Comments on: Joiphone

By: Jesse

Jesse — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 21:29:48 +0000

Joiphone?…. This company is a joke. Don’t fall to their gimmicks. If you used their VOIP adapter/equipent,they will demand you return it if you finish the term or you cancel your service. They will tell you the equipment is a loanner not free. This is completely not presented or indicated in their advertisement to get you use their service term qulified order to get the provided equipment at no cost, you pay shipping only.

Joiphone, will charge you with insanely high cost for the adapter/ equipment if you did not return it, again at your cost.

Dont!!!!!…Dont!!!!!…Dont!!!!!…Dont!!!!!…use Joiphone you will regret it.

By: Legal action

Legal action — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:44:39 +0000

To whom it may concern,
My business has been running on my joi phone account for almost a year and I have been without service for the last two months. I have called twice a week for the last forty days with no answer as to why I cannot receive incoming calls. I have been promised multiple times that a manager will be calling me to work out the issue which has not happened. The only response that I have received from technical support is to change my number. I have spent thousands of dollars branding my company around the assigned joiphone number and changing my number and reprinting marketing material would cost me thousands more. If I don’t receive an immediate response by email or phone I will be forced to take legal actions with the dozens of other customers that have been left in the dark.

By: mohammed

mohammed — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 20:40:10 +0000

numberone problem it takes 20 second to connect your line then No customer service at all. First I took it for a year it was 9.99 next year they charge my card with out letting me. and it was 17.95 (fully kidding..)I called and asked for disconnect and refund. you have to request by e-mail and they might or might not dis connect it. Even you have paid they ask the roughter to be send back (I pay shipping)and no refund will be send to you !!!!!! Please Do not use this service.

Save yourself some time and energy go for other company.

By: John

John — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:08:29 +0000

Service was ok for about 2 years but one day my number stopped working. I could dial out but no dial in. I was told it will be fix but after 2 weeks and a “temporary” number I am beginning to believe my number is gone forever. Customer service always answers but if they can’t help you then is a waste of time. I will definitely not renew my service.

By: Farid

Farid — Tue, 25 May 2010 16:43:37 +0000

They tried to charge my card for over $200 for an annual renewal, without informing me. luckily there was some mistake at their end and the card did not go through. I cancelled my service one week into the renewal and talked to them. They said I have to pay the outstanding balance no matter what since I did not call them before the contract was over. I sent several emails to billing but no one seems to care. Called Customer service but they have no answer. BIG TIME CROOKS.

By: Julie

Julie — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 19:04:12 +0000

Joiphone charged my card for over $200 for an annual renewal, with absolutely no communication in advance that I was coming up for renewal. When I called on the day they dinged my card, they indicated I could get a refund. Then, I had to follow up multiple times, before they stated there were no refunds. I am now disputing with my credit card company and canceling my card.

By: Salmonroe

Salmonroe — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 04:34:46 +0000

I have been with Joiphone for over almost 4 years, I got my first year pretty cheap ($9/mo.), then renewed a second year at a higher monthly rate (which didn’t bother me too much, since it was still less than Packet8, which was costing me almost $30/mo.) and my third year came with a fourth year free so it’s about $10/mo.

THERE ARE NO REFUNDS WHATSOEVER AT JOIPHONE. It doesn’t matter if you never touched the service, if you’ve paid $20 or $200, there is no refund! So think about it before you join. And yes, Billing questions are by email only, takes several days for you to get a reply and it’s usually not what you want to hear.

With that being said, I’ve had OK service in terms of voice quality. There were a few dropped calls, as with most VOIPs. The really annoying thing was I could not dial into voice conferencing numbers where you have to enter a code then # to enter teleconference. It would work only 50% of the time, which is not reliable enough. Tech support was good about calling me back when I left a message, but nobody knew what was wrong or what to do about it. Then the next time I’d dial into the same conferencing call (a week or two later), it would work again.

