necessary to get new and REAL VoIP phone service. Then the MagicJack owners can just go back to making the large sums of money that they always have from the phone companies that depend on their CLEC network. The only people that will unfortunately lose out is their customers.

Now for your privacy? Well you can kiss that goodbye. Our friends behind the MagicJack truly have some interesting things up their sleeves once they launch their advertising channel campaign and a snippet of their End User License Agreement (EULA) proves it. (More Info) You are giving them the right to spy on you, your PC and eavesdrop in your conversations for the sake of savings. They can see what you like and listen to your conversations for specific keywords so they can push targeted advertising to your MagicJack software. And if you cancel the advertising, you cancel your phone service and can't return the MagicJack. And furthermore, if you decide to take them to court about it, you can't because you waived your right to. A simple marketing rule I learned in college says it all..."What the big print giveth, the fine print taketh away" Marketing 101. It's too bad that unsuspecting customers will be Magically Hijacked because they were blinded by the savings, the foo foo dust and missed this important piece of privacy information in their EULA. But as they say, if it is too good to be true, then 9.9 times out of 10, it is.

And yet, even though MagicJack appears to be the macaroni with the cheese in the VoIP industry, there are a few other drawbacks that people need to consider them as a VoIP phone service provider, if they plan on having peace-of-mind of course. In case the above major issues weren't enough, we're going to give you a few more reasons why a MagicJack shouldn't even be considered when compared to TrinitiComm's portable and true VoIP phone service. Our bias is obvious but, nevertheless, it is truth.

1. MagicJack is not a 'Green' company. MagicJack, with its miniature built-in Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA) relies on your PC or laptop to constantly be running in order for your phone service to work. This is more expensive for everyone. Your electric bills will be higher and environmentalists are saying that power consumption will go up dramatically as more and more people turn to MJ as a phone provider. If your PC or laptop breaks down for some reason, so does your phone service. All calls will go automatically to voicemail until you have your personal computer repaired or have another one in place. TrinitiComm on the other hand uses a very small standalone Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA) for your local phone service that uses a fraction of the power that a PC or laptop uses. Your phone service will work whether or not your computer is on because it is not attached to your computer at all. If your ATA fails for whatever reason, we can send one out to you overnight, just plug it in and continue using your phone.
2. MagicJack relies on your computers processing power and memory to process your phone calls. If your PC is not a powerful machine, this can impact the quality of your phone service while using your computer for business or leisure. PC performance can be affected as well. Therefore, a PC upgrade or new PC may be required for an acceptable level of performance. Our ATA's are in fact mini computers that have their own processors and memory to do absolutely nothing but provide you with solid and dependable phone service. Work on your PC all you want. Your phone service doesn't depend on it.
3. MagicJack can not be used with your existing phone jacks all over the house. So you will have to invest in an expandable phone system to have site-wide phone service. With TrinitiComm's ATA's, they have enough outgoing power to make all of your lines in the house hot so they can be used as working phone jacks with your existing phones. I have heard that some people have done this with their MJ's but this is not advisable because of the additional stress to your PCs power system.
4. MagicJack has the capability for only one phone line. TrinitiComm's ATA supports 2 separate lines automatically. Even though you can purchase additional MJ's for different numbers, it is not advisable because they will tie up even more of your PCs processing and memory power.
5. MagicJack is not as dependable and reliable as TrinitiComm. MagicJack's network is regarded as hit or miss, which is not how phone service should be. Even though there are numerous praises about their service there are also hundreds if not thousands of reports online about the lack of consistent reliability. Customers are complaining about things like the unavailability of a dial tone to place calls, several missed calls, missing voicemails, no voicemail notifications, having to reboot the PC several times a day, having to remove and reinsert the MJ and more. Land line service should just work. Period. The last thing you need is to need the phone and it doesn't work just to save a few dollars. You can put no price on peace-of-mind. TrinitiComm guarantees uptime of 99.9+%. Meaning it is there when you expect it to be. We also assure rapid delivery of voicemail messages in seconds not hours.
6. MagicJack has been touted as having missing-in-action and, when reachable, horrible customer service and support staff. Our trained and knowledgeable customer service and technical support staff is available around the clock via a toll-free call, *99 on your TrinitiComm phone or email. With MJ's current pricing structure, it will be impossible for them to support a top tier staff that can handle customer issues in a timely and efficient manner. This problem will only get worse as they get more customers. They will always have technical issues because of the astronomical variations in PC hardware and software configurations. Their service will never be able to offer the same level of performance and reliability that TrinitiComm offers.
7. MagicJack hasn't been around and does not have a complete tried and true network or track record. Their VoIP network is relatively solid but the supports of the bridge are riddled with technical issues that have yet to be overcome. Our VoIP backbones are pioneers of the VoIP industry and have been in business since 1997 with advanced VoIP technology driving it forward. We have been offering VoIP services strongly and competitively since 2003.
8. MagicJack's business model is highly risky and may end up leaving their entire customer base hanging like Sunrocket did unexpectedly. Will MJ survive with their current business model? It doesn't look to good considering that VoIP vets have been folding like wallets with much more proven, solid and profitable business models. TrinitiComm's VoIP backbone has more than 150,000 active phone customers using it everyday and is growing every month. On top of this, we have a whopping 99.4% customer retention rate because we provide peace-of-mind along with fast and responsive customer service and support whenever needed. After trying our service for free for thirty days, our customers simply don't leave. We are not new to this and our integrity, quality of service and dedication to our customers proves it.
9. With MagicJack no international calling is included. MJ actually pre-sells international calling minutes a la carte for those individuals who need to place international phone calls. With our unlimited residential and business plans, free unlimited calling to countries in Europe or Asia is free. We also have flat rate unlimited calling packages to five strategic world regions at discounted rates, plus low per minute rates for calling to countries on an as needed basis.

These are just a few reasons to choose TrinitiComm when selecting a VoIP provider. Since MagicJack and the way it operates is so new, it just isn't wise to switch to their service to save some money when they have yet to prove themselves as a viable competitor in the VoIP industry with staying power. Even after they've come and gone, TrinitiComm will continue to be here providing, reliable, consistent and affordable VoIP phone service for your absolute peace-of-mind. The reward just does not outweigh the risk of getting left 'off the hook' when you least expect it. Don't believe the hype and visit http://www.triniticomm.com for the real deal.