My absolute worst experience was when my computer downloads/uploads slowed down tremendously (could not upload a 30-second video overnight) and it was traced back to the equipment. I ran several tests with Tech Support, lasting hours and days, tweaking everything. Things would work, then it wouldn’t work and it would work again. Basically the problem with the phone adapter is that it was bottle-necking all the data. As you can see on the instructions on the Joiphone website, the adapter is meant to be connected to the modem, not router. Router comes after the adapter, so all internet data is funneled to the modem via the phone adapter. After being told that a new adapter was available, but that I had “prove” my old adapter was defective in order to get it, I was put through more hoops. Finally I got fed up with trying to get everything to work. I knew I could not get a refund, but I couldn’t even get a new adapter after crawling around the floor for days, endless hours messing with wires, connecting/re-connecting equipment in endless variations and turning two PCs on and off with two toddlers at home-?!? You would think a company could treat a customer better. It became unbearable for me, nothing worked consistently as the days went by and at some point, my husband got on the phone and started demanding Tech Support to come over to do what I was doing themselves! My husband was angry, probably a bit rude, but it was 11:30pm and we were both exasperated and exhausted from a long day. If nothing else, I have to say Tech Support was persistent. They continued to call me to see if the phone service was working ok. If you sign up now, you can get the new adapter, so my story could be a thing of the past. Let’s hope.

That was the negative. Now for the positive. My phone works now, still has some problems here and there, but it works most of the time. I don’t use it that much, a few calls a day. Once a week I make one call, which lasts for the 2-hour maximum and this maximum is set by Joiphone, not me; your call will sound out a loud, almost disturbing beep and the call is cut off at the 2-hour mark. You can call the person back, but two hours is as long as you can talk continuously in a single call. I put it under positive instead of negative, because I don’t want to stay on the phone that long! But some of my friends just like to chew my ear off. I had no problem porting my old VOIP number. The feature I love most is blocking the last incoming call – *60 and you never hear from the advertiser or telemarketer again.

Joiphone is a small business, there aren’t that many staff members who can help you and the ones that do seem to be overworked. I feel bad for Joiphone employees actually. The company tries to stay competitive, but I question its equipment (beyond the home adapter) and it seems to seriously depend on customer’s money to keep operations running (hence the no-refund policy). I don’t like the way it does business, but as a second line, I’m OK with it – for now. I will definitely look around for something else once my contract is up.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 05:10:11 +0000

The operators seems to be very unprofessional. When calling them…it’s seem like they are doing us a favor and sounds very nasty. Kind of ghetto!!

By: Art Altman

Art Altman — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:54:24 +0000

Absolutely TERRIBELE Service. It took 8 months before it was runnning trouble free (More than 24 hours without failing). Support was almost non-existant.

There was double billing on a regualar basis. I paid for the year, and they also sharged the credit card monthly. After months of fighting I got SOME of that back. The rest was supposed to go to next year, but they screwed that billing up and cut off the line. (That happened 3 tims before). Finally when it was resolved, I thought, things went back to normal for 2 months. Then my service was cut off again, with no notice, no warning. I could not get anyone to talk to.

Adam, the only one there who knew anything, was no longer there. The rest of the B… would not do anything, and would not take calls. I sent several e-mails, but got no response.

The price is good, but only if you do not use the line.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:00:00 +0000

I’ve had joiphone for 2 years and signed up for another 2 years. They have gone down once in October last year, and that was it. Very reliable with fax service working 99% of the time. Well worth 9 bucks a month. Every one else is talking about customer support being non-existent but every time I have called I got Adam within 3 rings. He only handles Tech support however and you have to email billing. But what do expect for keeping prices low. If you want instant help and a smiling kiss your ass voice within one ring then go with the expensive guys who can afford that. As far as voice quality, there is no difference between Vonage, joiphone, etc. I have been using the same router they sent me for 2 years now and it subjected to extreme temps in my attic and has never failed and as before there service has only been interrupted once, back in October, however they could have handled that better and posted a reason, but when I called Adam said they had a total system failure including their website which will never happen again, and it hasn’t. Go with Joi phone. I haven’t had any issues with billing mistakes either, and I was skeptical when I renewed for another 2 years expecting Joiphone to screw up after reading all the previous reviews, but amazingly they got it right. And I’m still saving big bucks every month.